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The Executive director of the Alaska Municipal League is Nils Andreassen. The Alaska Municipal League (AML) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, statewide membership organization of 165 cities, boroughs, and unified municipalities, representing over 97 percent of Alaska’s residents. Originally organized in 1950, the League of Alaskan Cities became the Alaska Municipal League in 1962 when boroughs joined the League. Nils grew up in Washington State, earned a degree in Peace and Development studies from the University of Bradford in Great Britain, and served as the executive director of the Institute of the North prior to moving to AML in 2018.

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Physician Associate Christi Froiland spent a decade as an athletic trainer in the lower 48 before she went to PA school. She then returned to her hometown of Anchorage where she has practiced at both a dermatology clinic and an urgent care for over 18 years. She has also served for the last decade as the PA representative to the Alaska State Medical Association (ASMA). 

Outside of the legislature I, too, am a PA, and I know Christi through our professional organization the Alaska Academy of Physician Assistants. Our American professional organization (AAPA) has officially changed the name of our profession to Physician Associates. Alaska PAs have voted to officially change our name to physician associates as well, but the name change has not happened at the regulatory or statutory level yet. The PA profession in Alaska needs modernizing beyond a name change, and although we do not speak about it directly, we will reference Senate Bill 89 sponsored by Sen. Löki Tobin, which would modernize Alaska laws governing PAs. 

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Libby Roderick is a singer, songwriter, and recording artist, who was born in Anchorage just before statehood. Her father Jack Roderick was the last mayor of the borough of Anchorage prior to the unification of the municipality in 1975. Libby recorded her first album in 1990 which included the song, “How could Anyone,” which has been featured on CNN, CBS, and the Associated Press. Her music has been featured at the U.N. Conference on Women, with Coretta Scott King and Walter Cronkite in Washington D.C., and played on Mars by NASA. 

Libby has also been the director of the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Difficult Dialogues Initiative since 2006; through that initiative she has helped reinforce and protect civil discourse at centers of higher learning and beyond. According to former UAA Chancellor and governor of Alaska Sean Parnell: “Libby’s work is a critical keystone in the university’s service to students and to Alaska. The democracy-threatening polarization of the American public, social media’s influence on our inability to find common ground, and the difficult but necessary discussions related to human dignity and educational access have combined to maker her leadership paramount to meeting the mission to the university.” 

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Attorney John McKay has practiced media law in Anchorage for almost 50 years. He has represented Alaskan and national news organizations, photographers, artists, and others on libel, privacy and copyright issues, access to government proceedings and records, subpoenas to journalists, secret settlements by public agencies, cameras in courts, and many other matters.

He taught Media Law at the University of Alaska Anchorage for more than 30 years. In 2007, John was the first recipient of the Alaska Press Club’s First Amendment Award, and in 2011 on the 40th Anniversary of the ACLU of Alaska, he was recognized as one of the “40 Heroes of Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties.” He is the author of a legal guidebook for Alaska news reporters, and of publications on privacy law and open government law.

John has two sons both in their mid-30s, whose mother, the late Suzan Nightingale McKay, was a beloved columnist and opinions editor at the Anchorage Daily News.

To read John's "Open Government Guide" for the state of Alaska, click here.

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Chloe Pleznac is a former reporter for the Homer News. After six years working in public radio, Chloe got her first newspaper job at the Homer News in January of this year. After the right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, the Representative for Homer Sarah Vance co-organized a vigil for Kirk in Homer which was held on Sept. 17. Chloe decided to cover the vigil for the paper and posted her story online along with video of the event to the Homer News website on Tuesday Sept. 23. Rep. Vance objected to the article and wrote a letter to Carpenter Media which owns not only the Homer News but also the Peninsula Clarion in Kenai and the Juneau Empire. By Thursday Sept 25, Chloe’s story had been taken down, rewritten, and then re-published online without Chloe’s byline and without a note stating that the story had been changed. Neither Chloe nor her editor Erin Thompson were informed that the story had been taken down, edited, and republished.  Ultimately, both Chloe and her editor resigned from the paper because of the incident. Joining them in their resignation were the entire staff of the Peninsula Clarion in Homer Jeff Helminiak and Jake Dye, who appeared on this podcast the day after the resignations. You will hear Chloe and I reference Jake and also Michael Armstrong who was the former editor of the Homer News who was a guest on this podcast around the same time as the resignations. 

To read more about the incident, check out this article by Eric Stone from Alaska Public Media, "Homer newspaper revises Charlie Kirk memorial coverage after pressure from Republican lawmaker."

To listen to Jake Dye's episode, click here.

To listen to Michael Armstrong's episode, click here.

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Today's guest is the executive director of Project Alaska, Tetyana Robbins. Project Alaska is an organization that helps Ukrainian refugees find meaningful employment in Alaska. From helping improve their English language skills, to navigating the American immigration system, to helping with certifications and even transportation, Project Alaska does everything it can to make sure Ukrainians fleeing their war-torn country can quickly achieve self-sufficiency here in Alaska. Tetyana immigrated to Anchorage herself from Kharkiv, Ukraine, over 20 years ago when she married her husband Mike Robbins. With her Masters degree in accounting and auditing, she was a natural fit for her husband’s business ventures where she tracked the finances and kept the books. When war broke out in her home country in 2022, she and her husband founded the Ukraine Relief Program which helped Ukrainians escape to Alaska, contributing to one of the biggest waves of foreign resettlement our state has ever seen. Now, as the legal status of those recent refugees is called into question, she is advocating the federal government to find a path to citizenship for the over 2,000 Ukrainians who are vital to our state's workforce.

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Several friends and neighbors have moved out of the United States over the past year, and many more Alaskans are talking about it. Today's guest is an opera historian who has been living in Berlin, Germany, for the past 13 years. Daniel Gundlach is a former professional classical singer and accompanist who today hosts a podcast called Countermelody. The Countermelody Podcast is focused primarily on opera singers of the past century that may not have received the attention they deserved. Daniel is a countertenor which is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice type. Today we talk about his life and career, but we will also discuss the trials and tribulations of being an American emigrant in Germany. 

Musical Excerpts:

Leontyne Price, "O patria mia," from Verdi's Aida

Joan Sutherland, "Eccola," from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor

Anna Moffo, "Sempre Libera," from Verdi's La Traviata

Gilda Cruz-Romo, "O mio babbino caro," from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi

Daniel Gundlach, "O Lord, whose mercies numberless," from Handel's Saul

Daniel Gundlach, "O fatal day," from Handel's Saul

Daniel Gundlach, "On a dit sur Venise tant et tant de choses," from Gualtiero Dazzi's Le Luthier de Venise

Daniel Gundlach, "Danny Boy," Irish Folk Song

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Margaret D. Stock is an immigration attorney, and retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve. She is a recognized expert on immigration law as it applies to U.S. military personnel and veterans. In 2013, she was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as a "genius grant." She has taught law at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

She ran for the United States Senate as an Independent candidate in the 2016 Senate election in Alaska losing to the incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Today we discuss her life, but also her concerns about the politicization of the US military, the change in the way our country treats its immigrants, and the illegal extra-judicial killings of Venezuelans by the US military in the Caribbean Sea.

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Tashina Maasac Duttle is the chief operating officer and co-owner of DeerStone Consulting. DeerStone is a company focused on improving the infrastructure of Alaska's rural and Tribal communities by managing projects that upgrade energy systems, improve water and sanitation facilities, and expand broadband access. Tashina earned her bachelors degree in Sustainable Resources Management from UAF and her masters in project management from UAA. During covid, she started her own company which eventually merged with two of her friends’ companies to become DeerStone. In May of this year, she moved her family, including her husband and three kids, to northern Spain. 

This episode is part of a series on why some people are leaving America permanently, and how they did it. 

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Rachael Miller is the chief advocacy officer of the Food Bank of Alaska. The Food Bank of Alaska was founded in 1979 by a group of Anchorage churches and community volunteers; it operates under the belief that no one should go hungry. They partner with over 150 organizations and provide food to nearly 20,000 Alaskans a week. From Oct. 20-26 is Anchorage Restaurant week. Learn more here.

Rachael grew up in Ohio, and food & food policy have always been front and center in her life. She first visited Alaska 16 years ago to commercial fish. She has worked on food policy in Benin, West Africa, taught at Alaska Pacific University for 9 years, and has been the Chief Advocacy Officer at the Food Bank since January 2024.