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Homer-based author Tom Kizzia is most well-known for his best-selling 2013 book Pilgrim’s Wilderness, which was chosen by the New York Times as the best true crime book set in Alaska. Kizzia moved to Homer in the mid-70s where he took over the Homer News. In the early 80s, he was hired by the Anchorage Daily News and while working for that paper he wrote a series of stories under the title, "North Country Journal.” That project required Kizzia to travel to small Alaskan villages off the road system and report back. In 1991 he expanded some of those stories into his first book, The Wake of the Unseen Object: Travels through Alaska’s Native Landscapes.  In 2021 the book celebrated its 30th anniversary and was reprinted by the University of Alaska Press. We are discussing that book today. Tom will be back later this year to discuss Pilgrim’s Wilderness and his most recent book Cold Mountain Path, for which he was named 2022 Historian of the Year by the Alaska Historical Society. 

This interview was recorded via Zoom.

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Ivy Spohnholz is the Alaska State Director of The Nature Conservancy, which is a global environmental organization and the largest non-profit organization by assets in the Americas. Their mission is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. Prior to becoming the Alaska director of the Nature Conservancy, Ivy had served three terms in the Alaska House of Representatives where she chaired the Ways and Means Committee and Co-chaired the Labor and Commerce Committee. She passed several important pieces of legislation during her time in office, most notably, a price transparency in health care law and a law expanding telehealth options in Alaska. We discuss her sudden entry into the legislature when she was appointed by Gov. Walker to replace Max Gruenberg who had died unexpectedly in 2016 as well as her surprising decision not to seek re-election in 2022. 

This episode was recorded in Ms. Spohnholz's office downtown and there are some bird and street sounds.

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Representative Alyse Galvin  represents Midtown Anchorage in the Alaska State House, but she is most well known for her two runs for the US House in 2018 and 2020 against long-term Congressman Don Young. Earning 46.7% of the vote, she came closer to defeating him than any other challenger in his 49-year tenure. A third generation Alaska, Alyse's childhood was difficult. So difficult that some will find it unbelievably hard, while for too many Alaskans, it will sound all too familiar. We talk about how her challenges as a youth inspire her indefatigable work to strengthen families and improve Alaska's public education system.

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Anchorage Assembly Member George Martinez was raised in Brooklyn, NY, as part of the hip hop community and made a name for himself as a rapper and lyricist at an early age. Growing up in the 80s,he was politicized by the anti-welfare rhetoric of President Reagan’s administration. That experience eventually led him to run for political office, and he was elected as the district leader in the 51st Assembly District in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in 2002 making him the first hip-hop artist elected to political office in New York. He is a former adjunct professor at Pace University where he taught American politics and his own self-developed course, “The politics of hip hop.” In 2007, he served as cultural ambassador for the US state department in the Western Hemisphere under secretary of state at the time Colin Powell. We talk about how he and his family got to Anchorage, his 4 years serving in Ethan Berkowitz’s Mayoral administration, and his experience now on the Anchorage Assembly after being elected for the first time this past spring.

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Tiffany Hall was born and raised in Anchorage, and, since 2016, has served as the executive director of Recover Alaska. That organization works across the state to reduce not only excessive alcohol use but also to reduce the harms that come from that excessive alcohol use. Tiffany is sober herself, and we discuss her story and how she ended up as head of Recover Alaska.

Mentioned in the podcast:

1. World Health Organization statement on alcohol: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health

2. Dr. David Jernigan's lecture about the marketing of alcohol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfYoQ-BkpTc&t=984s

3. Recover Alaska's website: https://recoveralaska.org/

During this episode we refer to "AA;" "AA" stands for Alcoholics Anonymous which is a peer-led abstinence-based sobriety program with a strong spiritual component.

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Fairbanks Senator Scott Kawasaki was born in Japan to a Japanes-American father and a Chinese-American mother. He moved to Fairbanks halfway through kindergarten and has basically been there ever since. He was elected to the Fairbanks City Council when he was just 22 years old making him the youngest person ever elected to that body; and in 2006 he was elected to the Alaska legislature where he initially served in the House, and now serves in the Senate. We talk about being in public office for more than half his life, Gov. Sarah Palin, and much more.

This interview was recorded in Anchorage in July 2023. 

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Anchorage politico Anna Hutchinson has for the past few years been a major fundraiser for political campaigns in Anchorage and is now managing campaigns herself. In 2021 she came to Anchorage to work for her college friend Forrest Dunbar’s mayoral campaign. The plan was to be here for just a few months, but she has stayed on to work on other political campaigns. Although we set out to discuss strategies for new folks to get involved in local politics, we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation discussing her unusual childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, her obsession with Harry Potter, and her time as director of a domestic violence shelter in rural California.

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Representative Andy Josephson was born and raised here in Anchorage, and although he is the son of former Alaska state Senator and Anchorage Assembly member Joe Josephson, Andy didn’t initially think politics was for him. In 2012, though, he followed in his father’s footsteps getting elected to the Alaska State House where he represented the UMED district until 2022. After the redistricting process he ran to represent the Taku-Campbell District; he was successful, and now with 11 legislative sessions under his belt, he is the most senior Democrat in the House minority caucus. He currently serves on the coveted finance committee.

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Dr. Brett Watson, economist at ISER, was born and raised in a suburb of Houston, Texas. Brett made his way to Anchorage in 2017 as a postdoc at the University of Alaska Anchorage after earning his PhD in Mineral and Energy Economics at the Colorado School of Mines. We discuss how he ended up with his job, and we do a dive into two topics of great interest to many listeners: Alaska’s PFD system and Anchorage’s housing market.

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Phyllis Rhodes is the former executive director of Identity, the Anchorage-based nonprofit that seeks to advance Alaska’s LGBTQIA2S+ community. Born in 1937, Ms. Rhodes spent her youth in Amarillo, Texas. She moved to Anchorage in 1964 with her then husband, because she wanted a better future for her daughters. Although she’d known she was a lesbian since childhood, Phyllis was 62 years old before she began living openly. Despite her late start, the Alaska LGBTQ+ community is forever indebted to Phyllis Rhodes for her incredible work to advance our community.