Meet Me Here

Meet Me Here listeners, if you still don't have any plans for this weekend, fear not. The Weekend Warmup is here to help with a whole bunch of ideas for fun things to do around the region this weekend.

HOST: Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows

LINKS:

• Seattle Pride in the Park
• Paws & Pride Dog Walk
• Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show
• NORTHWEST NOIR: NWFF's 2026 Annual Gala
• DubSea Fish Sticks 2026
• Cascade PBS Ideas Festival
• Kent Nerd Party 2026
• Duvall Days
• 2026 Anacortes Waterfront Festival
• Point Defiance Flower & Garden Festival
• The "Sound of Sunshine" Steel Orchestra Concert

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/meet 

Meet Me Here is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today’s episode, we’re talking with two night owls who found freedom and community in Seattle’s local nightlife. 

Growing up just south of Seattle in Des Moines, music and nightlife advocate Leigh Bezezekoff felt like she saw a new world while watching Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow” video on MTV. “The coolness factor of Des Moines at that time was not great”, said Bezezekoff. But the video suggested that an extremely cool local music scene was waiting for her just a few miles north. 

These days, Leigh is the marketing and ticketing manager at Conor Byrne, a cooperatively owned music space and bar in Ballard. She's also a cofounder of the Washington Nightlife and Music Association, an organization that supports and champions independent music venues and artists. 

DJ Emily Griffin grew up in the Los Angeles area. She was drawn to the underground rave scene. Emily and her friends called telephone hotlines to get the scoop on where the underground raves were located – often in grimy warehouses on the edge of town. 

Emily said her days of clubbing in LA “opened up this whole world to me of being able to get lost in music, dance, and feeling fully self-expressed.”

Decades later, she’s still seeking that out. You can catch DJ Emily Griffin, aka GriffinGrrl, spinning regularly at late-night dance parties around the city. 

On this episode of Meet Me Here, these two night owls will tell you where - and WHY - to find late-night community in Seattle.

In this episode, we mention:

• Conor Byrne Pub on Instagram
• Conor Byrne Co-op 
• Washington Nightlife and Music Association
• GriffinGrrl on Soundcloud 
• Emily Griffin on Instagram
• Monkey Loft, Dance & Nightclub 
• Do206 

Host Jeannie Yandel recommends checking out the new Hot Rat Summer mosaic unveiling at Actualize Gallery in Pioneer Square on June 13th from 5-9 pm, and the afterparty from 9pm-midnight. 

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Support Meet Me Here and all KUOW's podcasts at kuow.org/meet 

Got an arts and culture idea you'd like us to talk about? Email us! [email protected] 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Me Here listeners, if you still don't have any plans for this weekend, fear not. The Weekend Warmup is here to help with a whole bunch of ideas for fun things to do around the region this weekend.

HOST: Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows

LINKS:

• Bark! The Musical
• HONK! Fest West
• Mason County Forest Festival
• Glazer's PhotoFest
• Battle on the Bank
• Sally Ride: A New Opera About Queer Love and the First American Woman in Space
• Pollinator Fest 2026
• Run to End Weekend Hunger 5K

THE STUFF WE DIDN'T GET TO:

• Brandi Carlile - Echoes Through the Canyon
• 14th Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival
• Trae Crowder at Emerald City Comedy Club
• Seattle Mariners vs Arizona D-Backs
• Stamp & Scrapbook EXPO
• Seattle Spring - Renegade Craft

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/meet 

Meet Me Here is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speculative fiction is often about society, how people think and work together. Sure, there's something decidedly out there, something not quite possible, sometimes something downright magical. But at the end of the day, the genre speculates about what might happen if... What exactly comes after the "if" depends on the writer.

Author Lily Brooks-Dalton's "what if" often includes a kind of societal collapse, and that collapse sets her latest main character, Ember, on a journey into a surprising past. Ruins is, on its face anyway, about an archaeologist who goes looking for a lost empire. But what is this lost world? What clue does Ember have of its existence? And why is the end of something so often the beginning for this author?

Lily stopped by to talk to host Katie Campbell about the allure of societal collapse in her storytelling.

If you want to stay speculative, check out Lily and Katie's Recommended If You Liked (RIYL):

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
• On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
• The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Honestly, Katie recommends anything by Emily St. John Mandel
• For All Mankind on Apple TV

Read more about Lily Brooks-Dalton (and all the authors who stop by for a chat with our host Katie Campbell) at kuow.org/books.

Help keep KUOW's local podcasts going strong! Donate now at kuow.org/meet. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finding love can be so weird these days, which is why the main character in Seattle author Sonora Jha’s new novel decides to take a big swing to find the right man for her. 

She holds a swayamvar. It’s an ancient Indian custom in which suitors competed in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess’s hand in marriage. But the woman in the novel Intemperance is not a young princess looking for her first love. She’s a twice-divorced professor of feminist theory in her 50s who lives on a rad houseboat in present-day Seattle. 

The KUOW Book Club read Sonora’s novel in May. KUOW’s Katie Campbell sat down with her on May 21 in front of a live audience at the Seattle Central Library to talk about love, aging, and the kinds of feats Sonora would require at her swayamvar. 

Join the KUOW Book Club at kuow.org/books.

Help keep KUOW's local podcasts going strong! Donate now at kuow.org/meet. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Me Here listeners, if you still don't have any plans for this weekend, fear not. The Weekend Warmup is here to help with a whole bunch of ideas for fun things to do around the region this weekend.

HOST: Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows

LINKS:

• Inaugural Ballard Book Crawl
• Lost the Plot Mobile Books
• Bremerton by the Book
• Page 42 Bookstore Smut & Sips
• Book Recommendations thanks to @beckybooksandbeads!
• Trailhead Direct - Begins Saturday!
• Whidbey Ren Faire
• Festival | Northwest Folklife

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/meet 

Meet Me Here is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Margo Vansynghel sometimes jokes that she’s the harbinger of doom. As the arts economy reporter for The Seattle Times, it's her job to spell out the connections between the arts and the economy here in Seattle. 

She’s written about the recent layoffs of 250 local arts workers; Seattle Art Museum employees working to unionize; and the Bellevue Art Museum's sudden closure in 2024. 

In this conversation from October 2025, Margo gives us a temperature check on how Seattle arts organizations are doing overall and says it's not time to freak out just yet. She also shares simple, actionable ideas for things we can all do to support Seattle artists and arts organizations. 

In this episode we mention:

• The Seattle Symphony and its new music director, Xian Zhang
• Seattle’s 13 art walks, in neighborhoods like the Central District, Capitol Hill, Belltown and Hillman City. Along with the mothership art walk, First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square
• King County’s cultural funding agency, 4Culture
• The Seattle Public Library’s free museum pass program.
• Discount tickets to arts organizations, including Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Rep and Seattle Art Museum.  
• Local storyteller Emmett Montgomery

Plus a shot out to one of our listener's who suggested volunteering with these groups:

• Freemont Arts Council
• VamoLa!
• Northwest Folklife 

MORE ON MARGO:

For more of Margo’s coverage of the arts and economy check out her articles about unexpected art experiences in Seattle and 12 ways to support the arts in Seattle. 

There’s also this visual story Margo wrote that explains 15 ways you can support local arts and artists. 

If you’d like to ask Margo for her arts suggestions based on your personal preferences, email: [email protected]

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Support Meet Me Here and all KUOW's podcasts at kuow.org/meet 

Got an arts and culture idea you'd like us to talk about? Email us! [email protected] 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"The Yankee Sphinx" may sound like a mysterious novel in line with "Twin Peaks," which author Mark Frost co-created, but it's much more normal than the famous surrealist crime drama.

Note: I said "more normal."

The novel is about President Franklin D. Roosevelt — nicknamed the Yankee Sphinx — and his presidency in the later years of World War II. There was very little that was "normal" about that period, considering the novel covers FDR's third full term and partial fourth term as president.

Then, there's the matter of the novel's source material: a clandestine diary kept by FDR's longtime staffer and friend William D. Hassett.

Frost stopped by KUOW while on tour to talk about someone who has classically dealt in the weird and uncanny came to write something so normal.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Symphonies have long struggled with shrinking audiences, yet some classical performances are packing concert halls with music from video games, TV shows like Game of Thrones, new and old pop charts, and blockbuster movies. You can find string quartets performing Taylor Swift, the music of TOOL, and classic hip hop. At the Seattle Symphony it's Andrew Joslyn's job to produce pop culture mashups that will get newbies through the door. He's the Symphony's associate director of popular programming, and he speaks with host Dyer Oxley about putting these shows together, and his path to Benaroya Hall from starting violin at age five.

You can support shows like Meet Me Here at https://donate.kuow.org/donate/meet

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shelby Van Pelt is the author of the hit novel Remarkably Bright Creatures about a giant Pacific octopus who develops a relationship with the cleaning lady at the aquarium where he is held captive (that's how he's sees it anyway). The novel has been adapted by Netflix, which released the film on May 8.

The octopus, Marcellus, is kept in the fictional Sowell Bay Aquarium, which sits on Puget Sound. And he’s not happy about it. He considers the aquarium a prison, and he’s all too aware of the limited time he has left in his life.

Marcellus may not be warm and cuddly like other animal narrators before him, but he does set the audience up for tears. Shelby stopped by KUOW while on tour with the film to talk about how the octopus came to life on the page and now the screen. 

And... if you need some help filing the octopus-shaped void after reading the book or watching the movie, check out Shelby and Katie's Recommended If You Liked (RIYL):

• The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
• The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Read more about Shelby Van Pelt (and all the authors who stop by for a chat with our host Katie Campbell) at kuow.org/books.

Help keep KUOW's local podcasts going strong! Donate now at kuow.org/meet. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.