The Ampersand

This host loves her morning brew, but rarely asks more of her coffee than, "Does it taste good?" and, "Is it waking me up?" In contrast, today's guest on The Ampersand, Kate Fischer, is a Britannica of coffee questions. A cultural anthropologist and teaching professor at CU Boulder, Kate offers insight into American "high-coffee" culture's spittoons and sprudge, her global travels spurred by her coffee industry research and the way she models insatiable, unabashed curiosity to her students.

Learn more about Kate.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Climate change has become wildly political and seems to spur intense responses across the political spectrum. But we're curious if it really needs to be this way. On this week's episode of The Ampersand, Erika Randall sits down with environmentalist and researcher Amanda Carrico to challenge the way we talk about climate change. While Amanda’s work focuses on the complex ways humans impact the environment, her vision for the future is remarkably hopeful.

Amanda covers questions like, why we might consider shifting focus from individual responsibility to massive structures driving climate change, how she finds common ground, especially with her family, and have productive conversations across differing political opinions, and how we might craft a narrative that offers the next generation genuine hope for a healthy, thriving future.

More on Amanda Carrico.

Check out the Carrico Lab's current research projects.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Artists have often turned to old stories to make sense of new truths. On today's episode of The Ampersand, Hip Hop choreographer and artistic director Rennie Harris gives insight into that process. Known for works like Lazarus and Rome & Jewels—retellings that play with familiar stories to reveal new understanding—Harris was praised by the New York Times in 2025 as an artist who "has done more than any other choreographer to reveal and develop the metaphorical and narrative expressivity of American street dance."

In this conversation, he traces the personal experiences that catalyzed one of his first commissioned works, Endangered Species, and how they shape a creative process that turned lived trauma into something audiences have called transcendent.

Learn more about Rennie Harris Puremovement.

For more about Harris’ scholarship and teaching, visit his CU Boulder faculty profile.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Institutions of higher education frequently work to understand its purpose and values. This process of shaping identities can often be seen in their buildings, where the choices of style and substance reflect what leaders hope to accomplish. This week on The Ampersand, Erika walks CU Boulder’s Quad to explore how our institution’s self-understanding shifted from its founding at Old Main to the Ivy-informed Hale; from Macky’s conglomeration of style to the library’s cohesion under the Tuscan Vernacular. Our guest is also our guide—Paul Chinowsky is a professor emeritus of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at CU Boulder. He is deeply invested in documenting our campus’ architecture to preserve the stories that shaped this institution and remember the traditions that came and went within these halls.

As noted in the prologue, the history discussed in today’s episode begins in 1876. However, CU Boulder is located on the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and many other Native American nations. Their forced removal from these territories has caused devastating and lasting impacts. While CU Boulder can never undo or rectify the devastation wrought on Indigenous peoples, we commit to improving and enhancing engagement with Indigenous peoples and issues locally and globally.

More information on the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Tribes and the Northern Arapaho Tribe.

More information on the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

To further engage in reconciliation and learning, visit CU Boulder’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies.

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Paul Chinowsky’s biography.

Follow Paul on LinkedIn.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Additional content recorded at the Fiske Planetarium.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

We’ve read, listened and watched them on screens of all sizes. But what actually makes a myth or a fairy tale?

Today’s guest, Ann Schmiesing, kicks off season five of The Ampersand by delving into mythmaking and the lessons we can glean from fairy tales. She is the best-selling author of The Grimm Brothers biography, which the New Yorker listed as one of its best books of 2025, a professor of Germanic and Slavic languages and the vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. Ann dives deep into the Grimms and disability studies while also exploring CU Boulder’s crafting of mythologies in its 150th Anniversary.

Learn more about Ann's research. 

Purchase The Brothers Grimm.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Music: Borodin's In The Steppes of Central Asia. Recorded, produced and released to the public by The Musopen Kickstarter Project.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

We love to explore the stories we tell about ourselves—paying special attention to the way they change over time, what that shift says about where we are and who we hope to become. 

The Ampersand is back for season five! In a year when the University of Colorado Boulder turns 150, we're asking questions that anniversaries make possible: What stories have we told? Which ones still hold up? And what do the myths we carry say about the future toward which we aspire?

This season, we're exploring the space between history and identity, where facts become folklore and where reflection and reclamation on these mythologies drive fresh creativity.

Join us as we walk into these many woods.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Music: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - IV. In the Hall Of The Mountain King. Recorded, produced and released to the public by The Musopen Kickstarter Project.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

I read once that bravery required feeling tangible fear. A Shackleton-style blistering confidence that barrels into harsh landscapes is not, by definition, brave, because it refuses to acknowledge the contextual realities around one's experience. Today's guest, on the other hand, looks with clear eyes at challenging field experiences, the inherent risks of life and severe discomfort, and she goes anyway. Joanna Lambert, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a conservation rock star. Known more recently for her research on Colorado's reintroduction of gray wolves, on today's episode she discusses her unexpected journey from commercial art into conservation, her love of the Rolling Stones and the music she finds in tracking wildlife through Yellowstone's extremes.

Joanna's website

Joanna's research

Wolves in Colorado

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Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

A moment of honesty: This producer shies from conflict. Most often, when someone disagrees, I perceive it as intellectual arm-wrestling—the more clever person winning the day and their opponent (usually me) hunched in a walk of shame away from the table. Imagine our delight when we began to work with today's guest, Megan Stephenson, who not only sees conflict as a means of connection and a path toward equity, but finds the reconciliation of differing views to be one way we can work toward a shared understanding. Megan is the College of Arts and Sciences' director of academic operations and student records, the college's hidden email voice and the person who helps students navigate academic policies. On today's episode, she discusses her take on conflict, how she arrived at this distinct stature, the way she sings through life and, yes, the sheer number of game shows on which she's competed. 

For more about Megan, see her CU Boulder About me page.

See Megan's announcement on Family Feud.

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Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

ANDers, today's episode is a doozy. Today, we sit with Ed Chuong, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and researcher at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute. Ed discusses his research exploring unexpected conflict, even in the womb, and his more recent exploration of the long-overlooked transposons. He also shares his journey into biology—from a love of science-fiction to an interest in developing video games, to a devastating discovery while snorkeling leading to original, career defining work in a lab. This conversation is a case study in ANDing's array.

For more on Ed Chuong's research, visit the Chuong Lab or his profile at the BioFrontiers Institute.

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Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Okay ANDers, we need a moment to fawn. Today's guest, Nick Houy, is a Hollywood film editing badass with movie credits like Barbie, Little Women, Mid90s and Lady Bird. Full transparency, these are some of our team's faves, and we couldn't believe our luck when Nick agreed to come on our show. When we discovered he is not only brilliant but incredibly kind and thoughtful, we lost it ... quietly, but we lost it. On today's episode, Nick discusses his career, his sculptor's approach to editing and why he looks for small moments among found footage.

Read more from Nick in his interview with Film Supply.

To craft a Houy movie marathon, check out Nick's IMDb page.

Nick Houy, ACE BFE, is a multi-award-winning film editor known for LADY BIRD, LITTLE WOMEN, BARBIE, and the HBO miniseries THE NIGHT OF. Houy is also known for editing MID90s, and the highly acclaimed documentary STUTZ.

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Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.