The Detour

What if our democracy didn't revolve around elections and campaigns or around specific politicians? What if we could rule ourselves differently, in more participatory, more rational, and more effective ways? This episode explores these questions through a conversation with Hélène Landemore, author of "Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule and Open Democracy."

In this episode, we talk with nine students involved with Portland Workforce Alliance, a career development organization, about jobs and the future. How are young people thinking about work and employment in the face of climate change, AI, and political and economic uncertainty? We also hear from Susan Nielsen, director of Portland Workforce Alliance.

Wherever people live in Oregon, you are certain to come across churches. Sometimes you'll find mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship, but as you'd expect in a majority Christian country, church buildings especially are everywhere. All these structures were built for a specific purpose, but with fewer and fewer people going to church, fewer and fewer are people using and paying for the upkeep of these buildings. In March of 2026, Brandon Rhodes, Amy Jayne, and Frank So explored what's happening with these buildings in a conversation in La Grande, Oregon.

The cover image for this episode is a photo by Curtis Gregory Perry of a church in Flora, Oregon.

In a world divided by borders and beliefs, how can poetry and storytelling bring us back to one another? Naomi Shihab Nye is an award-winning poet and novelist who has traveled the world meeting people and observing the ways poems offer meaning, comfort, and belonging. She sees poetry as a true bridge between people, cultures, and nations, sharing that in all her travels, she has yet to find a place “where poetry does not live.” In this conversation from June 2026, Naomi reads from her work and reflects on poetry’s ability to capture both change and continuity, helping us not only understand what separates us, but transcend it.

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence just days away, we talk with two people who have been leading conversations about that anniversary in communities across Oregon.  Wendy Willis runs Oregon's Kitchen Table and writes poetry and essays, including several pieces in Oregon Humanities magazine, and moved to Portland after growing up in Springfield. Nick Nash is from Pendleton and teaches philosophy and writing at Blue Mountain Community College.

With the 2026 Men's World Cup right around the corner, we're thinking about soccer and sports: What does it feel like to play? And what does it take to play at a high level? We're thinking about not only the playing of sports, but also the business and the politics of sports, and about how sports—played, watched, and worked at—affect our bodies, our attention, and our communities. We talk first with Georgia Cloepfil, author of "The Striker and the Clock," on being in the game, and then with Jules Boykoff, author of "Kicking" and "Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine." Both Georgia and Jules have played at a professional level, and both speak and write thoughtfully and beautifully about the game and what it might mean in and for our lives.

Summary for Labor.In celebration of International Workers' Day and in conjunction with the "Labor" issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, this episode of The Detour explores how work shapes our lives. What is work for? Are work and labor the same thing? And what, if anything, makes work meaningful? To get at these questions, we talk with three people who spend a lot of time thinking about labor and work. First, we speak with Lydia Kiesling, author of the novels "The Golden State" and "Mobility." Next, we talk to Nicholas Hengen Fox and Jorge Herrera Caro about Working Class Literature, the only class explicitly about class at Portland Community College.

In this episode we hear from Colum McCann, a National Book Award–winning novelist and cofounder of Narrative 4, a nonprofit organization that uses personal storytelling to build empathy between young people. Colum is Irish and lives in New York, and he joined us in February 2026 for a conversation about stories, national character, identity, and the 250th anniversary, of the Declaration of Independence. You'll also hear from Beyti, Jaylen, Uliana, Malaki, and Steve—five students at Adrienne C. Nelson High School in Happy Valley who participated in a storytelling workshop led by Narrative 4.

In this episode we talk about public service and elected office with CM Hall, a city councilor in Newport, Oregon and the executive director of emerge Oregon, an organization that identifies, trains, and inspires women to run for office.

Meg Wade rarely drives. There are, in Meg's view, so many other ways to move about in the world, and most or all of these other modes—walking, taking the bus, taking the train, and more, have a lot to offer to us, our communities, and our world. Through Meg's writing with Oregon Humanities and other outlets, Meg provokes us to pay a lot more attention to where we are, what it means to move about in the ways that we do, and who and what we're sharing space with as we do so.