Oregon Humanities' collaborative approach to programming and publications is possible thanks to the support of donors like you. In this special message, hear from Rozzell Medina, program manager, about the kind of intentional relationship building he's engaged in and how much time it takes. As part of our spring campaign, will you make a gift to support wonder and curiosity—one person, one connection at a time?

This episode of The Detour explores what kids think about success and where their ideas about success come from. The way we explore this is pretty simple: we talk with kids—second, fifth, and sixth graders from Vose Elementary in Beaverton and Yoncalla Elementary—who have some really helpful, clear, thought-provoking, and moving stuff to say.

In this episode we talk with Erica Heilman, creator of the podcast Rumble Strip. Erica's conversations with the wide range of people she talks to all sound unusually real—sincere, unvarnished, funny, regular, important, and humble all at once. So much of Oregon Humanities' work, including The Detour, revolves around conversation and trying to understand other people and ourselves, so we asked Erica to join us for a conversation about conversation.

For a significant stretch of our lives, most of us spend a whole lot of time working. In this episode of The Detour—the third in our series on organizing—we'll explore what it means to organize at work with the help of Vanessa Veselka and Gordon Lafer. We'll think about unions and labor and solidarity and power, and we'll also ask what unions are for. Are they primarily a tool to improve the basic conditions of our labor, like pay flexibility, predictability, and safety? Or might they also be for something more like solidarity, democracy and hope? When are unions likely to take root, and what generally stands in their way? And what about this particular moment for unions and labor in Oregon and across the country?

In this episode, the second of our three-part series on organizing, we talk about intergenerational organizing with Adah Crandall, a sixteen-year-old organizer focused on transportation and climate justice; Danny Cage, a youth organizer advocating for racial justice, education reform, and LGBTQ+ rights; and Suzanna Kassouf, a teacher at Grant High School and a cofounder of Sunrise Movement PDX. This conversation explores questions about power, change, and anger—and reminds us that while anger is a powerful force for change, love is stronger.

In this episode, the first of a three-part series on organizing people and communities, we talk with Hahrie Han, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University who studies civic and political participation. We also hear from Bruce Poinsette, Marcus LeGrand, Joy Alise Davis, and Keith Jenkins, four Black Oregonians who have been working on community organizing in different parts of the state.

What does it mean to organize community? Is it something all of us do, whether we mean to or not? Or is it something more technical than that, something that experts do to the rest of us, often with their sleeves casually rolled up? If it is in fact possible to organize people or communities, can we learn what it takes to organize people well or to organize for the good?

Few conversations are as polarizing as the ones that appear online between Black native Oregonians and transplants. It's a discourse that brings Oregon's history of anti-Black exclusion laws and redlining into the present, along with the frustrations that arise in a small community where so many people know each other. But are these tensions based more in perception than in reality? To explore this question, journalist (and Oregon Humanities Community Storytelling Fellow) Bruce Poinsette and photographer Intisar Abioto gathered a group of Black Oregonians—both those who arrived recently and those who grew up here—for a dinner conversation. In this episode, Bruce and Intisar revisit portions of that conversation and reflect on the themes of Black unity, community building, and the liberatory possibilities of place.

The Pacific Northwest has long been a hospitable home to conspiratorial thinking—often with dangerous results. What leads a person down these dark paths and what might it take to come out the other side? In this episode, we talk with Leah Sottile and Eli Saslow, two Oregon journalists who have gone deep into the world of conspiracy theories, about some of the conditions and patterns that lead people to conspire against the nation they live in and the people they live among.

In this episode, we talk with David Harrelson and Clint Smith about monuments, memorials, and statues—and also about culture, understanding, and hopes for the future. Talking about memorials, as Harrelson and Smith make immediately clear, you can't help but talk about values, and also about people and peoples. And, recently, talking about monuments, memorials, and statues has also meant talking about toppling, contextualizing, replacing, and reimagining.

In this episode, we ask young people in Oregon about what they thought and felt when COVID landed—and what they think and feel now, a few years in. You'll hear from Caroline Gao, a high school senior from Albany, and several students from Encore Academy in Warrenton.