The Rob Burgess Show

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 63rd episode, our guest is Ash Burgess.

You first heard Ash Burgess on Episode 16, Episode 26, Episode 27, Episode 39 and Episode 58 of the podcast.

Ash Burgess has a dusty degree in Religious Studies, an obsession with pineapples and an appetite for both high and low culture. She cuts her own hair, bakes her own sourdough bread and spends most of her time at home with her young son. Sometimes, she blogs at burgessbaby.blogspot.com.

Also, you may want go back and listen to last week’s episode for my recounting of the events discussed in this episode.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 62nd episode, our guest is ... me!

My first solo episode of this podcast was Episode 41.

Rob Burgess is a six-time award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in print, radio, online and television. He is currently City Editor, Opinion Page Editor and Editorial Board Member at the Kokomo Tribune, and has previously worked as a reporter at WFHB, Times-Mail, The Reporter-Times, Ukiah Daily Journal, Ukiah Valley Television and NUVO Newsweekly.

Oh yeah, and he's also the proprietor of the podcast, The Rob Burgess Show.

This episode is going to be a bit different than most of the others. The best comparison I could draw would be Episode 47 in which regular guest Mallory Willits returned to Ghana to retrieve her husband, Wisdom, and recorded audio diary entries on her phone. My daughter was born Wednesday and I brought my recorder along with me to document the experience.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 61st episode, our guest is Lynn Walsh.

You first heard Lynn Walsh on Episode 49 of this podcast. Lynn Walsh is an Emmy award-winning journalist who has been working in investigative journalism at the national level as well as locally in California, Ohio, Texas and Florida. Currently she leads the KNSD investigative team at the NBC TV station in San Diego, California, where she is the Investigative Executive Producer.

She is the National President for the Society of Professional Journalists and also serves the journalism organization as a member of SPJ’s FOI and Ethics committees. Lynn was also selected to represent SPJ on the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee where works to recommend changes to help improve the FOIA process.

Prior to working in California, she was working as data producer and investigative reporter for the E.W. Scripps National Desk producing stories for the 30-plus Scripps news organizations across the country. Before moving to the national desk, she worked as the Investigative Producer at WPTV, NewsChannel 5, in West Palm Beach, Florida. She has won state and local awards as well as multiple Emmy’s for her stories. She loves holding the powerful accountable and spends more time than she would like fighting for access to public information.

Her passion lies in telling multimedia stories that deliver hard hitting facts across multiple platforms. She describes herself as a "data-viz nerd" who is obsessed with new online tools to share information on the web and mobile applications.

Lynn is always interested in new projects surrounding FOI, public information access, mobile reporting tools, social media and interactive journalism. She is a proud Bobcat Alumna and graduated from the Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

And now, onto the show.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 60th episode, our guest is David Carson.

David Carson is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

He began his career at 16 when his mother drove him to his first newspaper assignment because he wouldn't have his license for another two months. A Boston area native, he has worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 2000. Before arriving in the Midwest he worked at the Naples Daily News in Florida, at the Providence Journal-Bulletin in Rhode Island, and as a freelance photographer in New England.

Carson’s images are featured extensively in the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography that was awarded to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch photo staff. (And if you haven’t heard Episode 38 of this podcast with David’s colleague at the Post-Dispatch, Robert Cohen, I would recommend it.) David has also won numerous other awards for his work over the years. In 2008, his multimedia project "Reporting for Duty" won a regional Emmy award for Advanced Media – Interactivity. In 2009 he was part of a team that was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the "Breaking News Reporting" category for their coverage of the Kirkwood City Hall shootings. He also was named the National Press Photographers Association Region 7 Photographer of the Year in 2011, 2010 and 2009.

He attended college at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he was a photojournalism major and international relations minor.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 59th episode, our guest is Robert Dunham.

Robert Dunham is an attorney and a nationally recognized expert on the death penalty.

Before becoming the Death Penalty Information Center’s Executive Director, he was one of the leading capital appellate lawyers in Pennsylvania, arguing on behalf of the Commonwealth’s death-row inmates in its state and federal courts and in the United States Supreme Court.

He served as Executive Director of the former Pennsylvania Capital Case Resource Center from 1994 to 1999; Director of Training of the Capital Habeas Unit of the Philadelphia federal defender's office from 1999 to 2009; and as an assistant federal defender in the Harrisburg federal defender’s capital habeas unit from 2009 until March 2015. He started his legal career as a litigation associate at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis in Philadelphia, where he handled his first pro bono capital case. He previously served five years as a legislative assistant to State Representative Robert W. O’Donnell, later the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

He has taught in death penalty training programs offered by national, state and local courts, bar associations, and professional organizations for more than 20 years. He was an adjunct professor of law at Villanova Law School for 11 years, teaching death penalty law, and he has also taught death penalty at Temple Law School and as a visiting scholar at Oklahoma State University. He is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has served on the Steering Committee of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project and on the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Philadelphia crime-victim assistance program, Northwest Victim Services, for whom he also served as Board President.

A native of Philadelphia, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a University Scholar in philosophy. He received his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he served as managing editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. At Georgetown, he received the Milton A. Kaufman Prize for outstanding contribution to the journal and the Jeffrey Crandall Award for commitment to public interest law.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 58th episode, our guest is Ash Burgess.

You first heard Ash Burgess on Episode 16, Episode 26, Episode 27 and Episode 39 of the podcast.

Ash Burgess has a dusty degree in Religious Studies, an obsession with pineapples and an appetite for both high and low culture. She cuts her own hair, bakes her own sourdough bread and spends most of her time at home with her young son. Sometimes, she blogs at burgessbaby.blogspot.com.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 57th episode our guest is Rachel Dolezal.

Rachel Dolezal holds an MFA from Howard University. Her scholarly research focus is the intersection of race, gender and class in the contemporary Black diaspora, with a specific emphasis on Black women in visual culture. She is a licensed intercultural competence and diversity trainer, dedicated to racial and social justice activism.

She has worked as an instructor at North Idaho College and Eastern Washington University, where she also served as adviser for the schools’ Black Student Unions, and has guest lectured at Spokane Community College, the University of Idaho, Gonzaga University and Washington State University.

Dolezal began her activism in Mississippi, where she advocated for equal rights and partnered with community developers, tutoring grade-school children in Black history and art and pioneering African American history courses at a predominantly white university. She is the former director of education at the Human Rights Education Institute in Idaho and has served as a consultant for human rights education and inclusivity in regional public schools. She recently led the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission to promote police accountability and justice in law enforcement in Spokane, Washington, and was the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. She is the devoted mother of three sons.

Dolezal garnered international attention after a June 11, 2015 interview she conducted with Jeff Humphrey of KXLY-TV. The interview begins with Humphrey asking Dolezal about hate crimes she had reported to the police. It ends abruptly after he asks her about a photo on the Spokane chapter of the NAACP's Facebook page which shows an African American man, Albert Wilkerson, who she claimed was her father.

It was later confirmed by Dolezal's birth parents, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal, that she was born white. Dolezal subsequently resigned her position at the NAACP on June 15, 2015. The same day, she also lost her position as an instructor at Eastern Washington University and her position as a freelance writer for The Inlander. And, on June 18, 2015, the Spokane City Council voted unanimously to remove her from the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission.

On March 28, Dolezal released the book she wrote along with Storms Reback, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World,” through BenBella Books. Wilkerson wrote the Foreword to the book.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 56th episode, our returning guest is Jonathan Fowler.

You first heard Jonathan Fowler on Episode 2, Episode 10, Episode 20, Episode 21, Episode 29, Episode 30, Episode 31, Episode 32, Episode 34, Episode 35, Episode 43, Episode 48 and Episode 51 of the podcast. Jonathan graduated with a BA in history from Indiana University in 2006. He is an unabashed left-wing political junkie. He has lived and worked in South Korea for 10 years, trying to help the citizens of that great nation, hopefully, "talk pretty one day."

A quick programming note: As you'll hear I was in rough shape health-wise when we recorded this episode, so I got a few minor facts wrong. The Senate race in Indiana between Democrat Joe Donnelly and Republican Richard Mourdock was in 2012 not 2010. The video of the passenger being ejected from a plane was a United flight not Delta. Also, after we recorded this episode, it was revealed that the USS Carl Vinson was actually headed away from the Korean Peninsula, not toward it. I'm sure Jonathan and I will discuss this at length during our next episode together.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 55th episode, our guest is Asia McClain Chapman.

Asia McClain Chapman will be familiar to fans of the first season of the “Serial” podcast. If you haven’t listened to that yet, you should probably listen to it before you hear this episode. It will make a lot more sense. Last year, she released her book, “Confessions of a Serial Alibi,” which tells the story of her journey from ordinary library patron to a key alibi witness for Adnan Syed. In the book, McClain discusses everything from her memories of Woodlawn High School, to her conversations with several key individuals such as Adnan Syed, Rabia Chaudry, Justin Brown, Gary Proctor and former state's prosecutor Kevin Urick.

Asia McClain Chapman was born on June 26, 1981, in Inglewood, California. Her parents, Carl and Michele McClain, were separated in 1986 resulting in her relocation to Baltimore, Maryland. After growing up in the Baltimore County school system, Asia graduated from Woodlawn High School in 1999 and proceeded to college.

In search of a fresh start Asia made the decision to drive across the country in 2005. After several years of living in Portland, Oregon, and working full-time as a personal assistant, Asia met her now-husband Phillip Chapman in 2008. The couple married in 2009 and they are now the proud parents of three rambunctious little boys, Lucas, Alexander and Ethan Chapman.

Located in Spokane, Washington, Asia spends her days as a stay-at-home mother, board secretary of Solutions Automation and small business owner of Diamond Concepts.

In addition to her commitment to her businesses, Asia enjoys web-designing, writing, cooking, gardening and working with her hands in addition to participating in events with her local MOMS Club chapter and church.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess.

On this, our 54th episode, our guest is Dr. Elizabeth Yuko.

Dr. Elizabeth Yuko is a bioethicist and the Health & Sex Editor at SheKnows, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Ethics at Fordham University in New York City. She specializes in reproductive and sexual health ethics, and the intersection of ethics and pop culture. She has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Atlantic, among others.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are several ways to support it.

I have a Patreon account, which can be found at www.patreon.com/robburgessshowpatreon. I hope you'll consider supporting in any amount.

Also please make sure to comment, follow, like, subscribe, share, rate and review everywhere the podcast is available, including iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Archive, TuneIn and RSS.

The official website for the podcast is www.therobburgessshow.com.

You can find more about me by visiting my website, www.thisburgess.com.

Until next time.