Where We Live

Fools and wise man, come hither! This summer’s day program of Where We Live will dedicate an hour to the master of comedy and tragedy alike, Sir William Shakespeare.

Outdoor productions of William Shakespeare’s plays go back to well…the time of William Shakespeare! And every summer this tradition comes alive on stages across Connecticut.

Today, we talk about Shakespeare in the park, the common and even - the sound! We’re joined by thespians across the state staging productions of this iconic playwright. 

GUESTS:

• James Bundy: Dean and Artistic Director of the David Geffen School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theatre
• Laura Sheehen: Co-founder of Capital Classics Theatre Company in Hartford
• Aaron Simms: Managing and Producing Director of Shakespeare on the Sound in Norwalk, Connecticut

Theater companies featured in this broadcast, including summer 2024 productions:

• Shakespeare on the Sound - Norwalk
  
  • June 12- June 30: Romeo and Juliet, Pinkney Park, Rowayton, CT
• Breakdancing Shakespeare - Hartford Stage
  
  • June 17 – July 27: Hartford Stage
• Capital Classics - Hartford
  
  • July 10 – August 4: The Greater Hartford Shakespeare Festival will feature two full-length productions of Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew — outdoors — on the campus of the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford.
• Shakesperience - Litchfield Hills (Washington Depot, CT)
  
  • August 7-11: Romeo and Juliet, River Walk Pavilion, Washington Depot, CT (Free Admission)
• Elm Shakespeare - New Haven
  
  • August 16 – Sunday, Sept 1: Richard III, Edgerton Park, New Haven (Free Admission)
• Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theatre - Middletown

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

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In Connecticut, there are LGBTQ community centers in New Haven, Norwalk and, most recently, Bridgeport. There have also been recent efforts to launch a queer hub in West Hartford.

These spaces are important for community, safety, resources, and even are associated with reduced suicide risk among LGBTQ youth, according to the Trevor Project.

Connecticut Public reported on the New Haven Pride Center’s move to a larger location in January. They say this will allow them to offer more community resources.

This hour, we hear from Juancarlos Soto, executive director of the New Haven Pride Center. We'll also hear from a researcher who has measured the importance of these community hubs, and the resources they offer.

Plus, we get an update on the policies protecting and restricting LGBTQ rights in the U.S. from The 19th's LGBTQ+ reporter Orion Rummler.

GUESTS:

• Orion Rummler: LGBTQ+ Reporter, The 19th
• Juancarlos Soto: Executive Director, New Haven Pride Center
• Dr. Dani Chiaramonte: Associate Research Scientist, Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Connecticut has had its share of intense storms, but this year’s hurricane is expected to be even longer and more intensive than ever before.

Today, we talk about what to expect and how to prepare.

Damage from hurricanes doesn’t just happen on the coast. We hear from farmers inland on how they’re preparing.

Got a question about hurricane season?

GUESTS:

• Juliana Barrett: Extension Educator Emerita, University of Connecticut and the Connecticut Sea Grant College Program
• Evan Lentz: Assistant Extension Educator of Fruit Production and Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at UConn
• Rebecca Toms: Communications Coordinator, UConn Extension- Sustainable Food Systems

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades, there were cities and towns that were all-white on purpose. These communities are known as "sundown towns." Because this practice was both formal and informal, researchers put together a database of these laws, customs and firsthand accounts, under the leadership of the late sociologist and civil rights champion James Loewen.

At the peak of the exclusionary practice in 1970, an estimated 10,000 communities across the U.S. kept out African-Americans through "force, law, or custom." Many sundown suburbs also excluded Jewish and Chinese Americans, and other minority groups.

There are 40 towns listed as possible or probable past sundown towns in Connecticut. This hour, we hear about this history and what it can tell us. You can add to this research too.

GUESTS:

• Dr. Stephen Berrey: Assistant Professor of American Culture and History, University of Michigan

• Logan Jaffe: Reporter, ProPublica

• Paul Saubestre: Volunteer Researcher, Hamden Historical Society

Cat Pastor contributed to this episode which originally aired November 27, 2023.

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Today, we get an update from humanitarian aid organizations with workers on the ground in Gaza and how they are addressing this continuing crisis. Before these airstrikes, the area was facing famine, mass displacement, and severe trauma from witnessing the ongoing war in Gaza.

We also get an update on other crises happening around the globe including the ongoing conflict in Sudan, and the parallels between these conflicts. The conflict in Sudan began over a year ago in April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support forces. More than 14,000 people have died, and more than 8 million people have been displaced.

We talk about the legal definition of genocide and how that word is impacting how we view crises around the globe.

GUESTS

• Dr. Ali Elaydi: Orthopedic Surgeon with FAJR Scientific
• Provash Budden: Americares Deputy SVP of Emergency Programs
• Dr. Abdelillah Douda: Coordinator of the Sudanese Refugee in Connecticut and Digital Coordinator of Feeding Centers
• Nathaniel Raymond: Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Author Garrard Conley published his first book in 2016, "Boy Erased". The bestselling memoir, relaying Conley's experience undergoing conversion therapy at 19, inspired a major motion picture two years later.

This hour, Conley discusses his newest book and his first foray into fiction. "All the World Beside" explores queerness in Puritan New England. Set in 1700s Massachusetts and inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," an affair unfolds between Arthur Lyman, a physician, and Nathaniel Whitfield, a reverend.

GUESTS:

• Garrard Conley: Author, All the World Beside and Boy Erased

Cat Pastor contributed to this episode which originally aired April 4.

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Beloved Muppet Elmo recently asked social media a simple question, "How is everybody doing?" The answers ranged from incredulous to raging. The trauma-dumping on Elmo begged the question: Are we burnt out?

Burnout has been reported in many industries: Connecticut Public has previously covered burnout in health care, and among early child care educators and teachers, for example. When Where We Live covered burnout in the nonprofit world in 2022, our phone lines were flooded.

This hour, we hear from Emily Ballesteros, a management coach and the author of the new book, The Cure for Burnout. She defines the phenomenon, and fields your questions.

Plus, Elizabeth Thompson is a local news researcher focused on burnout in local journalism.

A 2020 report from UNC found that more than one-quarter of American newspapers had shut down since 2005, forcing more than half of all local journalists out of the industry, and "leaving many remaining newsrooms staffed by a small number of reporters burdened by excessive workloads and unable to dedicate themselves to particular topics of local interest."

GUESTS:

• Emily Ballesteros: Management Coach; Author, The Cure for Burnout
• Elizabeth Thompson: Local News Researcher, Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at the University of North Carolina

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Cat Pastor contributed to this show that originally aired February 29, 2024.

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You’re never too young to learn about climate change. Younger Americans are more likely to engage with the issue, according to research on Gen Z and Millennials from Pew.

This hour, we hear from the authors of three children’s books about climate change, and taking action, including UConn sociologist Dr. Phoebe Godfrey, meteorologist Paul Douglas, environmental scientist Lena Champlin, and resident in psychiatry Jeremy Wortzel.

GUESTS:

• Dr. Phoebe Godfrey: Professor in Residence of Sociology, University of Connecticut

• Dr. Jeremy Wortzel: Co-Author, Coco’s Fire: Changing Climate Anxiety Into Climate Action

• Dr. Lena Champlin: Co-Author and Illustrator, Coco’s Fire: Changing Climate Anxiety Into Climate Action

• Paul Douglas: Meteorologist; Author, A Kid's Guide to Saving the Planet: It's not Hopeless and We're Not Helpless

Cat Pastor contributed to this episode which originally aired April 25.

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You’ve heard of Bigfoot and Nessie, but did you know Connecticut is home to a host of creatures, or "cryptids"?

Cryptozoology is the study of animals whose existence is a matter of debate. While Bigfoot sightings have been reported where we live, sea serpents, the Glastonbury Glawackus, and plenty of others call Connecticut home.

This hour, we hear from Patrick Scalisi and Valerie Ruby-Omen, the author and illustrator of a new field guide to this cast of Connecticut cryptids.

Plus, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella explains how folklore can deepen our understanding of these fantastic creatures, and how the stories about them are shaped over time.

• Patrick Scalisi: Author, Connecticut Cryptids: A Field Guide to the Weird and Wonderful Creatures of the Nutmeg State
• Valerie Ruby-Omen: Illustrator, Connecticut Cryptids
• Stephen Olbrys Gencarella: Professor of Folklore Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Where We Live is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Cat Pastor contributed to this show that originally aired on January 18, 2024.

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"An act of translation is always an act of betrayal."

This idea, and the questions it inspires, are central to author Rebecca or RF Kuang’s 2022 novel, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution.

As the title promises, the book also explores the nature of revolution and the "necessity of violence," in addition to those complex questions surrounding the art of translation.

This hour, we revisit our conversation with the author, which was focused on the award-winning book, during an event organized by local bookseller RJ Julia.

On the importance of student revolutions, Kuang reflects, "The student's weakness is precisely his allure. The fact that the student is so naïve and doesn't have the jadedness of somebody who's been through more; the fact that students are dreamers, that they are romantic idealists; that kind of hope, that kind of ability to imagine an alternate future is beautiful and it matters and I hope we keep seeing that."

GUESTS:

• RF or Rebecca Kuang: Award-winning author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface, and Katabasis (forthcoming). She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

Cat Pastor contributed to this episode which originally aired December 18, 2023.

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