Steve Scher talks at length with thinkers, writers, and artists shaping our society and culture.
Read MoreThe Cheating Cell, Aktipis
At Length with Alva Noë
Baseball Season is winding down to the championship season. How did your team do? Winners? Losers?
No matter your teams standings, the game itself goes on.
Why?
Why does baseball still survive, even thrive in America?
Here then, one answer, from the philosopher Alva Noë, who came to Seattle to speak at Town Hall, July of 2019.
Alva Noë is a writer and a philosopher who studies the nature of mind and human experience. And he thinks about baseball.His latest book is Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark
Read MoreAt Length with Charles Fishman, "One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us To The Moon."
Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon, but it took hundreds of thousands of working men and women, scientists, computer manufacturers, stitchers, engine designers, welders and technicians to actually make the dream a reality. Charles Fishman tells their story in his new book, “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us To The Moon.”
Read MoreAt Length with Neal Stephenson, "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell"
Will the digital world of the future- a world coming up pretty fast in our rear-view mirrors-be a source of joy or sorrow for its virtual citizens? What parts of our consciousness might actually be uploaded to the big virtual universe many imagine is in the making? What parts of our humanity might just get snipped off, the same way CRISPR scientists now clip off what they perceive to be junk DNA? Neal Stephenson speculates on the direction virtual human consciousness might take, and tells a rousing good story, in his new novel “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.”
Read MoreAt Length with Rachel Louise Snyder, author of "No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us."
Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder looks at domestic violence around the world in her new book “ No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.”
Read More“Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health.”
At Length with Dr. Sandro Galea, "Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health."
“Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health.”
How do we get to healthy? Diet, exercise, sure, but is health also about where we live and how we live? What about how our neighbors live?
We know from the recent measles outbreak that choices our neighbors make affect us. What about the choices we make as a society? How do those choices, policies really, affect our individual health?
The debates over health care in America often start and stop at issues of diet and exercise, health insurance, access to medicine, choosing your own doctor.
But health, according to Dr. Sandro Galea, isn’t going to actually occur, for individuals or societies, if we stay focused at that level of attention and care.
Health rather should be seen as how everyone lives in their neighborhoods including the opportunities that exist in education and employment.
Dr. Sandro Galea is coming to Town Hall Seattle to The Forum, newly reopened in Town Hall. Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 7:30PM.
His book is “Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health.”
Public health thinkers, like Dr. Sandro Galea, argue that opportunity to live in a safe, stress free place, where opportunities exist for ourselves and our children are among the most powerful influences on creating a healthy society and so health individuals.
Sandro Galea is considered an innovator in epidemiology. He is Dean and Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He is the author of many scholarly articles, book chapters and books.
He is coming to Town Hall Seattle to The Forum, newly reopened in Town Hall. Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 7:30PM.
His book is “Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health.”
At Length with Mary Norris, author of "Greek To Me: Adventures of The Comma Queen
Mary Norris recently left her job as copy editor and query proofreader after more than thirty years at the New Yorker. She is following up her series of Comma Queen videos and her best selling book, “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,” with a book about her love for the Greek language and the culture of Greece. Our conversation about “Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen” is a sublime excursion into punctuation, the copy editor’s tasks and the writer’s life.
Read MoreCopy of At Length with Hedrick Smith, Winning Back Our Democracy
Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, author and documentary filmmaker Hedrick Smith talks about the grass roots activists across America who are organizing for voter rights and against gerrymandering. Smith argues in his new film, “Winning Back Our Democracy,” that citizens can overcome the money that is corrupting democracy.
Read MoreAt Length with Hedrick Smith, Winning Back Our Democracy
Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, author and documentary filmmaker Hedrick Smith talks about the grass roots activists across America who are organizing for voter rights and against gerrymandering. Smith argues in his new film, “Winning Back Our Democracy,” that citizens can overcome the money that is corrupting democracy.
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At Length with Siri Hustvedt
Scholar and novelist Siri Hustvedt on memory and time.
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At Length with Frans De Waal
For many reasons, humans have developed ways of thinking that deny animals emotions. We have viewed them as bundles of rigid instincts, automatons acting only on stimulus and response. But that is changing. Almost every day brings new scientific evidence that animals have emotions, make decisions based on inference and experience are cognitive thinkers and sentient beings. Frans De Waal studies primates, loves fish and offers in his latest book, “Mama’s Last Hug” an exploration of animal emotions, animals including ourselves.
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At Length with Arne Duncan
America seems unable to decide how to educate its children. We swing between reforms unsure of what we need more of and which direction to go. There are ongoing debates about how to shrink the education gaps between the well offand the under resourced. Successes occur, but they seem to struggle for acknowledgment and replication.
Arne Duncan served as President Obama’s Secretary of Education. His assessment of the nation’s efforts to educate children and of his own tenure in federal office is “How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education.”
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A Retablos collected by Octavio Solis
At Length with Octavio Solis, "Retablos."
Retablos are devotional paintings, usually done on tin. The tightly framed images tell stories of trauma, temptation and redemption.
Octavio Solis is an award winning working playwright immersed in the culture and politics of our time. His plays tell the stories of rural America, of Latino America, of border America. His community of artists are telling stories that reveal the changing culture of the nation and the continuing connections people still have across different borders, nations, age, race, culture and politics.
He comes to Town Hall Seattle December 4th,the Rainier Arts Center, to read from his new book, a collection of short dream-like stories of his life growing up along the US Mexico Border, “Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border.”
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At Length with Marie Wong Part 2
I took an extended walk through Seattle’s Chinatown/International District with scholar Marie Wong. “Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels”is the Seattle University professor’s historical examination of this vibrant Seattle neighborhood.
The interview came out of an assignment for Seattle Magazine. I wrote a story for the December 2018 issue focused on Wong’s work and the future of the ID.
This is part two of the interview, touring the inside of the West Kong Yick Building and then a wander around the district.
We toured the district to get a feel for its past, present and future.
It’s a nice long walk and wander. I’ve broken it into two episodes, both around an hour each.
Too long?
If you want to jump around, here is an annotated list of listening spots to land on along the way.
Part Two
00:00 You have a flashlight? Let’s go inside West Kong Yick, the upper stories were boarded up in the 70’s.
2:44 Gazing up at the light-wells, bringing sunlight into the apartments on the inside of the hallway.
3:20 The West Kong Yick was built for a higher turnover in the population. Didn’t happen that way. Home redefined.
7:49 The room sizes varied to accommodate families.
9:29 They are taking out longs to renovate the building.
12:45 The redevelopment removes the transom windows but character and opportunity remain
20:00 The cubic air ordinance that created the excuse to push Asian Americans out of the NW cities in 1885 and 1886
21:25 How hard it is to renovate these buildings. What would be lost if they were radically altered.
24:49 Back on the street, looking across at the Gee How Oak Tin Family Association Building on 513 7thAve and explaining the different associations and Tongs of the District.
26:25 The Eclipse Hotel
27:37 The Japanese owned and operated many buildings.
28:42 The many hotels that were torn down. The parking lots trace the later history of the District.
30:30 William Chapelle, a notorious Caucasian property owner in the district during the 1800’s and early 1900’s, owned many hotels which were bawdy houses.
32:20 Poverty was the great unifier for people living in the community
33:00 More market rate rehabbed old SRO’s.
33:50 Photographer Dean Wong, author of “Seeing The Light,” documents Pan-Asian communities across the U.S.
34:40 Marie’s history.
36:50 Why the building styles of the Kong Yick are unique.
37:46 Parallels to San Francisco.
39:20 The myths of subterranean Chinatown and the preservation of urban artifacts.
At Length with Marie Wong on Seattle's International District
I took a different approach to these two episodes.
I hope you like them.
I took an extended walk through Seattle’s Chinatown/International District with scholar Marie Wong. “Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels”is the Seattle University professor’s historical examination of this vibrant Seattle neighborhood.
The interview came out of an assignment for Seattle Magazine. I wrote a story for the December 2018 issue focused on Wong’s work and the future of the ID.
TheChinatown/International Districtonce housed thousands of working people in hundreds of small rooms in residential hotels. These single room occupancy or SRO hotels were viable and affordable housing options for almost 100 years. But starting the 1970’s new ordinances forced the shuttering of many of these hotels. If you look up from your wandering in the International District today, you will see many of the windows in the uppers floors boarded up.
With the booming Seattle economy, these buildings are now being rehabbed, but the rents are usually market rate, unless the developer is a non-profit. So going forward, the working poor, in dire need of affordable housing, won’t find many options in a neighborhood they once dominated.
Marie Wong, Seattle University associate professorin theInstitute of Public Service and the Asian Studies Program and Public Affairs, studies Pan-Asian districts across America. She is worried about the future of Seattle’s International District. She has documented the history of these SRO’sin the district in her new book, “Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels.”
We toured the district to get a feel for its past, present and future.
It’s a nice long walk and wander. I’ve broken it into two episodes, both around an hour each.
Too long?
If you want to jump around, here is an annotated list of listening spots to land on along the way.
00:00 Meeting on the street, talking about writing, journalism and the noisy streets.
9:32 We started our tour at the 100 year plus Kong Yick Buildings, flagship buildings of the final, historic Chinatown District.
9:52 The first core of Chinatown was at First and Yesler and why it moved into its current location.
13:00 Developing a Chinatown that won’t move and becomes the conscious execution of Chinese America communities are constructed in Seattle.
14:00 The building of the first SRO’s by the Chinese Free Masons.
15:48 The recessed balconies reveal that Chinese associations built and occupied the buildings. The traces of histories in the buildings.
17:36 The histories of the East and West Kong Yick Buildings and Corporation.
20:26 Can the small businesses housed in Kong Yick as well as other former SRO’s survive?
24:21 The Ozark Hotel Ordinances and how they changed Seattle housing.
27:16 In the 2000’s a renovation for these buildings began- most at market rate
29:00 Restoring these buildings costs between 24-26 million. Developers either partner with community non-profits or charge market rates.
30:20 What was a typical SRO building and room. 350 different SRO’s in downtown Seattle area.
31:43 Japantown
33:15 John Okada, author of “No-No-Boy grew up in Japantown.”
33:42 Wong feels blessed to have met so many people who grew up in the district.
34:35 The district is changing as city’s 1970’s and 2014 housing ordinances reclassify buildings forcing more closures and changing the district with even more impact than even the WW2 incarcerations.
39:06 SRO’s seen by elites as substandard historically and still today even as they are seen as good housing options in some cities. But Wong feels the city council has regulated the city out of affordable options. The money spent and taxes assessed have to filter back into the community.
45:02 Residential Hotel buildings were zero lot lines. Look up to differentiate one building, and its history, from the next. Compare the New Pacific and the Panama hotel.
46:00 We gaze at boarded up buildings. Is the district losing its identity?
47:30 The district entices developer who see the opportunity for higher rents next to the booming downtown core.
50:00 Imagine the district in the 1900’s. It was a boom time for construction of unique SRO’s, like the Milwaukee Hotel, redeveloped by James Koh. Now SRO’s style is persona non grata in many neighborhoods.
53:50 Pigeons!
55:00 There are light-wells inside most of these half block sized buildings.
56:00 The businesses in the Milwaukee Hotel are emblematic of the new ID.
57:28 Bob Santos, hero of the district.
59:00 Will older Asian-American districts disappear? Will new districts arise?
At Length with Rob Reich on the Failures of Philanthropy
Some rich people give away some of their money. They are philanthropists. They probably see themselves as doing good. Are they?
Through their wealth, philanthropists influence society. Is that fair?
As it is currently set-up, Rob Reich says it isn’t. Reich (pronounced “reesh”) is a professor of political science and faculty co-director for the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford. He has written “Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy And How it Can Do Better.”
Rob Reich will be talking about the cons and pros of philanthropy with Jeff Raikes,co-founder of the Raikes Foundation and one-time CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This Town Hall event takes place at the Impact Hub on 2nd Avenue in downtown Seattle, Wednesday November 28that 7:30,
(I didn’t have a great Skype connection with Reich, so there are a few electronic glitches in the audio. My apologies.)
Here is an annotation of our interview.
02:12 The organizing institutions of philanthropies in the U.S.
03:05 School fundraising prompted his interest.
05:24 Why are philanthropies tax exempt?
06:20 Rockefeller and the dawn of modern foundations.
10:02 Is having lots of money inherently undemocratic?
11:45 Philanthropies contribute to the calcification of society.
16:24 The tax advantages of philanthropy
19:30 Big philanthropic institutions should pioneer new ideas.
26:56 Why not take away their tax exemptions and deductions.
29:10 Why Phil Knight should have burned his 400 million dollar gift to Stanford.
31:48 The appropriate attitude is to engage in our government. Philanthropy should support government efforts, not circumvent them.
34:59 The philanthropists who work that way.
36:18 The confusion over political giving and philanthropies
39:12 On-stage with Jeff Raikes
At Length with Alex Rosenblat in Uberland
Uber has disrupted the taxi industry around the world. But its way of doing business may be reshaping other industries.
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Peter Sagal. Author of “The Incomplete Book of Running” and host of “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”
Peter Sagal At Length
A conversation with Peter Sagal, a marathon runner, Runner’s World columnist and author of The Incomplete Book of Running. His day job, host of the Peabody award winning NPR news quiz, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!"
Read MoreChris Hedges At Length
Chris Hedges reports on the current state of America. He sees a declining empire in the last stages of dissolution.
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Ancient Skulls
David Reich At Length: Who We Are and How We Got Here
Harvard Geneticist David Reich explains the latest discoveries on human evolution. New technology allows scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA from ancient bones. Reich explores how the genome contains the history of our species and our relationship to ancient humans.
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