East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray
The East Anchorage Book Club is an interview podcast where Alaskan leaders discuss politics and community issues.
Episodes
Willie Iġġiaġruk Hensley was born in 1941 in Kotzebue, Alaska, and was raised to live the traditional way that his Iñupiaq ancestors had lived for thousands of years. As a young adult away at college, his family home in Kotzebue was sold for a bottle of whiskey and then bulldozed. This lit a fire in him to fight for Alaska Native land claims, and Willie was instrumental in the creation and passage of the Alaska Nati...
Reverend Matt Schultz is the pastor for First Presbyterian Church in downtown Anchorage. He was the Democratic candidate for Alaska's lone US House seat up until he suspended his campaign on July 17. With his departure, there are still 14 candidates in that US House race, but the incumbent Republican Nick Begich and challenger Independent Bill Hill are the only ones who have raised significant campaign funds. Hill h...
Spencer Perry, PhD, is an assistant professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Before earning his PhD in Economics at Arizona State University in Tempe, he worked for three years at the Federal Reserve. He moved to Anchorage a year ago when he began his job at ISER where he focuses on topics in health and public economics.
T...
Former Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz moved to Alaska in 1990 after he finished law school in San Francisco. In 1996 he ran for an open state house seat in west Anchorage, and he served in the state legislature for 10 years, 8 as minority leader. In 2006 he ran for Lieutenant Governor with Tony Knowles at the top of the ticket, but they lost to Sarah Palin and her Lt Gov Sean Parnell. In 2008 he unsuccessfully...
Julia Lurie is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, a nonprofit American magazine that focuses on news, commentary, and investigative journalism. In 2023, Julia wrote a story entitled, "Inside the Psychiatric Hospitals where foster kids are Gold Mine." The article was largely an exposé of the horrible history in Alaska of foster children being placed at our short-term psychiatric facility for far too long and sometime...
Heather Doncaster leads three different lives. The first is the one she is most famous for and that is as master of ceremonies for Mad Myrna's weekly Diva Variety Show. She has held this job for over 10 years, but not as Heather. She hosts the drag show in drag as Hank Van Dickerson; we learn Hank's origin story. Her second life is as a public school teacher in Anchorage for over 20 years: first as a high school/mid...
The Majority Leader in the Alaska State House is Representative Chuck Kopp of South Anchorage. After a childhood in Iliamna and Kenai, he began a 23-year career in law enforcement, the last six as Chief of the Kenai Police Department. In 2010 he moved to Anchorage and began work as a legislative staffer, first to Senator Fred Dyson of Eagle River and later to Senator Peter Micciche of Kenai. In 2016 he successfully ...
Ken Alper served as the director of the Tax Division for Governor Bill Walker. After earning a master's degree in Urban Planning at the University of Washington, Ken and his wife Jill relocated to Juneau in the early 90s where they bought the Silver Bow Inn which they still own. Once their business was thriving, Ken took a job with the department of Fish and Game at the tail end of Governor Tony Knowles' administrat...
Bruce Botelho is the former Attorney General for the state of Alaska under Republican Governor Wally Hickel and under Democratic Governor Tony Knowles. Bruce also served as Mayor of Juneau from 1988-1991 and from 2003-2012. His paternal grandparents first moved to Juneau in 1897, and really since his birth here in 1948, Juneau has been Bruce Botelho's home.
Today we discuss his start in the Alaska government in...
Author Amy Wallace was the ghostwriter for Virginia Roberts Giuffre's, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice. Virginia Giuffre was an American advocate and survivor of sex trafficking who became widely known for accusing financier Jeffrey Epstein and his associates, including Prince Andrew, of sexual abuse. She died by suicide in April 2025 at her home in Australia. At the time of...
Stephen J. Cox is the acting Attorney General of Alaska since August 29th, 2025. He was appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy after the previous Attorney General Treg Taylor resigned to begin his gubernatorial campaign. Stephen Cox previously served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, which is headquartered in Beaumont. He was appointed to that position by US Attorney General Bill Barr during ...
The Executive Director of the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (ANDVSA) is Brenda Stanfill. She moved to Fairbanks from Utah when she was 16 years old as a newlywed. Within a few years of arriving she had two children and realized that she had to escape her abusive marriage. It was that experience surviving her own domestic violence that led to a lifetime of advocacy, including 25 years a...
Aubrey Wieber is the founder and executive director of the 907 Initiative. The 907 Initiative is an Alaska-based government watchdog organization working to increase public transparency for state and local government. Aubrey grew up mostly in Portland, Oregon, but his youth took a dramatic turn when he and his mother joined a cult, Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, while he was in middle school. That experience had ...
Author Keri Ladner, PhD, is an expert on fundamentalist politics in America and the radicalization of the conservative movement. She specializes in the religious beliefs of the American right, and her work illuminates how those beliefs have become part of American power structures. Today she discusses her newest book: American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom. This is her second appearance ...
Samu El Bayani Neek was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. At 12 his parents divorced, and he had to drop out of middle school to begin working as a barber. During this tumultuous period in his life, he discovered a church in Tehran and converted to Christianity. Under Iran's Islamic Regime, a Muslim who abandons Islam can be punished by death. At 20, Sam fled to Turkey where he lived for about 5 years waiting for his...
The Alaska State House Representative for East Fairbanks is Will Stapp. This is his second appearance on the podcast. To learn more about Will's early life and military service (including his Purple Heart), check out his first appearance. Today, Will and I talk about the chance for increased public education funding this year, Alaska's therapeutic court system, and the elections bill (Senate Bill 64) that just passe...
Wil Courtney is a Political Reporter and Multimedia Journalist for KTUU Channel 2 Alaska's News Source and host of the station's Political Pipeline podcast. This interview is part of the Alaska Media series. Wil never planned to work in Alaska but in less than a year's time our state has had a profound impact on him, particularly his reporting from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok shortly after Typhoon Halong.
Nebraska State Senator John Fredrickson was first elected in 2022 by a margin of only 82 votes. He is the first openly gay man to be elected to the Nebraska state legislature. We discuss Nebraska's unicameral non-partisan legislature and its term limits. We also talk about John's youth, how he and his husband adopted their son, and his journey into politics.
This conversation was recorded in Chicago at the Coun...
The Alaska State House Representative for Ketchikan is Jeremy Bynum. We discuss his childhood growing up in a devout Pentecostal household, his escape to the Air Force, and his struggles being accepted as a newcomer to Ketchikan. We also talk about the drama of the Juneau Capitol, specifically his fraught relationship with my chief of staff Kyle Johansen (a previous Representative of Ketchikan) and the heated rhetor...
Laura Booch and Dr. Ingrid Johnson both appeared at the Alaska State House Judiciary Committee's informational hearing on Civil Protective Orders that happened on Monday, March 9th. Civil protective orders are also called restraining orders and there are several types, but the most common type is the Domestic Violence Protective Order, and that's what today's episode is about. Right now a long term domestic violence...
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