Crude Conversations

Anchorage Historian David Reamer has spent years digging through archives, newspapers, and forgotten corners, recovering stories that might otherwise disappear. From his early days of sharing historical stories on social media to his long-running Histories of Alaska column in the Anchorage Daily News, he’s documented everything from vanished neighborhoods and local legends to racial covenants, labor struggles, ...

In this one, I talk to Ashley Saupe. She’s the host of the Sharp End Podcast, a show built around firsthand accounts of accidents, near misses, survival, and the complicated psychology of risk in the outdoors. But before she started the podcast, she was studying the mistakes of others, reading Accidents in North American Climbing, an annual publication by the American Alpine Club that documents climbing incidents, what went w...

In this one, I talk to Sue Aikens — the warden of Kavik River Camp, a remote, self-sufficient outpost on Alaska’s North Slope. A collection of bunkhouses, fuel tanks, generators and equipment set against a wide, treeless, and unforgiving landscape defined by wind, cold, and distance. Just open ground, shifting weather, and a constant awareness that survival depends on preparation and respect for the elements. Hunters, s...

Caroline Van Hemert is a wildlife biologist, writer, and researcher whose work moves between science, story, and the lived experience of wild places. She’s based in Alaska, where she’s spent years studying migratory birds and the shifting ecosystems they move through, paying close attention to how climate change is reshaping patterns that have existed for generations. She’s also the author of “The Sun Is a C...

Don Rearden is an author and an educator whose work is rooted in Alaska—its landscapes, its communities, and the complex realities shaping life across the North. His writing—both fiction and nonfiction—blends elements of survival, culture, and environmental change. Whether he’s exploring a pandemic unfolding in the Arctic or a coastal village on the brink of relocation, his work is grounded in lived experien...

Sam Davenport writes the AK IRL newsletter. It dissects Alaska reality television as entertainment and as a cultural lens that shapes how Alaska is perceived from the Outside — an idea often signaled right from the start in show titles filled with buzzwords like wild, survival, and frontier. As if there’s a checklist for how Alaska gets branded and sold. She writes about the manufactured drama, the narrative structure, ...

Julia O’Malley is a journalist, a cook, a baker, and lately she’s been researching and re-creating Cold War cakes. During the Cold War era—roughly the decades between the end of World War II and the early 1990s—cake mix transformed a food once associated with luxury into something democratic, something anyone could make at home. Julia says that those boxed mixes, and the recipes people built around them in t...

Jeremie McGowan is an artist, designer, and researcher. Amund Sjolie Sveen is an artist. And together, they created Real. Arctic., an exhibition that examines how the word “Arctic” is used in branding, institutions, geopolitics, and everyday consumer products — and how the use of that word shapes what we think we know about the arctic. Their work blurs the line between critique and commodity, asking who gets to de...

In this one, I talk to journalist Paul Koberstein, whose recent book, “Canopy of Titans,” explores one of the most overlooked ecosystems on Earth: the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest. Stretching roughly 2,500 miles from just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to the western Gulf of Alaska, it’s the largest temperate rainforest on the planet. Fueled by Pacific storms and cool ocean currents, it ...

Emily Sullivan is a writer, a photographer, and a director whose work is grounded in questions of land, community, and responsibility. Throughout her work, she focuses on uplifting Indigenous perspectives — not by speaking for communities, but by listening to what people are already saying and doing. Her first film, Shaped by Land, is currently screening at festivals. It’s a documentary about Greenlandic skiers and thei...

Kevin Lane is the executive chef and co-owner of The Cookery and The Lone Chicharron Taqueria in Seward, and he was recently named as a James Beard Award semifinalist. Reflecting on that recognition, he says it wouldn’t have been possible without his team at The Cookery, or the kitchens and crews from his past that shaped the way he cooks today. Those roots stretch back to California’s Sacramento area, where he was rais...

In this one, Cody talks to cartoonist Peter Dunlap‑Shohl. His career traces a remarkable arc, from daily newsroom deadlines to personal, long-form storytelling. For 27 years, he worked for the Anchorage Daily News, drawing editorial and political cartoons. He produced thousands of comics focused on, more often than not, the worst things he could find in Alaska politics and in the pages of the newspaper — the biggest screwup, ...

Charles Stankievech is an artist, a writer, and an academic. He teaches at the University of Toronto, and his art takes him into some of the most remote landscapes on earth. Places like CFS Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world. He describes the Arctic as occupying two parallel spaces in our cultural imagination: one built on myth and fantasy, and another grounded in harsh, physical reality. He says that ...

Kikkan Randall is a five-time Olympian and an icon of U.S. cross-country skiing. But before all the medals and podiums, she was a high schooler with dyed hair, face paint, and a nickname that captured her energy: “Kikkanimal.” Her teammates gave it to her as a nod to the edge, spirit, and unity she brought to the team. Cross-country skiers understand that it’s a sport that rewards time spent—refining muscle ...

In this one, Cody talks to Alev Kelter. She grew up in Eagle River, Alaska, playing varsity boys' hockey because there wasn’t a girls’ team. That drive to compete at the highest level has carried her through a career that spans multiple sports. She played soccer and hockey at the University of Wisconsin, and was part of U.S. national team programs in both sports—earning spots on the U.S. hockey national teams and ...

In this one, Cody talks to Ben Weissenbach. He’s an environmental journalist and the author of “North to the Future.” It’s a book about Alaska, but also about uncertainty, responsibility, and the quiet, sometimes uncomfortable process of learning how to see. Ben spent time in the Brooks Range and Fairbanks with Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics; Kenji Yoshikawa, a permafrost scientist; and M...

In this one, Cody talks to Luc Mehl. He’s an adventurer, educator, and the author of “The Packraft Handbook.” He’s traveled over 10,000 miles across Alaska using only human power — by foot, ski, paddle, bike, and even ice skate. He’s traversed all of the state’s major mountain ranges, competed in more than a dozen Wilderness Classics, and has become one of the most trusted voices in wildern...

In this one, Cody talks to author and multi-disciplinary artist Tessa Hulls. She recently won the Pulitzer Prize for her graphic memoir, “Feeding Ghosts.” It’s about three generations of women in her family — her grandma, her mom, and herself — and the ways their lives were shaped by political violence, migration, silence and survival. The book moves across continents and decades, weaving together pers...

Nicholas Galanin is a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and activist whose work includes sculpture, installation, music and performance — and it’s always in conversation with history, land and power. He creates art that honors Indigenous traditions and confronts the structures that have sought to erase them; it challenges colonial narratives while inviting reflection on language, identity and the legacy of removal. He says th...