The Detour

Oregon Humanities

Each month, host Adam Davis and guests explore tough questions about how we live together. Conversations on The Detour connect ideas and personal experiences without looking for easy solutions. Here we find the path to understanding often takes unexpected turns. The Detour is produced by Oregon Humanities.

  1. 3D AGO

    Thinking About Equality with Akhil Reed Amar

    This year, in observation of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we're exploring the core values and ideas our nation claims to be committed to. We're calling this yearlong effort Beyond 250. For our first episode, we're focusing on equality: what we mean by it, where we live up to our hopes related to equality and where we fall short, and how understandings on equality have changed throughout our nation's history. To that end we'll hear from Akhil Reed Amar, author of "Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920," "The Words That Made Us," and many other books in articles on the Declaration, the Constitution, and other key aspects of the United States. We'll also hear from many Oregon high school students who gathered at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland in October 2025 to hear Akhil speak.

    53 min

  2. 11/19/2025

    Building Spaces with Brad Cloepfil

    In this episode, we talk with Oregon architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works. Brad grew up in Tigard and has designed beautiful buildings all over our state and the world: art museums, private homes, a sports stadium expansion, and even a US embassy. Brad is someone who thinks about and then dreams into being the spaces where we live our lives—especially the parts of our lives that include silence, listening, and a sense of the transcendent. We asked him to explain what he thinks about and notices, as a person who designs buildings. What do our built spaces open up for us, and what do they say about us?

    59 min

  3. 11/01/2025

    Character Work and Community Work with Paul Susi

    This week we talk with Paul Susi, a theater artist, a social services professional, an educator, and a writer who is also so much more than any blurb could say. He's a person who's trying to live in the world and be fully open to its suffering and darkness as well as to the beauty that it holds. He's trying to reckon clearly with our past and to move toward a more gentle, patient and just future. He's also trying to connect and to trust the power of connection. And in everything he does, he's working to bring more light.

    59 min

  4. 10/01/2025

    Life in Another Language with Aleksandr Chernousov

    In 2022, on the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, Aleksander Chernousov left Russia for Oregon. He was headed here to study Russian-speaking communities in the Pacific Northwest through the University of Oregon. (Russian is the fourth most common language in Oregon.) Aleks didn't know then that Oregon would become his long-term home. Since getting here, Aleks has talked to hundreds of people from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other Russian-speaking countries about their departures, their reasons for coming here, and especially their experiences in this part of the world. From recent Ukrainian and earlier Soviet refugees to an insulated sect of Russian Orthodox Christians called Old Believers or starovery, these varied stories are steeped in religion, war, family, geography, art and work.

    59 min

  5. 09/01/2025

    Talking with Kids About Learning

    In this episode, we talk with kids at the Gilbert House Children's Museum, in Salem, and and at Grace Art Camp, in Portland, about learning, creativity, and joy, and also about school and the summer.

    53 min

  6. 08/01/2025

    The Lands We Live on with Chuck Sams

    In this episode we talk with Chuck Sams, the nineteenth director of the National Park Service, about public lands, relationships between people and the places where they live, and what national parks are for. Sams is Cayuse and Walla Walla and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.  In addition to directing the National Park Service, he has served as an intelligence specialist in the US Navy, held leadership positions with the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla and the Trust for Public Land, and was recently appointed by Governor Tina Kotek to serve on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

    59 min

  7. 07/01/2025

    Reinventing American Democracy with Danielle Allen

    Danielle Allen is a professor, author, and former candidate for governor in the state of Massachusetts. Her books include "Justice by Means of Democracy," "Our Declaration," and "Talking to Strangers," as well as a report called "Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century." This idea, reinventing our democracy or renovating it, has occupied Danielle for decades. As you'll hear, Danielle has a wide range of thoughts from the micro to the macro and from procedural to cultural about what we can do to improve how we govern ourselves and strengthen the institutions we count on to help with this audacious project.

    59 min

  8. 06/01/2025

    Creatures We Love and Creatures We Fear with Bobby Fossek, Erica Berry, and Wendy Bingham

    Why do we welcome some animals and plants into our lives, while we reject others? In this episode, we explore the boundaries of fear and belonging in relation to the other living creatures we share this planet with. Our guests are Wendy Bingham, a cattle rancher; Erica Berry, author of the book Wolfish; and Bobby Fossek, who works on ecosystem restoration, among many other things. This conversation was recorded in Pendleton, Oregon in May 2024.

    1 hr
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

Each month, host Adam Davis and guests explore tough questions about how we live together. Conversations on The Detour connect ideas and personal experiences without looking for easy solutions. Here we find the path to understanding often takes unexpected turns. The Detour is produced by Oregon Humanities.

Information

  • Creator
    Oregon Humanities
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    55
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Oregon Humanities
  • Show Website
    The Detour

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