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The East Anchorage Book Club is an interview podcast where Alaskan leaders discuss politics and community issues.
213 Episodes
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Send us a text Today is a brief bonus episode explaining Governor Dunleavy’s recent veto of Senate Bill 113 which would have required internet companies to pay corporate income taxes based on the location of their sales rather than the location of their offices. This bill would have put Alaska in alignment with 36 other states and would have leveled the playing field our local mom-&-pop businesses which are forced to pay taxes while companies such as Amazon, Hulu, or Netflix are not. Sena...
Send us a text Jake Dye had been the lone news reporter at the Peninsula Clarion in Kenai for three years until his resignation last night, September 29. He is the great-grandson of the former mayor of Kenai James Dye and has deep roots in the city on both sides of his family. He graduated from UAA's journalism program in 2022 and shortly thereafter began work at the Clarion. We discuss the difficulties of being a new reporter isolated in such a small newsroom, what happened at the Homer News...
Send us a text Former editor of the Homer News Michael Armstrong moved to Alaska from Florida in 1979. After over a decade in Anchorage working as a freelance reporter at the ADN and as an adjunct English professor at UAA, he and his wife Jenny Stroyek moved to Homer when Jenny became co-owner of the Homer Bookstore. In 1999, Michael began work at the Homer News, where he remained until 2022 retiring as editor of that paper. Michael has published many short stories in publications like ...
Send us a text ABC/Fox Your Alaska Link’s evening news anchor Trill Gates began her education as a broadcast journalist as a junior at Bartlett High in the late 1980s. While in high school, she did an internship at the Fox news station on Tudor Road where she still is today. Trill became famous in the early '90s as "Kiddie Fox" on the "Fox 4 Kids Club" TV show. We talk about that experience and how unlikely it would be for that type of broadcast to thrive today. When her four kids were y...
Send us a text This month a data breach at Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center allegedly exposed 60,000 patient records to hackers (ANHC has approximately 15,000 patients). Today on the show we talk about that case specifically, but also Alaska’s cybersecurity more generally. Our guest is Leon Jaimes, an Anchorage-based network security professional who has done security consulting in the healthcare, financial services, state and local government, telecommunications, and retail sectors. We d...
Send us a text Lisa Alexia is a psychiatric physician assistant in Anchorage specializing in eating disorders. Today we talk about her entrance to the health care field as a community health aide in Nikolai, Alaska, her decision to go back to school to become a physician assistant, and her work with eating disorders. But the last half of our conversation is the reason why she is on the show. Back in May, she authored an editorial in the ADN calling for an end to daylight saving time in Alaska...
Send us a text Tomorrow, September 16th, 2025, Anchorage will celebrate 50 years as a unified municipality. In honor of that anniversary I am re-releasing an episode from last year with Charter Commissioner, Jane Angvik. This episode is almost exclusively about the charter commission. I have another episode with Jane about her life; here's that link. I have also interviewed the other two living members of the Anchorage Charter Commission: Joe Josephson and Lisa Parker – you can find links to ...
Send us a text Rep. Ted Eischeid is the Alaska state house representative for North Muldoon in Anchorage, and his wife Hedy Eischeid is President of the Anchorage Democrats. Both Ted and Hedy were public school teachers in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where they met. We will hear their stories and how they ended up in Alaska. Much of their episode revolves around union work; Hedy is the current state-wide organizer for NEA-Alaska, which is the Alaska affiliate of the National Education Association...
Send us a text Dermot Cole is a longtime Fairbanks newspaper reporter, columnist and author who began his career at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in the late 70s while he was still a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He stayed with that paper until 2013 when he became a columnist at the Alaska Dispatch, an online news blog funded by Alice Rogoff, the former CFO of US News & World Report. In 2014 Rogoff purchased the Anchorage Daily News and merged it with the Alas...
Send us a text James Devens is the director of KCHU public radio which serves the communities around Prince William Sound and Wrangell-St Elias National Park. At the time he became director five years ago, he was the youngest director of a public radio station in America. Jimmy was elected to Valdez city council in 2020 and re-elected in 2023. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2024, but he remains an active member on the council and is a founding member of their housing committee. Alth...
Send us a text Sen. Löki Tobin (D-Anchorage) discusses the resolutions up for a vote today, August 22, 2025, by the Alaska State Medical Board. The first, listed on the agenda as "Board Statement/New Regulation Project: Late Term Abortion," is a statement drafted by board member and Republican candidate for governor Dr. Matt Heilala that would seek to limit access to abortions later in pregnancy. The second makes up the bulk of Sen. Tobin’s and my discussion today. It is also a statemen...
Send us a text Jeff Landfield is the founder and editor of The Alaska Landmine Blog and podcast. Since the Landmine’s founding in 2017, Jeff, with no formal training in journalism, has written and published investigative new stories often providing close coverage of municipal and state government. He was a state Senate Candidate in 2012 and 2016, and was appointed to the commission on judicial conduct by Governor Bill Walker, but that appointment was withdrawn due to a scandal involving photo...
Send us a text Alaska Public Media Reporter Wesley Early moved to Anchorage in 2008 and began his freshman year at Bartlett High School. He stayed in Anchorage for college earning a degree in journalism and public communications at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He started working in public radio his senior year of college and has never left. In 2019 he became the news director at KOTZ, the public radio in Kotzebue, and spent two years covering arctic climate change, subsistence, I...
Send us a text Today in Anchorage the world’s eyes are on us as President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin meet to discuss the fate of Ukraine. Although President Trump has lowered expectations by referring to the summit as a mere “listening exercise,” there is anxiety that illegitimate concessions might be made to Russia that may affect our state, such as access to our rare earth minerals or to oil in the Bering Sea. On March 5, 2025, I gave a speech on the House Floor about the lea...
Send us a text Author Dan O'Neill has lived in Fairbanks for 50 years. During that time he has published editorials and op-eds in all of Alaska's major newspapers. From 1998 to 2002, he had a weekly column in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. He compiled his best work from his almost half century of newspaper work into his most recent book, The Impertinent Question: the Words & Adventures of a Liberal Columnist at a Conservative Newspaper in the Red State of Alaska. Today we are talking abo...
Send us a text The third part of a legislative audit of the Alaska Office of Children's Services (OCS) was made public on June 30, 2025. In 2018 an omnibus bill was signed into law that completely overhauled the way foster care in Alaska should work. That bill -- House Bill 151 -- passed the Alaska State House and the Alaska State Senate unanimously. The completed audit shows that OCS failed to implement most of the required reforms. Les Gara was the 2022 democratic candidate for governor of ...
Send us a text James Brooks is a reporter for the Alaska Beacon. James is a longtime Alaska journalist, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner -- although as we will learn today initially more as an editor than as a journalist. He has laid down roots in Juneau where he and his wife and young daughter live, and he was content in his role as the ADN's chief Capitol reporter when three years ago he embarked on what he...
Send us a text Larry Persily is the Anchorage-based owner and publisher of the weekly newspaper the Wrangell Sentinel. Larry and his wife Leslie Murray first purchased that newspaper in 1976 when they moved to Wrangell from Chicago. After almost 50 years as an on-again off-again journalist at various publications such as the Anchorage Times, the Associated Press, the Juneau Empire, & the Anchorage Daily News, Larry re-purchased the Wrangell Sentinel in 2021. In 2019 he purchased the newsp...
Send us a text President and publisher of the Anchorage Daily News Ryan Binkley is the oldest son of former state Senator John Binkley (R-Bethel). When John ran for governor in 2006, Ryan, at 27, took over the Binkley family tourism business based in Fairbanks. That business includes the Riverboat Discovery, a gold mining tour, a partnership with a flight seeing company in Girdwood & Juneau, and a cruise port in Ketchikan. In 2017, Ryan and his three younger siblings purchased the Anchora...
Send us a text Open Enrollment is an education priority of Gov. Dunleavy that would allow any Alaska student to enroll in any Alaska school. To better understand the consequences of this proposal, Sen. Bill Wielechowski, the rules chair in the Alaska State Senate, and Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, the co-chair of the House Education committee appear in this brief bonus episode.
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