The Detour
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© Oregon Humanities
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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.
The Detour is produced by Oregon Humanities.
57 Episodes
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In this episode we talk about public service and elected office with CM Hall, a city councilor in Newport, Oregon and the executive director of emerge Oregon, an organization that identifies, trains, and inspires women to run for office.
Meg Wade rarely drives. There are, in Meg's view, so many other ways to move about in the world, and most or all of these other modes—walking, taking the bus, taking the train, and more, have a lot to offer to us, our communities, and our world. Through Meg's writing with Oregon Humanities and other outlets, Meg provokes us to pay a lot more attention to where we are, what it means to move about in the ways that we do, and who and what we're sharing space with as we do so.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Built nearly overnight during World War II, Vanport was the second-largest and most integrated city in Oregon until it was destroyed by a flood in 1948. Remarkably, the meaning of Vanport continues to deepen and expand, thanks in large part to the annual Vanport Mosaic Festival. In this episode we hear from Laura Lo Forti, Laveta Gilmore Jones, and Kelly Bosworth, three people whose lives are wrapped up in Vanport and the Vanport Mosaic Festival and whose work has helped show so many of us how our lives, too, are part of what Vanport means to Oregon.
In this episode, we talk with Anis Mojgani, who served as Oregon's Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024, about the complex relationship between poetry and politics. Recorded live in Portland in January 2025, this conversation between Anis and host Adam Davis examines the unique role of the governor-appointed laureate and the nature of what makes something—a poem or a piece of art—"political." Anis and Adam also read several poems that they'd selected for the evening, and Anis responds to questions from the audience.
In this episode, we talk with Ben Rhodes, a former national security advisor to President Barack Obama and current host of Pod Save the World, about the ways that everyday citizens can understand and engage with our complex global system. Drawing on his eight years in the White House and his work since as an author and podcast host, Rhodes identifies pivotal moments that have shaped our current international landscape and offers a surprisingly human perspective on diplomacy, while reminding us that individuals have more agency in shaping history than we might believe.
We talk with Manu Meel, whose organization, BridgeUSA, works on getting young people to think and talk across political differences. Manu and BridgeUSA are making a bet on democracy—a bet relies on Manu's sense that most people, most of the time, do want to talk with and listen to each other.
Adam Davis talks with Leigh Van der Voo and Emily Harris, two deeply experienced Oregon-based journalists who are working together, along with John Schrag, on Uplift Local, a new organization striving to empower communities through high-quality, community-first reporting and partnerships that close news gaps and disrupt misinformation. As you'll hear from Lee and Emily, Oregon and the nation are facing a range of serious challenges when it comes to news, and we're also in a moment that's full of opportunities.
This month, we honor the legacy of Barry Lopez, who passed on Christmas Day, 2020. This episode is a rebroadcast of one of The Detour's first episodes. It features a conversation with Barry, and then a reading and conversation with Debra Gwartney, Barry's wife, and, like him, a writer.
Barry was a renowned author and essayist known for his deep attention to landscapes and communities across the globe. From Arctic Dreams to Horizon, his works transformed how we see the world around us and remind us of our intrinsic connection to the natural world. As we mark the anniversary of his death, We reflect on Barry's continuing impact—on how he intertwined justice, nature, and humanity in ways that remain essential today.
A conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, who has reported on, written about, and devoted much of her life to understanding the United States Supreme Court and the justice system more generally. Dahlia is deeply knowledgeable about the culture of the court and the character of its rulings, and she's deeply attuned to the relationship between justice and democracy. And she's quick and funny, too, which seems important when you're talking about something as heavy as justice—especially because justice is so often invoked, demanded, and yearned for.
In this episode of The Detour, we talk with Eli Saslow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, who has written heartbreaking, beautiful, deeply researched, and deeply empathetic stories about the challenges Portland and many other cities have been facing. And about some of the people living these challenges and trying in difficult circumstances to overcome them.
In this episode, we asked young people at Slater Elementary School in Burns and Highland Elementary School in Grants Pass about how their schools, their towns, the state of Oregon, and the United States shape who they are. In the process, they told us about other places—other countries, states, towns, and schools—that have contributed to how they understand themselves and who they are becoming. You'll also hear from a few school administrators and parents about how places inform our ideas about ourselves.
Sheila Liming is the author of the recent book "Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time." In both her book and this episode, Sheila argues that hanging out—being with other people, being open to the unscripted and surprising, and taking time back from default expectations about productivity and predictability—is important for our mental health, our relationships, and even our democracy.
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