Switchyard
Switchyard is a podcast for people hungry for eye-opening essays, moving fiction, soul-stirring poetry, and honest, thought-provoking conversation. Join us monthly for new content.
Episodes
In this episode, Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways speaks with award-winning journalist Ted Conover about his book Cheap Land Colorado, set among the rural poor in the San Luis Valley, and his style of investigative reporitng, known as "immersion." By spending months or even years with the people he is writing about—working alongside them, living with them—Conover comes to understand his subjects as few journalists do. That s...
In this episode, Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways brings together author Jeff Sharlet and political organizer Jane Kleeb for a conversation about the nation’s political divide and a path toward a positive future. Ranging from the deep-rooted divisions fueling hate and violence to the beacon of hope emanating from rural America, this dynamic conversation promises to spark your imagination and ignite your spirit. Sharlet and K...
In this riveting episode, Timothy Egan, author of New York Times bestseller A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, and Kevin Willmott, the brilliant director and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, join Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways for a conversation about the role of the Ku Klux Klan in America’s past and present.
In this episode, three contributors to the Rural Americas issue of Switchyard magazine—Monica Potts, the New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Girls; Dean Bakopoulos, whose third novel Summerlong is now in development as a television series; and Michael Croley, author of the collection of short stories Any Other Place—join editor, Ted Genoways, for a conversation about the hardships facing rural America and hope for th...
In this episode, world-renowned climate activist Bill McKibben and singer-songwriter Andrea von Kampen join Switchyard magazine editor Ted Genoways for a lively and soul-searching conversation about how we can embrace our fear and grief in the face of pending climate disaster and use those feelings as motivation to take action to address the crisis. The conversation is interlaced with acoustic performances by von Kampen from her ne...
In this episode, Ted Genoways speaks with Sterlin Harjo, the co-creator of the groundbreaking TV series Reservation Dogs. They discuss the show's unique blend of humor and heartbreak and how Harjo combines elements of traditional Native storytelling, parodies of Hollywood classics, urban myths, pop music, and zany side quests to cre...
This very special episode of the Switchyard Podcast was recorded live in the “big room” of Leon Russell’s historic Church Studio in Tulsa. The program leads off with a performance by Casii Stephan of “These Hard Days,” her song about working through the challenges of Covid lockdown but it is also ab...
In this episode, Switchyard editor Ted Genoways talks with writers Jori Lewis and Siddhartha Deb whose stories were published in the new Switchyard magazine special food issue (Winter 2024) in partnership with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Lewis and Deb joined us in Tulsa on November 30, 2023, for the Switchyard Food Fest, and we recorded this conversation with a ...
For the Winter 2024 food issue of Switchyard magazine, we teamed up with the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN). In this episode, guest host Theodore Ross, Editor-In-Chief of FERN, speaks with Chef Sean Sherman. Sherman's Minneapolis restuarant Owamni won the 2022 James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant. It’s a whole menu made from ingredients used by Indigenous Peoples in North America, before the arrival of ...
In this episode, we speak with Tom Colicchio, chef, activist, and contributor to Switchyard magazine's special Winter 2024 issue on food. Colicchio is arguably the best known chef on the planet. He is a five-time James Beard Foundation Award winner, including the award for Outstanding Chef. For twenty-one seasons, he has been the lead judge of the Emmy Award-winning TV show, Top Chef. He is also the author of three books, including...
In this episode, award-winning author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho speaks with host Ted Genoways about his lifelong passion for storytelling, his journey from journalist to fiction writer, learning to write in a second language, and how all of these experiences shape the characters in his stories. You can read Antonio's short story "The Search Zone" in the first issue of Switchyard magazine and hear it performed as a radio play in a previo...
In this episode, author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho portrays Daniel Proust, a young journalist covering a flood in the remote mountain village of Motozintla, Chiapas, in far southern Mexico. Proust comes to the aid shelter late at night in hopes of seeing the condition of the survivors and has a chance encounter with the leader of the disaster relief effort, General Martínez, portrayed by Os...
In this episode, Ted Genoways speaks with Dimiter Kenarov about his transformation from snowboarder poet to journalist, and his return to Bulgaria where he has been observing a slow transformation that he describes as “the closing of the Bulgarian frontier." He wrote about this in the inaugural issue of Switchyard magazine. We had the opportunity to speak in person at the Church Studio in Tulsa, during the first annual...
In this episode, Ted Genoways speaks with Maia Kobabe about eir book Gender Queer—how the book explores eir gender and sexual identity during eir childhood and teen years, eir discovery of non-binary identity, the book’s early positive reception, and how Kobabe has navigated the challenges of the last few years, as eir memoir became the most banned book in America. We had the opportunity to speak in person at the Church Studio in T...
In this Switchyard poetry exclusive, hear Natasha Trethewey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Poet Laureate of the United States, read her stunning and deeply felt sequence of poems that she wrote for the inaugural issue of Switchyard magazine about the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
In this episode, Ted Genoways speaks with Natasha Trethewey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Poet Laureate of the United States, about a stunning and deeply felt sequence of poems that she wrote for the inaugural issue of Switchyard magazine about the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Those poems are available unabridged as an exclusive Switchyard poetry episode. We encourage you to listen to them in their entirety.
In this episode, Ted Genoways, editor of Switchyard magazine, speaks with legendary comic book artist and writer Art Spiegelman about the attempt in Tennessee to ban his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, about a legislative bill in Oklahoma that was designed to defend the book, how he became a free speech absolutist, and how he found his way back to the drawing table after a year consumed by controversy and outrage.
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