The Detour
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.
Episodes
October 1, 2025 • 59 mins
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, B...
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September 1, 2025 • 52 mins
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.
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August 1, 2025 • 59 mins
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 i...
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July 1, 2025 • 59 mins
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...
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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 Pendle...
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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 th...
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March 28, 2025 • 59 mins
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...
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February 28, 2025 • 59 mins
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 an...
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February 1, 2025 • 59 mins
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.
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January 2, 2025 • 60 mins
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 se...
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December 1, 2024 • 52 mins
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 A...
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October 30, 2024 • 58 mins
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 importan...
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September 27, 2024 • 52 mins
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.
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August 30, 2024 • 56 mins
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...
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August 1, 2024 • 58 mins
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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July 1, 2024 • 59 mins
In this episode, we share a conversation with Enrique Bautista, a writer and 2024 Community Storytelling Fellow, and Alexis Tadeo, an illustrator and tattoo artist. Both Enrique and Alexis recently moved from the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem back to the relative freedom of civilian life. Much of what they talk about here is their lives in prison, and more specifically, about their efforts to build relationships and...
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June 1, 2024 • 58 mins
What was the last thing you were wrong about? How did you come to know you were wrong? And how did it feel to come to know this? This episode of The Detour explores these questions with Sarah Marshall, who for several years has hosted a podcast called You're Wrong About. Sarah and her guests often talk about pop culture: Britney Spears, Tonya Harding, O.J. Simpson, satanic panics. Here, we explore what's undern...
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May 1, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode, we talk with Father Greg Boyle, who is, in the eyes of many people, a holy person—a person whose presence elevates those nearby and revivifies the world with meaning and hope. He is a Los Angelino, a Jesuit priest, and founder of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. In this conversation, Father Greg reflects on some of the highest and most noble aspiration...
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April 1, 2024 • 59 mins
Eliot Feenstra is a theater artist, teacher, and organizer who has lived in Takilma, an unincorporated community in Josephine County, since 2012. In this episode, Eliot shares the hopes that drew him from very urban Chicago, Illinois to the very rural Illinois Valley and how those hopes play into the work he does in Takilma and across Oregon in performance, community conversation, and civic engagement.
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March 1, 2024 • 59 mins
For the final episode of our series on belonging, we talked with students at Fern Hill Elementary School in Forest Grove and Crestview Heights Elementary in Waldport about where they feel they belong and how to help others feel like they belong. You'll also hear from a few adults who work at these schools about how they create a welcoming community inside and outside of the classroom.
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