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
May 1, 2026 • 52 mins
Summary for Labor.In celebration of International Workers' Day and in conjunction with the "Labor" issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, this episode of The Detour explores how work shapes our lives. What is work for? Are work and labor the same thing? And what, if anything, makes work meaningful? To get at these questions, we talk with three people who spend a lot of time thinking about labor and work. Fir...
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April 1, 2026 • 59 mins
In this episode we hear from Colum McCann, a National Book Award–winning novelist and cofounder of Narrative 4, a nonprofit organization that uses personal storytelling to build empathy between young people. Colum is Irish and lives in New York, and he joined us in February 2026 for a conversation about stories, national character, identity, and the 250th anniversary, of the Declaration of Independence. You'll also ...
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March 1, 2026 • 59 mins
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.
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February 1, 2026 • 59 mins
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 tha...
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January 1, 2026 • 52 mins
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 t...
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November 19, 2025 • 59 mins
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...
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November 1, 2025 • 59 mins
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...
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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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