Almost There with Dwayne Betts
How can we shape the place we call home? And how does it shape us? This season, host and poet Dwayne Betts talks to inspiring local leaders who are working to make their homes more connected, resilient, and joyful. We’ll travel across America to meet such leaders, including a high school mariachi teacher in the Rio Grande Valley, a book seller in Salt Lake City, a farmer in upstate New York, and a reverend on the West Side of Chicago. Learn what motivates their dedication to their community, and gain insight into how you can create change in the place you call home, too.
Episodes
The Most Human Space of All
In the season two finale, Dwayne speaks with the writer Amy Low about living with the terrible diagnosis of stage four colon cancer, which she chronicled in her memoir, The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room. Amy, who worked at Emerson Collective for nearly a decade, shares what she learned occupying the very “last room” of life: deep gratitude, the power of forgiveness, and how to live ea
A Place of Gratitude
Karen Washington never imagined herself as a farmer. But after decades in New York City, she found her calling establishing community gardens that brought fresh food – and life-affirming beauty – to her neighborhood in the Bronx. Today, she lives on a farm in upstate New York where she grows fresh, healthy produce that she believes belongs on everybody’s plates.
For more on our guest, Karen Wash
The First Place I Felt Safe
As a kid growing up below the poverty line on the west side of Salt Lake City, Calvin Crosby found immense pleasure and freedom in books. Years later, after a journey that took him to San Francisco and into a leadership role at the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, he bought the bookstore that first changed his life – The King’s English – and moved back home to Utah to run it.
For more
Dance Is Story
If you think dance is just movement set to music, you’re missing something big. Award-winning director and choreographer Camille A. Brown argues that dance is the act of using physical gesture to manifest story—stories about ourselves, the lives we’ve lived, and where we’re from. Camille, whose work celebrates Black culture, helps Dwayne see the ways he’s moved through prison and his work with Fre
Mariachi Became Home
Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, Abel Acuña has been a mariachi musician for three decades. Now, he teaches mariachi at Edinburg North High School, the very same school he himself attended. He tells Dwayne how he uses the power of music to foster confidence and pride in his students—and explains why competitive mariachi is a perfect way for young people to find their place in the
A Place for Redemption
Welcome to the New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, where we meet Reverend Marshall Hatch Jr. He leads The MAAFA Redemption Project, a faith-based program that supports young men in West Garfield Park on the West Side of Chicago. Marshall tells Dwayne how he’s working to build a space where young men resist despair, become agents of change in their city, and move forward with a deep unders
My New Kentucky Home
Do you have to be born in a place to feel like you are of that place? The conductor Teddy Abrams has been asking himself that question for the last decade. Originally from San Francisco, he has earned recognition as one of today’s youngest and most dynamic conductors while serving as music director of the Louisville Orchestra. For Teddy, music is a bridge across Kentucky, a magical force that bind
A Place Outside of Geography
For documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, place is as much about emotion and history as it is about a geographic location. Guided by the ways he’s used place in his documentary work – including An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala, and most recently, Deaf President Now! – Davis turns the tables on Dwayne, asking him about his relationship to the places he has lived, from growing up in PG Co
Season 2 Trailer: The Power of Place
Season 2 of Almost There is coming soon. This season, we’re talking to inspiring local leaders with big dreams for the places they call home. We’ll travel across America to meet these leaders: a high school mariachi teacher in the Rio Grande Valley, a book seller in Salt Lake City, a farmer in upstate New York, a reverend on the West Side of Chicago, and others. Learn what motivates their dedicati
Michael Murphy • Our buildings are making us sick. Could they heal us instead?
Before Michael Murphy became an architect, his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. For the next eighteen months, as his father was treated, they worked together to restore their old family home. When the house was completed, his father’s cancer was in remission, and he told Michael that the project saved his life.
Today, as the founder of MASS Design Group and lead designer on projects like
Lehua Kamalu • What you learn when you sail around the world without a compass
Sailing around the world is very, very hard. But sailing around the world without the help of modern navigation technology? Shouldn’t that be impossible? Not for Lehua Kamalu, who has captained her way across our great oceans as the Voyaging Director for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, an organization based in Hawaii that perpetuates traditional Polynesian voyaging and the spirit of exploration.
Chuck Yarborough • How to teach history in a divided America? Let students think for themselves
Chuck Yarborough is a sixth-generation Mississippian who teaches American history at one of the best high schools in the state, The Mississippi School of Mathematics and Science. In the midst of a national debate on how we teach American history to young people, Chuck doesn’t just rely on textbooks. Instead, he sends his students to original sources to research overlooked and untold histories, hel
Joan Salwen • You can do WHAT with seaweed???
Joan Salwen has a thing for cows. After all, she grew up helping her grandfather tend to the livestock on his farm in Iowa. But as an adult, Joan was shocked to learn that cows are pretty terrible for the environment: they burp huge amounts of methane, a destructive greenhouse gas driving climate change. So she built a company, Blue Ocean Barns, around a surprising solution: making feed with a red
Tiana Epps-Johnson • Want to protect democracy? Hug an election official.
Across the U.S., local election administrators are the unsung heroes of democracy, helping to protect our right to vote. But who is protecting them? Scarce resources and increasing threats of violence are causing many in the profession to find new jobs. Fortunately, Tiana Epps-Johnson has big ideas on how to make their jobs easier. Tiana and her nonpartisan organization, Center for Tech and Civic
Sri Shamasunder • The marvelous connections between poetry and medicine
Sri Shamasunder likes to say he was a poet before he was a doctor. His college mentor, the legendary poet and activist June Jordan, passed away from cancer during his first year of medical school, but had a lasting impact on his practice of medicine. She encouraged him to harness righteous anger and to use his voice to fight inequity, inspiring Shamasunder’s work as a professor of medicine at the
Sara Zewde • The anti-slavery roots of America’s public parks
When Hurricane Katrina barreled toward her home stretch of the Gulf Coast, Sara Zewde had not yet decided what she wanted to do professionally. But the aftermath of the storm inspired her to work across ecology, infrastructure, and culture as a landscape architect. Today, she runs Studio Zewde, a landscape-architecture practice based in New York City, and is an assistant professor at Harvard’s Gra
Diana Tellefson Torres • If farmworkers picked the food, shouldn’t they get a seat at the table?
Tonight at dinner, you are likely to eat something that was picked by a farmworker. This is back-breaking work, involving long hours in the hot sun. And yet farmworkers, many of whom are immigrants to the U.S., often do not have basic workplace protections like heat standards or overtime pay. “The cruel irony in this country is that the very people who nourish us often can’t afford to put food on
Sheila Davis • What the AIDS epidemic taught this nurse about keeping the world healthy
Sheila Davis began her career as a nurse working on the front lines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Boston. Today, lessons from that experience guide her work as the CEO of Partners In Health, the global health nonprofit with nearly 20,000 people, providing care across 11 countries, from Rwanda to Haiti. Building on the legacy of PIH founder and Sheila’s longtime friend Dr. Paul Farmer, who died unexp
David Domenici • Is it possible to build a great school in a prison?
Each year, more than 200,000 young people are held in hundreds of juvenile-detention centers across the U.S., many of which do not provide a quality education to the students in their care. David Domenici is working to change that. He co-founded the Maya Angelou Schools, a successful network of alternative schools in Washington, D.C. that includes the Maya Angelou Academy, located inside Washingto
Shari Davis • You—yes, you—can decide how the government spends money
Shari Davis first began dreaming about how to empower young people as a teenager, while serving on the Mayor's Youth Council in Boston. In 2014, the Mayor of Boston asked Shari to launch the country's first youth-focused “participatory budgeting” effort—a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Today, Shari co-leads the Participatory Budg
Amy Bach • Following the data to a fairer criminal justice system
You can’t change what you can’t see. And good data, Amy Bach believes, is one of the keys to seeing what’s not working in our criminal justice system. She is the founder of Measures for Justice, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization developing data tools to help both community advocates and law enforcement reshape how the criminal justice system works. Amy believes that data trends from a local c
Elise Smith • Could virtual reality make us better coworkers?
Work isn’t just the place where we work. It’s also the place where we meet new people who are different from us, which is why Elise Smith thinks the office is the perfect place to start building a more empathetic world. She is the co-founder and CEO of Praxis Labs, an immersive learning startup that is reimagining diversity, equity, and inclusion training for corporate America. Using virtual reali
Wendy Red Star • Native life is everywhere. Just look around.
A member of the Crow/Apsáalooke tribe, Wendy Red Star was raised on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, which encompasses two million acres. And while she was immersed in Crow culture growing up, she didn’t really learn the broader history of Indigenous people in the U.S. until college. Today as a visual artist, Wendy centers this history, along with Native life and culture, in work that spans
Aisha Nyandoro • When Black mothers have the financial freedom to dream
In 2018, Aisha Nyandoro launched what is today the longest-running guaranteed income program in the U.S. after doing something radical: asking Black women what they needed most. The support of monthly cash payments of $1,000 from the Magnolia’s Mothers Trust has allowed Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi to put food on the table, do that long-delayed car repair, enroll a child in their first da
Conchita Cruz • What if we let asylum seekers fix our immigration system?
As the daughter of a Guatemalan immigrant and a Cuban refugee, Conchita Cruz first got involved in immigrants’ rights work to support her own family. Today, she is the co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), the largest organization of asylum seekers in U.S. history, with over 500,000 members. Supporting people who have fled their home countries in search of safety and
Robert Stewart • How does it feel to be known as a “felon” forever?
Robert Stewart defended his doctoral dissertation almost 11 years to the day after he walked out of prison. Today, as a sociological criminologist at the University of Maryland, he researches the experiences and beliefs of people who have also been through the criminal legal system. Asking important questions about civic inclusion, Robert has researched the startling impact of criminal records on
Amanda Litman • Want to run for office? Here's how.
When life-long politics nerd Amanda Litman woke up the day after the 2016 election, and the candidate she had been working for lost, she didn’t wallow. Instead, she launched Run for Something, an organization that helps young people run for office. The organization’s team of experts offers guidance to potential candidates under 40 on everything from selecting a race, to planning a campaign, to wha
Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison • This profoundly simple act can save the lives of millions of Black women
Walking is the single most powerful thing a Black woman can do for her health, according to Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison. Black women and girls experience higher rates of hypertension and diabetes, higher maternal mortality, and overall shorter life expectancy than other Americans. As a practical first step to healing and transforming their own lives, members of their organization, GirlTrek,
Clint Smith • How America can tell the truth about the history of slavery
How do we remember the darkest parts of our collective past—from slavery in the U.S. to the Holocaust in Germany—while moving steadily forward? This question has driven poet and journalist Clint Smith to travel the U.S. and cross oceans in search of places, stories, and public memorials that deepen our shared understanding of what human beings have done to each other, and how we can collectively h
We’re “Almost There”
On Almost There, a new podcast from Emerson Collective, poet and lawyer Dwayne Betts talks to creative problem solvers—architects, doctors, writers, voyagers, organizers, artists—whose ideas could remake our world. In each episode, we’ll learn about the unpredictable journeys that have led them to the big questions driving their work: How do we keep our families and communities healthy? How do we
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