Crude Conversations

In this episode, Cody talks with three Alaskan comedians: Matt Collins, Kass Smiley and Dayman Wright. Dayman is still pretty fresh, with three years in the Alaska stand-up scene, while Matt and Kass have been doing it for over a decade. Doing anything for that long, you gain knowledge and experience. Like knowing that comedy in Alaska—and live entertainment in general—mimics the city’s economy. It ebbs and flows based on the community’s ability and willingness to spend money. Kass says that the first thing to be neglected during an economic downturn is live entertainment, and because of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutdowns and hesitancy about attending live events deepened. It’s starting to bounce back though, with more people attending shows. But that’s just one piece of doing comedy in Alaska, it says nothing of the long hours of joke writing and the process of joke-telling. With help from Kass and Daymen, Matt is about to release a documentary about comedy in Alaska. It’s called “Why Not: A Year in the Life of The AK Comics” and in it Alaskan comedians talk about their hopes, struggles and their lives within a small, but intimate scene. One that’s easy to enter, but difficult to rise to fame because there are fewer opportunities in Alaska than in other places with an infrastructure that supports comedy. So, you have to create your own opportunities, and many times that means promoting yourself, filling the audience with friends and family or even creating a comedy festival, like Kass did with the Alaska B4UDie Comedy Fest. Matt says that Alaska has big city problems with small town attitudes, but that in a small town you can build your own thing. And that’s what they’ve done with comedy in Alaska.

Joining this conversation are artists Stuart Hyatt, Dan Mills and Christina Seely. Stuart uses sound to understand our relationship with the natural world. Dan uses maps in paintings and collages as a way to explore ideas of historic and current events, including issues like colonialism. Christina uses photography to address the complexities of both built and natural global systems. All of their work—Stuart, Dan and Christina—is featured in the Anchorage Museum’s exhibition “Counter Cartographies: Living the Land,” which challenges our traditional understanding of what a map is. Often, maps are viewed as objective and above reproach, but maps—just like any piece of art—come with the bias of their makers. They can be made with the intent of acquiring land and resources, as has historically been the case. So, it’s important to consider how they affect our perspective and understanding of land and our place in the world. It’s also important to consider ways we can re-imagine the traditional idea of mapping because an image can’t always document or express the reality of a place. Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks." Artwork by Dan Mills

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist and a research scientist. He collects data and analyzes it. And within that mountain of data, he believes many of the secrets of the world exist. But extracting meaning from all that information is a big challenge. It takes time, education and technology.  With its many research institutions located in arctic environments—including universities and weather stations—Alaska is important in the global conversation surrounding climate change. Brian says that, in a lot of ways, the state is a research laboratory with a collection of intellectual firepower located in close proximity to locations that are experiencing quick and dramatic changes. Changes that affect our ways of life, societal infrastructure, transportation and cultural identity. Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."

In this one, I talk to veterinarian Dr. Michelle Oakley, who stars in the National Geographic reality television show “Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet.” The show follows her and her family around as they administer veterinary care to domestic and wild animals. Many of Dr. Oakley’s most memorable moments have involved her family. From close encounters with a massive Kodiak brown bear to a rotting rumen in a reindeer, close calls, gross-outs and heartfelt moments are typical when you surround yourself with the ones you love in a place that’s constantly challenging you. Dr. Oakley says that when she’s working, she has to adapt veterinary medicine so that it can be applied in the field in Alaska. And, oftentimes, that means being a jack-of-all-trades. When she’s outside of a sterile clinic, in remote areas and it’s 20 below and her hands are freezing, she’s just trying to give the best care possible with the tools and the medicine she has. In some cases it might not look great, but she’s doing the best she can. Dr. Oakley’s daughter Maya also joins the conversation. Maya was 14 when they started filming “Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet,” so she’s been there through all of the change and growth of the show.

In this episode of Chatter Marks, Aaron Leggett explains the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA. ANCSA was established on December 18, 1971, and is a landmark policy for many reasons. As a result of the act, Alaska Natives retained 44 million acres of land and about 1 billion dollars to settle Indigenous land claims in Alaska. It also divided the state into 12 regional corporations and almost 200 village corporations that split the money and the land. Before ANCSA, ​the traditional way the United States ​had negotiated land settlements and compensation with Native tribes ​was in the form of reservations ​and treaties​. ANCSA changed the fundamental existence of Alaska as a state as well as the way we think about ​Indigenous land settlements, and this December marks its 50th Anniversary.  Aaron is the president of the Native Village of Eklutna and the Anchorage Museum’s ​Senior Curator. He’s a shareholder in Cook Inlet Region, Incorporated, or CIRI, one of the​ regional Alaska Native corporations set up by ANCSA​. ​He’s also a shareholder and has served on the board of Eklutna, Inc., one of the village corporations set up by ANCSA. Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."

Journalism has been part of Julia O’Malley’s life since elementary school, where she remembers carrying around a notebook to keep track of what her classmates were doing. Then, in high school, she wrote for her school newspaper. But her love for cooking goes back even further. In fact, one of her first memories is of being 2 or 3 years old and mixing blueberries and milk in her toy kitchen. The dinner table was a sacred place in Julia’s household. Sitting down and sharing a meal was important and everyone had a role, be it cooking the meal, setting the table or clearing the table. That affection for food also extended outside of home cooked meals. Growing up in Anchorage in the 1980s, there wasn’t a big variety of restaurants and what was cooked in homes. Ingredients were scarce then. So, when they were available, new meals were an experience that Julia cherished. When she thinks about food today, she says that it’s more than just sustenance, it expresses love, culture, care, identity and nostalgia. Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."  

In this one, Cody talks with Roman Dial, an academic and a long-time explorer of Alaska’s natural world. Since the 1970s, he’s been out there—in the backcountry and in the wilderness—in search of that next thrill or moment in nature. He actually says that there’s a difference between the backcountry and the wilderness. While the backcountry has trails and is near a road or a town, the wilderness has no trails except for those made by animals and is three days or more from civilization. In the wilderness, you’re surrounded by nature unaffected by humans and you can drink from freshwater streams. This is the world that Roman has always been attracted to. One that is still wild and full of possibilities—there’s always another mountain to climb or a valley to explore. He’s 60 now and that excitement and passion for the outdoors hasn’t subsided. In 2014, Roman’s son, Cody-Roman, was on an exploration in Costa Rica when he went missing. Over the course of the next two years, Roman traveled to Costa Rica in search of his son. He says that he felt it was his duty and that he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t. Then, in 2016, Cody-Roman’s body was found and it was determined that he had been killed after a tree had fallen on his campsite. In the aftermath of all this, Roman had a realization: That all the adventuring he’d been doing was selfish. That he’d been doing dangerous things because he got a thrill out of it. So, he started to back away from the activity of scaring himself. Today, when he goes to nature, he’s more conscious of his mortality and how his death might affect his loved ones, and there isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t think of his son.

In this one, I talk to Mitch Kitter, the co-owner of The Studio, a photography studio in Anchorage, Alaska that specializes in high school senior photos. He also works in cybersecurity and recently completed his MBA at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He’s 34 years old, and in the winter of 2019 he was diagnosed with leukemia. The only indication that something wasn’t right were frequent nosebleeds that ran for about an hour or two each day for a month. After visiting a doctor to get his blood tested, there were signs of blood cancer and because of the aggressive type, he needed to be medivaced to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Mitch says that he’s still not sure how to categorize his cancer diagnosis and everything that followed it. He experienced a mixture of emotions. In the beginning there was denial, followed by shock, then exhaustion and guilt. There were moments of despair and ones of overwhelming gratitude. It’s a story that he hopes has the potential to help other people going through a similar experience, but he also doesn’t want being a cancer survivor to define his life and his identity.

Dr. Amy Christianson is the host of Good Fire, a podcast that explores the social, cultural and ecological importance of fires. For thousands of years, Indigenous people have used fire to improve their environment and their community. More recently, however, because of colonialism and the centralization of power, many of those traditional practices have been made illegal, forcing them to stop or suffer legal repercussions. Today, governmental agencies want to integrate cultural burning into their systems, but Indigenous people are only asking for the autonomy to continue doing what they’ve done for thousands of years. Matthew Kristoff also joins the conversation. He works on Good Fire with Dr. Christianson. He’s also the host of YourForest, a podcast that explores the natural world through conversations about environmental issues. Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."

In this episode of GLOSS, or the Gorgeous Ladies of Snowboarding and Skiing—an ongoing series between Crude and Blower Media—I talk with professional snowboarder Madison Blackley. Madison found her way into snowboarding by way of Volcom’s Peanut Butter and Rail Jam competition. Fresh out of high school, she won the competition at Brighton in 2007. From there, she made it to the finals, where she got 3rd place and Best Trick. It was a formative moment in her career—it put her riding in front of industry people and it introduced her to other riders who have continued to be part of her life. These free competitions, with gear and prize money, are few and far between now, making it difficult for many newcomers to enter the sport as aspiring professionals. The elimination of them has bottlenecked the industry into invite-only competitions, where only certain riders are chosen. And if this trend continues, then less and less new riders are able to enter the industry. Madison has an encyclopedic knowledge of women in snowboarding. She collects their stats like baseball cards—the spots they’ve hit and the tricks they’ve done. This helps her understand her peers as well as her place in snowboarding. As a woman, she says that in order for there to be more equity in the sport, the industry needs to stop marginalizing women. For example, she says that all-female videos have the potential to alienate them from the larger culture of snowboarding rather than allowing them to be part of established projects that feature both men and women.