HARTS Beat, a biweekly radio segment on XRay FM dedicated to showcasing the arts and humanities at Portland Community College. Produced as part of the HARTS Initiative. Selected episodes I produced:
- An interview with Emanuel Garcia, an airplane maintenance technology student—and a star of the Latin music charts
- An interview with the student editors of Alchemy, a student literary magazine, on the eve of its 50th anniversary
Many Roads to Here, a podcast on migration and American identity, in collaboration with The Immigrant Story & Portland Radio Project (2020-2024). Spearheaded and oversaw the Conversations series, which facilitated conversations between two experts in a field. Selected episodes I produced:
- “It Takes a Yes From One Person”
- This episode brings together two remarkable women, both public servants. Sophorn Cheang is the director of Business Oregon, the economic development agency for the state of Oregon. Toc Soneoulay-Gillespie is the director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Advancement for the state. Together they reflected on the promises and struggles of serving in government, got real about how immigration policy has advanced and stalled over time, and wondered how to involve the community in public policy decisions.
- “Here From the Very Beginning”
- Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is one of the nation’s leading scholars of Islam in the United States. In this conversation, he sat down with writer and educator Flamur Vehapi to talk about the often ignored presence of Muslims in American history, from Revolution-era figures to Beyonce’s children’s names.
- “Living in a Gilded Cage”
- In the early 1900s, Rani Bagai’s grandparents arrived in California ready to start a new life. But citizenship requirements and prejudice against Indian-Americans made settling in more difficult. In this conversation, historian Johanna Ogden speaks with Rani about her grandparents’ fraught immigration history, anti-colonial movements on the American West Coast, and how the goalposts for American citizenship in the 20th century kept getting moved.
- “My Community Sustains Me”
- Ruth Zuñiga grew up in a rural, evangelical Christian town in Costa Rica. Both restricted and supported by her community, she eventually set out on her own, becoming a psychologist and professor in the U.S. Her commitment to serving others, and to her family, led to unexpected new connections in Idaho, Alaska, and Oregon.
- “We Need a Willed Remembering”
- Peggy Nagae and Chris Ling, both attorneys, talk about major civil rights cases and immigration legislation in American history, with a focus on civil rights advocate Min Yasui.
- “When I’m Playing, I’m Just Heat”
- The first time Denzel Mendoza came out as undocumented he was on stage in front of a crowd of strangers. That night, he didn’t just play his trombone, he let out the raw emotions of doubts, fears and hardship that had followed him throughout his life, letting himself be truly seen, for the first time, at this random jazz house show in Portland. After that night, life began to move quickly. A few years later, Mendoza shared his undocumented identity publicly once again, but this time the crowd wasn’t filled with strangers, it was filled with celebrities, and it was no house show. It was the Grammys.
“What They Carried,“ Oregon Humanities, audio interviews with immigrants & refugees to the U.S. on what they brought with them (2017)
Caitlin Dwyer 