Stories that Change Us with Colum McCann and Nelson High School Students

What Sports Are for with Jules Boykoff and Georgia Cloepfil

With the 2026 Men's World Cup right around the corner, we're thinking about soccer and sports: What does it feel like to play? And what does it take to play at a high level? We're thinking about not only the playing of sports, but also the business and the politics of sports, and about how sports—played, watched, and worked at—affect our bodies, our attention, and our communities. We talk first with Georgia Cloepfil, author of "The Striker and the Clock," on being in the game, and then with Jules Boykoff, author of "Kicking" and "Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine." Both Georgia and Jules have played at a professional level, and both speak and write thoughtfully and beautifully about the game and what it might mean in and for our lives.

Work and Words with Lydia Kiesling, Nicholas Hengen Fox, and Jorge Herrera Caro

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. First, we speak with Lydia Kiesling, author of the novels "The Golden State" and "Mobility." Next, we talk to Nicholas Hengen Fox and Jorge Herrera Caro about Working Class Literature, the only class explicitly about class at Portland Community College.

Stories that Change Us with Colum McCann and Nelson High School Students

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 hear from Beyti, Jaylen, Uliana, Malaki, and Steve—five students at Adrienne C. Nelson High School in Happy Valley who participated in a storytelling workshop led by Narrative 4.

CM Hall on Public Service and Running for Office

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.

How to Move About the World with Meg Wade

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 that we do, and who and what we're sharing space with as we do so.