Episode 5: Interview — Faith, Spirituality, & Organized Religion
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Release Date: 02/21/2023
Episode 12: Interview––Equity, Justice, & Climate Change
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
In the first half of this episode, our host Charlene and Dr. Heather Price, Chemistry Faculty and Climate Scientist at North Seattle College and co-PI of a National Science Foundation Climate Justice in Undergraduate STEM Incorporating Civic Engagement (C-JUSTICE), discuss the arc of climate justice as a focus of climate activism and why people who are retired or heading into retirement should care about climate change. Dr. Price explains that climate justice is both intra and inter-generational. Elders now, as part of the intra-generational equation, have significant power to alter the...
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Episode 11: Tikkun Olam
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
The Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam” translates to “repairing the world” and is a fundamental value to Bernard Osher, leader of the Osher Foundation. In the first half of this episode, Kelly Jane Rosenblatt, Program Director at the Bernard Osher Foundation, and Steve Thaxton, Executive Director at the National Resource Center for Osher Institutes, talk with our host and OLLI-UW Director, Natalie Lecher, about the foundation at the center of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) network. There 125 OLLI programs all over the United States, with at least one in each of the 50 states....
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Episode 10: Interview––A Taste of OLLI
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
In this very special episode of Forever Curious, we’re giving you a “taste” of OLLI! The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute truly is for the forever curious, and that’s on both sides of the teacher’s desk. What curiosity drives our instructors to gain the knowledge and life experience they share with their students? Hosts Charlene and Murray are chatting with several instructors in this “flight,” so get ready to swirl ideas around in your head, sniff the rich bouquet of knowledge, and choose which flavors you might want to experience more deeply! David Fenner is the...
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Episode 9: Presentation –– Telescope Technology: Learn about the Webb
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Dr. Bruce Balick’s long and distinguished history at the UW doesn’t go back quite as far as the Big Bang, but his impact on the University’s astronomy program is nearly as significant! In this episode of Forever Curious, we have the enormous pleasure to present Bruce Balick, Professor Emeritus in Astronomy at the University of Washington. In the first part of the episode, he chats with host Charlene about his path to a career that meant spending his life with his head in the stars. In the second part of the episode, we hear Dr. Balick’s lecture on the James Webb telescope and how our...
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Episode 8: Presentation –– To Hell & Back with Jordan Ray Claytor
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
What do you do with a kid who tries to capture every tiny animal that crosses his path? You take him to the Natural History Museum. A LOT. Fortunately for the critters, graduate student and OLLI instructor Jordan Ray Claytor quickly discovered that paleontology was more his passion, so he switched to fossils. As a paleontologist, Jordan studies at the intersection of a bunch of different sciences, he says, including biology, geology, and ecology. They’re trying to answer questions about life in “deep time.” What can fossils tell us about Earth’s organic past, and how can we apply...
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Episode 7: Interview –– Our Extraordinary Bird Lady
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Master birder and nature author Constance Sidles has (no exaggeration) an encyclopedic knowledge of birds. She’s written for 65 different publications and is the CEO and Founder of Constancy Press, and she can answer questions about the ascending or descending call of the Swainson’s thrush at a moment’s notice and off the top of her head. Connie has taught many classes for the University of Washington’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), and she shares that expertise with students and with us, in this fascinating conversation. Oddly enough, Connie initially disliked birds...
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Episode 6: Interview — Art in Context
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Osher Lifelong Learning (OLLI) Instructor Misha Berson has — in the understatement of 2023 — been busy. Writer and arts critic, journalist and long-time educator, author, singer, and jazz enthusiast … she’s done it all. She comes to OLLI - UW to share her passions with students. When writing, she says, she is often operating on a deadline and within word limits. But when she teaches a class on Stephen Sondheim, for example, she has the time to dive deep with students she knows are keen to learn. In this episode, host Murray Urquhart and guest Misha talk through the value of the arts...
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Episode 5: Interview — Faith, Spirituality, & Organized Religion
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Dr. David Smith is a popular lecturer in the OLLI - UW program, and if you haven't discovered his courses yet, you'll want to, after you hear this discussion with host Charlene Joy and a panel of OLLI - UW members. David grew up in a very religious, evangelical family, but life events and his own research and reflection pulled him in a different direction. He became a religious progressive skeptic, received degrees in religious studies, including a PhD in religious studies from Temple University. Why study religion if you don't follow a traditional faith anymore? For one, he wanted to find...
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Episode 2: Presentation — How to Find & Hear Your Next Podcast Binge
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
If you want to listen to a podcast, do you have to "borrow" your neighbor's 14-year-old to figure out how? Look, it's totally fine. Technology moves at lightening speed, and needing a little help to figure out the latest-and-greatest is as normal as it gets. In this one-hour workshop by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Washington, podcast producer Shannon Perry takes us through how to find the right podcast app, how to zero in on your next binge through all the noise, and how to support the shows and creators you love. Without the assistance of a 14-year-old,...
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Episode 4: Interview — You Heard the Lecture, Now Meet the Scholar Behind It
Forever Curious: An Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Podcast
Brian Gutierrez, PhD, earned his doctorate in Literature, and he taught for many years in the English Department at the University of Washington. Now a Professional Programs Development Specialist, he helps professionals translate their work experience and industry expertise into academic curricula. As Brian tells us in this conversation with host Murray Urquhart, at this time in the UK, Gothic and ghost stories were all the rage. And Mary Shelley was eager to add a story to the shelves of horror. Brian tells us how she went from initial writers' block to a terrifying waking dream that evolved...
info_outlineDr. David Smith is a popular lecturer in the OLLI - UW program, and if you haven't discovered his courses yet, you'll want to, after you hear this discussion with host Charlene Joy and a panel of OLLI - UW members.
David grew up in a very religious, evangelical family, but life events and his own research and reflection pulled him in a different direction. He became a religious progressive skeptic, received degrees in religious studies, including a PhD in religious studies from Temple University.
Why study religion if you don't follow a traditional faith anymore? For one, he wanted to find answers, since the ones he'd been raised on no longer held. And secondly, his own struggle to discover a spirituality that felt right gave him a passion for helping others break free from ideology and learn to think for themselves, and think "well."
Civil discourse is another concern for David: How do we discuss highly emotional, highly sensitive topics while staying civil? Even more, why take on the topic, if the conversation is likely to be so emotionally fraught? Says David, people are struggling with big questions of life and faith, and while he may not be able to provide definitive answers, he is often able to help people see their faith more clearly. There are still lessons to learned from religious teachings, he says, if we cast an informed eye on them.
The questions are deep and meaningful; the conversation open and forthright, taking on questions of anger, broken family relationships, loss, and grief. It's such an important discussion — we hope you'll listen, share, and discuss. Then check out David's and other experts' course offerings at OLLI-UW: https://www.osher.uw.edu/.
Forever Curious is produced by Audiotocracy Podcast Production.