Almost There

Almost There

Emerson Collective

On Almost There, a new podcast from Emerson Collective, poet and lawyer Dwayne Betts talks to creative problem solvers—architects, doctors, writers, voyagers, organizers, and artists—about their approach to making meaningful social change. In each episode, we’ll learn about the journeys that have led our guests to the big questions driving their work: How do we keep our families and communities healthy? How do we build a fairer immigration system and promote civic participation? How can we stay alert to the beauty around us and harness human ingenuity to protect our planet? The conversations on Almost There will explor...

David Domenici • Is it possible to build a great school in a prison?

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 Washington’s juvenile-correctional facility. In 2011, he founded BreakFree Education, which works cl

Nov 21, 2023 • 19:20

Joan Salwen • You can do WHAT with seaweed???

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 seaweed native to Hawaii that dramatically reduces cows’ methane emissions when they eat it in smal

Nov 7, 2023 • 31:14

Tiana Epps-Johnson • Want to protect democracy? Hug an election official.

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 Life, provide local officials in the U.S. with the funding, technology, and training they need to ad

Oct 31, 2023 • 29:53

Sri Shamasunder • The marvelous connections between poetry and medicine

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 University of California, San Francisco, and as the co-founder and director of the HEAL Initiative,

Oct 24, 2023 • 46:21

Sara Zewde • The anti-slavery roots of America’s public parks

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 Graduate School of Design. As one of just a few Black female landscape architects, she is dedicated to

Oct 17, 2023 • 34:50

Diana Tellefson Torres • If farmworkers picked the food, shouldn’t they get a seat at the table?

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 their own table,” says Diana Tellefson Torres. The granddaughter of a migrant worker herself, Diana’

Oct 10, 2023 • 30:36

Sheila Davis • What the AIDS epidemic taught this nurse about keeping the world healthy

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 unexpectedly in 2022, Sheila and her team of doctors, nurses, clinicians, and administrators are

Oct 3, 2023 • 33:13

Shari Davis • You—yes, you—can decide how the government spends money

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 Budgeting Project, which has helped more than 700,000 people in over 30 cities directly decide

Sep 19, 2023 • 31:28

Amy Bach • Following the data to a fairer criminal justice system

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 criminal justice system – like the racial disparities in diversions for felony convictions, for insta

Sep 12, 2023 • 31:14

How to teach history in a divided America? Let students think for themselves

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, helping them turn what they learn into vivid public performance for their community. “I try to create s

Aug 29, 2023 • 34:57

Elise Smith • Could virtual reality make us better coworkers?

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 reality, workers take on new perspectives, experiencing incidents of bias or discrimination from

Aug 22, 2023 • 32:14

Wendy Red Star • Native life is everywhere. Just look around.

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 imaginative self-portraiture, vivid collage, and site-specific installation. An avid resea

Aug 15, 2023 • 40:00

When Black mothers have the financial freedom to dream

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 dance class, or save for a family home. Now, Aisha wants to reimagine the social safety net all togeth

Aug 8, 2023 • 31:13

Conchita Cruz • What if we let asylum seekers fix our immigration system?

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 protection, ASAP provides resources to help their members navigate the legal system and adv

Aug 1, 2023 • 31:28

How does it feel to be known as a “felon” forever?

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 college admissions, and today is working to understand the political beliefs of the 4.6 million Amer

Jul 25, 2023 • 34:02

Amanda Litman • Want to run for office? Here's how.

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 what to do after Election Day. (They even help candidates cope with a hard loss.) Since launch

Jul 18, 2023 • 35:05

Lehua Kamalu • What you learn when you sail around the world without a compass

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. Lehua travels the ocean in Hōkūle’a, a double-hulled canoe designed to replicate ancient Po

Jul 11, 2023 • 32:34

Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison • This profoundly simple act can save the lives of millions of Black women

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, form local groups that walk together in their neighborhoods. Today, GirlTrek has blossomed into a gl

Jun 27, 2023 • 34:00

Michael Murphy • Our buildings are making us sick. Could they heal us instead?

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 the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Butaro Hospital

Jun 20, 2023 • 34:45

Clint Smith • How America can tell the truth about the history of slavery

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 heal. He is the author of the book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Ac

Jun 20, 2023 • 36:22

We’re “Almost There”

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 build a democracy that works for everyone? How can we stay alert to the beauty around us, and harnes

Jun 6, 2023 • 3:07

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