On The Block Radio

A former National Book Award finalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Jess Walter is the author of six novels, one book of short stories and one nonfiction book. His work has been translated into 30 languages, and his essays, short fiction, criticism and journalism have been widely published, in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harper's, Esquire, McSweeney's, Byliner, Playboy, ESPN the Magazine, Details and many others. Jess came to Portland as part of my college's Mouths of Others literary reading series. We had a chance to sit down and talk about his unorthodox path to literary success, the perils of self-revelation in fiction, and how he sees writing as a way to break our hearts open by making us laugh at the ugly bits.

Domi J. Shoemaker is the creator and curator of the legendary Burnt Tonguereading series in Portland, Oregon which features some of the best writers in the region and highlights Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writing groups. Domi recently received their MFA from Pacifica University and is also an integral part of the creative team for Lidia Yuknavitch's Corporeal Writing workshops. Domi is also a gender-fluid, differently-abled, ball of wonder and spark and bite. They do not fit easily into any one box. Domi forces us to look as much at ourselves as we do at them for the answers to who we are and who we can bein a world that is often obsessed with forcing us into categories it can easily understand, manipulate and control. Mostly, Domi loves to write. And Domi loves it when you write. As long as it is honest. And good. They celebrate the craft as much as they do the transparency. Domi believes that writing holds the power to help us reinvent ourselves in ways that give us the control, give us the dignity, give us

A native of Portland, Oregon, Mitchell Jackson is the author of The Residue Years, a novel set in inner northeast Portland neighborhoods in the 1990s. Based on Jackson’s own life, the novel tells the story of Grace, a mother battling crack addiction, and Champ, her son, who sells the drug that has ravaged his family and his neighborhood. The Residue Years, which was Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads selection for 2015, just won the prestigious Whiting Award, with a prize of $50,000. Jackson teaches at NYU and Columbia and is also the author of Oversoul, a collection of stories and essays. Mitchell now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He received an M.A. in writing from Portland State University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from New York University. He has been the recipient of fellowships from TED, the Lannan Foundation, The Center For Fiction, and The Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. His novel also won The Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the Center For Fiction’s Fla

We met this guy at an academic conference two years ago and was blown away by his razor wit, deep insight, Buddha-like compassion and academic prowess. His presentations weave together cultural analysis, anthropological analysis, psychological insights and piercing humor to reveal deep truths about human nature and culture and the complex dialectic between the two. We sat down a while back to discuss his journey into the shadow and his emergence back into a world alive with spirit, meaning and truth. And how he is working to translate those realizations into his work as a psychologist and an academic. Dr. Justin Panneck is an assistant professor of Psychology at Colorado Technical University as well as an instructional designer for several Fortune 500 companies. He holds a MEd in Instructional Technology and a PhD in Health Psychology and is currently finishing a counseling degree. In addition to psychology, he has lectured and taught classes on such diverse subjects as organizational psychology, history of p

Happy Easter and Spring Equinox folks! We are so pleased with the way the Winter season went and are hard at work on Spring 2016! We have some amazing shows lined up for you in the coming months. For today, please enjoy this resurrected episode from our archives with the ineffable S. Renee Mitchell. See you again live next week! With over 25 years of experience as the most widely read newspaper columnist in the American West, S. Renee Mitchell left a successful career in journalism to pursue a calling as an artist, author, poet, playwright and community activist. Nominated twice for the Pulitzer, Renee left an indelible mark on the world of journalism before stepping out into this new phase of her life. She is a celebrated spoken word artist, a painter, an inspirational speaker, a woman’s advocate and an all around tornado of art, creativity and activism. Renee has shared the stage with greats such as bell hooks, Erykah Badu, Danny Glover, pianist Tom Grant, Grammy Award winners Esperanza Spalding and Dr. Tha

What can a single human being hope to achieve in one lifetime? How do know our lives have mattered? Is it in the work we do, the people we touch, the love we allow ourselves to experience? To write about an authentic life, to write dangerously, is to strip away the artifice and the pretense and get to the bloody, sinewy truth of it all. The rhythm we chase is that of our own songline: a beating heart, a sideways glance, an empty seat at the dinner table. All reveal the same spaces of fragility and transformation which make us who we are. But what is left when the scales fall away and some honest fiction or another has birthed a new version of ourselves into the world? Well, Tom Spanbauer is. Tom Spanbauer is the critically acclaimed author and founder of Dangerous Writing. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born. His five published novels Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In

NOTE: This interview was recorded before the death and funeral of Nancy Reagan. So please give Patti Davis the privacy and respect she deserves during this difficult time. | The first child of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Patti Davis, has lived anything but the conventional life of the child of a conservative political family. Throughout the 1970s, Patti rejected her parents' conservatism, living with a member of the rock band the Eagles and participating in the nuclear freeze movement. After years working as an actress, Patti tried her hand at writing. In 1986, she published A House of Secrets, an undeniably autobiographical novel about a liberal young writer whose conservative father is the governor of California and then the president of the United States, and whose mother is an exacting woman obsessed with appearances and propriety. A long estrangement between Patti and her parents followed. In recent years, Patti has voiced regret at some of her actions during this time period. But we wonder how many of us w

Tiffany Shlain is on a mission. The Emmy-nominated filmmaker, speaker, and Webby Awards founder has received over 70 awards and distinctions for her films and work, including being named by Newsweek as “one of the women shaping the 21st Century.” Shlain’s films encourage us all to think about where we’re headed in our increasingly connected world. Like future On the Block Radio guest Douglas Rushkoff, she explores how technology is shaping us in new, and often unexpected, ways. She has premiered four films at Sundance, including her acclaimed feature documentary Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology, which The New York Times hailed as “high-tech Terry Gilliam,” and “Examining Everything From the Big Bang to Twitter.” The US State Department has also selected three of Shlain’s films including Connected to represent the U.S. at embassies around the world for their American Film Showcase. Her AOL Original series, The Future Starts Here was nominated for an Emmy in New Approaches: Arts,

Sean Davis is not a politician. But he is running to be the next mayor of Portland, Oregon. In a year of political outsiders and upside down campaign logic, he just might have a shot. Sean is an Iraqi War veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, and an accomplished author, artist and volunteer firefighter. He is also the Post Commander at the American Legion Post 134 in the Alberta Arts district in NE Portland. Sean believers art can save lives, because it helped to save his. The guy is a friggen' force of nature. Sean sees human need and suffering and throws himself into addressing it with such wild abandon; with little regard for his own personal safety. On the Block Radio usually stays away from politics. Our issues are more evergreen and touch on the eternal aspects of human consciousness and spiritual transformation. But at the end of the day, if we are not involved in changing our communities and limiting human suffering, we are on the sidelines of a struggle as old as civilization itself. Shout out to Matthe

Paul is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, as well as an innovator in the field of dreaming (both night dreams as well as waking dreams). A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years, he has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, as well as Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse. His newest book, Awakened By Darkness, is an exploration of his relationship with his abusive father and how it initiated the beginning of his shamanic shift in awareness. In 1993, after many years of struggling to contain and integrate his non-ordinary experiences, Paul started to openly share his insights about the dreamlike nature of reality. He began giving talks and facilitating groups based on how life is a shared waking dream that we are all co-creating and co-dreaming together. Paul has developed a unique and creative vehicle to introduce people to the dream-like nature of reali

Happy Valentine’s Day. Put down the box of Russell Stover candies and listen up. It’s time to talk about death. There’s no better way to celebrate love than to honor the fact that we eventually lose the ones we love. Or do we? On the Block Radio is a show about transformation. More specifically, we are a show about how people face intense experiences in their lives and transform them into meaning, beauty and purpose. There is no bigger transformation than that of death. To confront our own deaths, the sages of every religion teach, is the key to unlocking the eternal aspects within our consciousness and our bodies. There are few more basic human issues than the ever-ticking clock of our own mortality. It is what makes life tragic and glorious at the same time. And to help someone prepare for a beautiful death is to help a person fulfill their deepest potential as a human being. There is literally no higher calling. This is the calling Mellisa Dodson heard, and answered, on March 25, 2014. Melissa Dodson is a

Mo Daviau (pronounced DAH-vee-oh) was born in 1976 to a very unusual couple in a widely disliked city in California. A graduate of Smith College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her stuffed crocodile. Her new novel, Every Anxious Wave, is the coolest time travel/90s indie rock novel you haven't read yet. A wild romp of a love story across time, interweaving astrophysics and indie rock, it follows the exploits of two friends who discover a wormhole in their closet and use it to sell time travel packages for people to visit their favorite rock shows of the past. Mo is quick-witted, funny and a damn fine writer. She reminds us of the aspects of writing that involve craft, discipline and hard work. She is also a survivor. Women like her take a lot of heat for walking to their own drum beat. And her courage in the face of some pretty awful shit should be a reminder to us all of the real importance of community and art in the process of trans

Science is increasingly recognizing what spiritual and religious traditions have been advocating for thousands of years: through focused self-awareness we can fundamentally change our conscious experience. The keys to accessing profound joy and contentment in this world lay not in our external circumstances, but in our relationship to ourselves. Numerous peer reviewed studies on mindfulness and meditation are proving the profound benefits reaped by these long-time practices. Is there a modern enlightenment, in harmony with the media and technology that seems to constantly externalize our attention, and increase our sense of separation from ourselves and others? Can we create new forms of technology that can enhance our lives? Can we leverage existing technologies to help make us smarter, cultivate calm minds, lower stress, do our jobs better, improve our relations with friends and family, respond better to the world around us and rediscover our sense of connectedness and the simple joy of being alive here and

I first met Adrian and Keisha when I entered the PhD program in Transformative Studies at CIIS in San Francisco back in 2013. I had to leave the program almost immediately due to financial aid problems (making me the shortest lived doctoral candidate since Elvis got his honorary degree) but they continued on and have begun implementing what they had been learning in exciting, innovative ways. They are co-teaching a class at the Emergent Studies Institute which explores the linkages between social justice movements and the creative muse via the artistic outlets of music, literature, film, images and performance art, beginning with the Civil Rights movement to the present day. In many ways, On the Block Radio is a project that grew out of my initial interactions with folks like Adrian and Keisha. They are engaged, compassionate people who are finding ways to join their business interests, academic scholarship, creative impulses and spiritual lives into integrated, integral models of wholeness, mindfulness and b

Shawn Levy watches movies. Lots of them. Probably more in a year than you will in a lifetime. And in between watching movies he writes about them. A lot. He has also penned seven full books and is hard at work on his eighth. His latest, DeNiro: A Life, is based on Levy's unprecedented access to De Niro's personal research and production materials and explores the legendary actor's process with Levy's characteristic wit and unparalleled film IQ. From 1992 until 2013, he wrote for The Oregonian, serving as Film Critic from 1997 to 2012. Prior to that, he was Senior Editor of the late, great American Filmmagazine. He currently reviews movies for KGW-TV. Shawn has written about film, pop culture, books and sports for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian of London, the Independent of London, the San Francisco Chronicle, Premiere, the Village Voice, the Hollywood Reporter, Portland Monthlyand many other publications. The dude is a walking film museum. A living shrine to the gods and goddesses of

Mark Russell is hilarious. Mark Russell is irreverent. Mark Russell believes that GOD IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU. So much so that he wrote a book about it with the same title. He is also the author of the very popular DC reboot of the comic Prez which is about a teenage girl who becomes the President of the United States. Mark uses humor in ways that bring us closer to the things he is satirizing. His books about religion, including the upcoming Apocryphal Now, explore the complexity of religious faith in ways that both celebrate the deep wisdom and transformative power of the biblical text AND criticize the ways this very text has been used to justify diminishing other people's dignity and common humanity. Here we discuss how he uses humor to simultaneously support and undercut religious faith, the surprisingly worst character in the book of Job and how he views his recent success without losing perspective.

When we started On The Block Radio, we made a list of all of the people we knew or knew about whose lives represent the very best of what transformation and elevated consciousness could be in the world. So far, we have been fortunate to have had many of those people on the show. Today, we add another name to that list. Bo Rinaldi is many things, but easy to define is not one of them. He has already managed to cram more into a single lifetime than many of us could in three lives. An entrepreneur, angel investor, and lifelong activist, he is one of the originators of the organic food movement in this country and the former owner of the world-famous Blossoming Lotus restaurants. Now he has turned his attention to the fuel industry. Bo lives by the mantra, "Food, Fuel and Fun." In this interview, you will see why. Here we discuss the origins of vegetarianism in the theories of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, the time Peter Coyote called him to recruit him into the infamous Diggers, and how he has managed to sta

Well, we end the year with the Gandalf of paranormal research. Stanley Krippner has over 50 years of experience as one of the world's most recognized humanist psychologists. He has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and a few dozen books on topics including dream research, shamanism, indigenous cultures, and consciousness studies. His newest book, The Voice of Rolling Thunder, is a firsthand account of a controversial and enigmatic medicine man whose life and work influenced people from Buckminister Fuller to Mickey Hart of The Grateful Dead. Stanley is a deep well of wisdom and story. A celebrated academic with a heart as big as his incomparable body of work. Here, we discuss the healing potential of psychedelics, his good friend Dr. Christopher Ryan, and how the concept of shamanism has been misapplied to the point of cultural appropriation and the academic "disappearing" of indigenous identity. Stanley is a compassionate, engaged and transformative scholar and we are so thrilled to end our first y

Most of us have a hard enough time staring our deepest fears directly in the face. But imagine having your deepest fear shoot you in the back at the age of 13, leave you paralyzed for life, and then walk off into the night, never to be heard or seen again? And imagine then, after a lifetime of struggle, writing a book to the person who shot you. An open letter that ultimately forgives the person for what they did, but not before taking them on a journey through a life of loss, grief, humor and hard-fought redemption. This is no feel good story. Jerry McGill is bone and flesh. Grace born of fire. But he’s got a secret to share with the rest of us. How should we go through the world? How do we define ourselves? What is the meaning of “disability” and why do we create categories of people based on what they cannot do? It is a riveting and transformative conversation. Like we do around here…

Sister Outsider Poetry is an award-winning duo representing some of the top performance poets in the world, Dominique Christina and Denice Frohman. Their tour marks the first time that two Women of the World Poetry Slam Champions have paired up. They have appeared on 10 national poetry slam finals stages and have seven championships collectively. Inspired by the life and work of Audre Lorde, they write and perform their "otherness" into the center and use spoken word as a tool for social change. What they bring to a performance will either rip you wide open or stitch you back up, depending on where you stand in relation to the dark side of the American Dream. Every so often, you run across someone who changes you forever. For the rest of your life, you will be able to think about yourself, the continuity of your lived experience, as existing in two distinct halves: the time before you met person "X" and the time after. If we are lucky, we meet several people like this along the journey. For us at OTB, Sister