Robert Reich Interview

I recently had the opportunity to interview Robert Reich ahead of his appearance at the Crosscut Festival. Here’s an except from the interview:

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It discusses the increased power of the CEO. (I want to highlight this quote in particular: “[Between 1980 and 2019] CEO pay increased 940%. But the typical worker’s pay increased 12%. In the 1960s, the typical CEO of a large American company earned about 20 times as much as the typical worker. By 2019, the CEO earned 300 times as much.”) Do CEOs have a moral obligation to fix systemic problems? Or what actions can CEOs take?

Yes, they do have a moral obligation to fix these sorts of problems because they have created them. CEO pay wouldn’t have soared like this if CEOs hadn’t wanted their pay to soar. It wouldn’t have happened if CEOs hadn’t pushed for stock buybacks, if they hadn’t selected their compensation committees on their boards, if they had pushed for the compensation of their hourly workers to grow as fast as their own compensation.

Read the full interview.

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Rick Steves Interview

“The sunset, to me, everyday is like a performance. The sound of the train coming and going, the sound of the ferries coming and going. It’s just a beautiful soundtrack of my life here in the Puget Sound.” – Rick Steves

What happens when the travel guy can’t travel? I recently had the chance to interview Rick Steves, we talked quarantine, European travel, life in the Pacific Northwest and more. Read the full interview here.

Photo via http://www.ricksteves.com

 

Southern Foodways Alliance Gravy Podcast

I was recently interviewed for the Southern Foodways Alliance Gravy Podcast for a piece about Louisiana’s Lebanese community, Cajun Kibbe: Eating Lebanese in Louisiana. I am featured in the beginning of the episode, discussing the community’s history. You can listen to the interview here.

You can also read my article in Country Roads regional magazine about my own family’s Lebanese Louisiana history here. 

My Lebanese family, Sulphur, Louisiana (1950s)

New Orleans Write-Up on Nat Geo Travel

Check out my latest New Orleans travel guide, hot off the press on Nat Geo Travel. These new tips are out just in time for Mardi Gras. Click Here.

Ann Curry Interview

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Ann Curry about her PBS series, We’ll Meet Again — which reunites people whose paths crossed at tumultuous moments in history. Season 2 of the show airs Tuesday nights this fall and winter.

For more about We’ll Meet Again and Ann Curry’s experience with the show read the interview on KCTS9.org: Ann Curry Discusses the Power and Appeal of ‘We’ll Meet Again’

Spotted In Nat Geo Museum

If you find yourself in the D.C. area, I recommend you stop by National Geographic Museum, where I am part of a permanent installation. My work is one of their featured exploration projects and my book is for sale in the gift shop. See you there!

Nat Geo Learning in Denver

I recently attended a National Geographic Learning teacher training in Denver, Colorado as the event’s keynote speaker. Here, I gave a 45 minute talk about my oral history work, my book (An Oral History of the New Orleans Ninth Ward) and how to implement oral history in the classroom. Thank you so much to National Geographic Learning for connecting me with so many great educators and for giving me the opportunity to share my work!

NCSS ’17

I recently attended the 2017 National Council for the Social Studies Conference in San Francisco. Here, I worked with National Geographic Learning at their booth, discussing my work contributing to their textbooks and signing copies of my book, An Oral History of the New Orleans Ninth Ward. A huge thanks to National Geographic Learning for hosting me at NCSS ’17!

Join Me Next Week At Elliott Bay!

Hey Seattle! I’ll be doing a book reading and signing at Elliott Bay Book Company Wednesday, August 30, at 7 p.m. The “An Oral History of the New Orleans Ninth Ward” event is being held in conjunction with the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. For more information about the reading, check out Elliott Bay’s event page or this write-up in the Capitol Hill Times.

Hope to see you there!

Barnes & Noble Mandeville Signing | Photo credit http://www.TaylorMickal.com

The New York Times Student Journeys

I just returned from teaching a journalism course to American teens at Oxford University. The course was run by The New York Times as part of their new Student Journeys program.

With two other instructors, I taught 23 budding journalists about media ethics, bias, news writing and editing. We also did some sight-seeing on a few day trips around England — London, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Stonehenge. And, the program hosted two New York Times veterans as well as other notable speakers.

The students were expected to maintain a NYT blog (which I edited), write spot news stories and complete a feature story as their “final project.” These feature stories were impressive in both concept and execution, with students tackling subjects from campus rape to Brexit to the economics of literary tourism in Oxford.

The completion of these projects, creation of a real newsroom and one-on-one feedback from my co-instructors and me, set the course apart from an average high school journalism class. The students took it upon themselves to create an online magazine to host their final projects, The Oxford Student Times.

Group photo at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. Photo by Lisa Hornak