Opb's State Of Wonder

This week we lost two giants in the arts community, Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and poet and musician David Berman. We remember their impact and explore other hard truths, but also look to other artists whose work has us excited for the future.

This week we visit people doing difficult and dangerous work. We talk about threats to domestic security, people fighting for their voices and stories to be told, and an act some may find the most terrifying of all: singing in public.

Happy Moon Week! If you didn’t make it to OMSI or the High Desert Museum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first crewed space mission to the moon, you can still celebrate our shared celestial history. We’re visiting an exhibition honoring Tomanowos, the Willamette meteorite, getting starry-eyed over Frances Quinlan’s music, and more...

This week we’re handing over the keys for "State of Wonder" to musician and publisher, Fabi Reyna. She's the creator of the guitar magazine She Shreds.

We’re taking a look back at some of our favorite music stories and interviews. We blast out of this galaxy with Afrofuturistic music, come back down to earth to follow one musician’s odyssey, and explore those whimsically designed pianos that have been popping up around Portland.

Bump up your beach reads with three spectacular writers, each grappling with human connection: Kiese Laymon's Southern coming-of-age, science-fiction spectacle from Ted Chiang, and New York Times best-selling author Rosanne Parry imagines life through the eyes of Oregon's most famous wolf.

This week, we’re kicking off our summer playlists. We called in some experts: The people in town actually making the music, writing about it and putting on the shows. Artist and rapper, KayelaJ, is also about to drop a scorcher of a debut, “D.Y.K.E. (Don’t Yield, Keep Enduring)” and we get an exclusive listen to some of the tracks and her creative process.

The continuing search for awesome summer reads led us back to one of our favorite interviews from Portland Book Fest 2018 — and quite possibly one of our favorite book interviews ever! Somaiya Daud’s debut novel lit up the YA world. She is a dazzling conversationalist on sci-fan world-building, the joys of the YA genre, Victorian vs. classical Arabic literary forms, and much more. Also in the show: We meet one of Daud’s early inspirations and  we say goodbye to a truly great literary journal.

Sometimes good stories take a while. This week, long-awaited gems from Astoria’s Fisher Poets and an arts outpost in East Portland. Also, a photographer goes the extra 4,000 miles for the literary story she believes in.

It’s a weird world that obliges you to negotiate for decades to borrow things your great-grandparents made. And where are we if we can’t recover and know our history? This week, classic stories from the L.A. punk scene in the '80s, and Portland queer punk from the ‘90s, and a Native museum’s deal to get some time with priceless tribal artifacts.\

Home can be a place you love and a palace of mixed feelings. But at its best, home is the place where you can be seen and feel understood.As we kick back in the folding chair with a frosty glass and some porch music, we’re thinking about all the comforts of home. Writers Jesmyn Ward and Mitchell S. Jackson trade stories about recreating the places they grew up. A dozen nonprofits make a home away from home. And some beloved assets of Portland’s parks system — its arts resources — get ready to transition off the city budget.

As a parent, you’ve buried your ambitions, your social life and your dignity. You’ve put your own health and well-being on the back burner. But hey, once a year you might get brunch. Parent-child relationships are a complicated matter for us all. This week, artists talk about the things parents do. It’s all worth it. (Isn’t it???)

Lest you thought the Blazers were the only action in town, we’ve got some updates. Oregon claims the only Northwest artist selected for this year’s Whitney Biennial. A much-beloved film center makes a dream match with a new incoming director. But the story of the week (and possibly the year) is the end of a 112-year-old institution, close to the heart of Oregon’s creative identity. We mark the occasion with a look into why craft still matters and always will.

We're revisiting one of our favorite shows from last year. The jobs that make art possible, and the ones threatening to take over everything. We’re talking with artists about the work they do for love, for money, or some mix of the two.

It's almost impossible not to view everything around us — whether it’s music, books, movies, or films — in the context of the political turmoil washing over the U.S. right now. Some artists get pushed into tackling the times, and some go there by choice. This week,three kinds of response, in music, words, and more.

Who doesn’t love music? You’re not going to believe this, but we actually found someone. Still, music remains — for most of us — one of the most intuitive tools to work out our feelings. This episode is a music intensive that dives right into those emotions. Music haters, you have been warned.

Maybe things in our lives haven’t actually changed, but we can see them differently. This week, artists hitting the reset buttons for us through their work: composer Raven Chacon, sketch comedians the 1491s, Shy Girls, and more...

As often as Native and Native-influenced imagery turns up in apparel, graphic design, product design, and elsewhere, there’s a chronic dearth of Native designers or influencers involved in the creation. Adia Victoria kicks off the show with a very candid and quote-worthy filled interview about what led to hew emotionally raw — and at times unsettling — new collection of songs.

Don’t trust your textbooks. This week — artists and writers whose work is illuminating the histories that have been pushed to the margins. We might not always get it right, but it’s important we try.

People say, there’s no place like home. But what if “home” is more than one place, or it doesn’t exist anymore, or it hurts to revisit? This week, three incredible writers share how the concept of home influences their work. From migration to gentrification, these stories explore the relationship between identity and location.