John O'Brien
Producer, Speakers Forum
About
John O’Brien produces Speakers Forum at KUOW. He learned to love radio as a child waking up one summer morning to the harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel. As a teenager, he would drive the back roads of Indiana and Michigan late at night listening to vintage radio theater. The question of whether or not he had the legal right to drive then remains a mystery. Only The Shadow knows. Inspired by a chance meeting with Noah Adams, he learned to make radio as an intern on KUOW’s The Conversation with Ross Reynolds. John has been recording talks for Speakers Forum since 2007. Early on he learned Seattle is a Mecca for any touring speaker because Seattleites read so much, support a wide variety of venues and ask smart questions. He says that makes his job easy and always interesting. John is a graduate of St. Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Podcasts
Stories
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Speakers Forum
Paul Auster celebrates the precocious, abbreviated life and work of Stephen Crane
'Crane is now in the hands of the specialists, while the invisible army of so-called general readers, the same people who still take pleasure in reading old standbys such as Melville and Whitman, are no longer reading Crane.’
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Speakers Forum
What are we willing to do to protect Southern Resident orcas?
What it will take to share this region with Qw'e lh'ol mechen, ‘the people that live under the sea’
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Speakers Forum
Trans history and one man’s struggle to correct ‘a ghastly mistake’
‘Dr E. Forbes-Sempill henceforth wishes to be known as Dr Ewan Forbes-Sempill’
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Speakers Forum
Anita Hill on her mission to end gender violence and harassment
‘We know it’s a cultural problem. We know it’s a behavioral problem. But it’s not a problem of a few bad apples.’ – Professor Anita Hill
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KUOW Newsroom
Check out these ho, ho, holiday streaming picks from McTelevision
‘Hallmark has a powerful formula. It's one that other channels have tapped into, particularly by responding to the fact that Hallmark has for a very long time not been inclusive.’
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Speakers Forum
Gather ‘round for a roguish, timeless Christmas tale
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas
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Speakers Forum
Claudia Rankine on the unbearable lightness of whiteness in America
‘The indifference is impenetrable and reliable and distributed across centuries, and I am stupidly hurt when my friends can’t see that.’
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Speakers Forum
‘The science isn’t complicated.’ An investigative reporter details the effects of climate change disinformation in public education
‘We’re pumping millions of tons of warming pollutants into the atmosphere every day. The trick is, you don’t need very much of the population to doubt it to stop action.’
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Speakers Forum
Connection and restoration in the PNW, Ampersand-style
‘If you want to take up space, first see how small you are.’
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Speakers Forum
The how and why of Elsa Sjunneson’s fight to end ableism
‘I think sometimes that we are a little bit like ghosts. We’re haunting the world because it’s not entirely ours and we scare people.’