Sam Teresi/‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’

Our guest this episode is Stuart Chafetz, the longtime principal timpanist of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra who has just been named as the ensemble’s first-ever principal pops conductor. A well-known and cherished presence on the Chautauqua Institution grounds each summer, Chafetz has made annual appearances on the podium for the ensemble’s Independence Day Pops Concert and the late-season collaboration with the Chautauqua Opera Company’s Young Artists. More recently, he has also served as a conductor for the orchestra’s live performances accompanying film presentations, beginning in 2019 with “Star Wars: A New Hope,” and continuing with “The Empire Strikes Back,” on Aug. 15, 2020.

Chafetz also serves as principal pops conductor of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and is newly appointed as the principal pops conductor of the Marin Symphony. A conductor celebrated for his dynamic and engaging podium presence, he is increasingly in demand with orchestras across the continent.

Chafetz joined Chautauqua Vice President of Performing and Visual Arts Deborah Sunya Moore for a phone conversation shortly before the announcement of his new appointment at Chautauqua.

Our guest this episode is author, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben, whose 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change. He is also a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized 20,000 rallies around the world. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, McKibben writes frequently for a variety of publications around the world, including The New York Review of Books, National Geographic and Rolling Stone. He is the author of more than a dozen books; his latest, published in April, is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

McKibben joined John Merino for an in-studio conversation shortly after he delivered his Aug. 15 lecture in the Chautauqua Amphitheater as part of a week themed “Shifting Global Power.”

Our guest this episode is J. Ekela Kaniaupio-Crozier, the E Ola! Learning Designer and Facilitator at Kamehameha Schools Maui, where she provides campus support for a world-class Hawaiian culture-based education to students. A fluent speaker of the Hawaiian language, Kumu Ekela serves on the Hawaiʻi Development team for the Duolingo language learning app. She has been a Hawaiian language, studies and history instructor for more than 40 years in various settings, including K-through-12 schools, community college and four-year universities, and she continues to teach classes on Molokaʻi and on Maui free of charge.

Kumu Ekela and her Kamehemeha Schools colleague Makana Garma joined our Emily Morris for an in-studio conversation on July 26, shortly after she delivered a lecture titled “Renormalizing the Hawaiian Language” in the Chautauqua Amphitheater as part of a week themed “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

Our guest this episode is Julie A. Washington, chair of and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development. Professor Washington specializes in language development and disorders in high-risk populations; early literacy and language interactions; African-American Child English; and African-American student achievement. Her work focuses on understanding cultural dialect use in young African-American children, with a specific emphasis on language assessment, literacy attainment, and academic performance. In addition, she is an affiliate faculty of Georgia State’s Language and Literacy Initiative.

Currently, Professor Washington is a principal investigator on the Georgia Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health. This research initiative is focused on improving early identification of reading disabilities in elementary-school-aged African-American children who speak cultural dialects.

Professor Washington joined Chautauquan Daily editor and Institution lecture and literary arts associate Sara Toth for an in-studio conversation on July 25, shortly after delivering a lecture in the Chautauqua Amphitheater as part of a week themed “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

Our guest this episode is Trevor Cox, a professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford. Professor Cox’s research and teaching focuses on architectural acoustics, signal processing and audio perception. He has written several books for academics and the general public, most recently The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World and Now You’re Talking: Human Conversation from the Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence.

A former senior media fellow at the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Professor Cox has presented 25 documentaries for BBC radio and has been featured on BBC1, Teachers TV, Discovery and National Geographic channels; one of his most popular interviews concerned the debunking of the myth that “a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.” He has also written for New Scientist and The Guardian, and runs a website that hosts experiments to test people’s responses to sound: sound101.org, which hosted the popular experiment on the “Worst Sound in the World.”

Professor Cox joined our Christopher Dahlie (who during the day serves as head of audio at the Chautauqua Amphitheater) for an in-studio conversation on July 23, shortly after Cox delivered a lecture in the Amphitheater as part of a week themed “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

Our guest on this episode is John Kasich, who served as Ohio’s 69th governor from 2011 until just this past January. Now a CNN political commentator, Gov. Kasich often speaks about the power of individuals to effect change at the local level, to reach beyond politics and the issues that divide us to achieve solutions through unity and resilience. During his tenure, when Ohio budget reserves grew from 89 cents to $2.7 billion, the governor was a leading voice in promoting bipartisan solutions to health care reform, immigration and international trade, and was one of the few Republicans to advocate for Medicaid’s expansion.

Previously, Governor Kasich served Ohio as a state senator and then nine-term congressman. He’s also hosted the Fox News program “Heartland with John Kasich,” and authored four New York Times best-sellers including Two Paths: America Divided or United. His newest book, out in the fall, is titled It's Up to Us: Ten Little Ways We Can Bring About Big Change.

Gov. Kasich joined CHQ&A’s John Merino for an in-studio conversation last month, shortly after delivering a lecture in the Chautauqua Amphitheater to open a week themed “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions.” A quick program note on this episode: We had some difficulty with John Merino’s mic in this recording, so he will sound a bit distant, though still should be heard clearly. Gov. Kasich’s mic was operating normally. Ultimately we made the decision to forge ahead out of respect to Gov. Kasich and his incredibly tight Chautauqua itinerary.

On this episode, we feature a conversation between interviewer John Merino and Maureen Rovegno, Chautauqua’s director of religion, on the little-known history of what has come to be called the “Burned-over District,” or the “on fire” religious environment and culture of the early 19th century in Western New York. As you’ll hear, Chautauqua itself is one of the movements that has roots in the “Burned-over District,” and the Institution will program a week of lectures on that era from July 22 to 25. More information is available at chq.org.

The Week Five Interfaith Lecture Series is described as follows:

We refer often to Chautauqua’s beginnings in 1874 and its history going forward, but little-known is the history that preceded Chautauqua’s founding. The Chautauqua Assembly reflected many movements that had had their genesis in what was called the “Burned-Over District” resulting from the “on fire” religious environment and culture of the early 19th century in Western New York. The Assembly synthesized the religious passion of the age with its own unique contributions to American culture, as did other religious and civic expressions of the region arising out of that epoch. In this week we will revisit that incendiary era, and then meet some other religious and civic entities that have also stood the test of time.

Our guest on this episode is Ambassador William J. Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Ambassador Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 33-year diplomatic career. Hailed as an “American diplomatic legend” by Secretary of State John Kerry, he holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, Career Ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become deputy secretary of state.

Ambassador Burns is the author of an acclaimed new book, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, which Henry Kissinger called “an incisive and sorely needed case for the revitalization of diplomacy — what Burns wisely describes as our ‘tool of first resort.’”

He joined Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill for an onstage conversation on June 28 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater, during the first week of the 2019 summer assembly season, themed “Moments That Changed the World.”

For the second consecutive summer, Chautauqua Theater Company is producing a free, touring outdoor production of a Shakespeare classic. This summer, having started June 25 on our own Bestor Plaza, CTC is performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a variety of locations around Chautauqua County, including Jamestown, Mayville and Southern Tier Brewing Company. On this episode, CTC Artistic Director Andrew Borba and Midsummer director Sarah Elizabeth Wansley, speak with longtime Jamestown mayor Sam Teresi about the city’s two productions, including the upcoming July 13 show at the Riverwalk Park.

Hugh Hewitt is a lawyer, law professor and political commentator who as of July 1 began his service as president of the Richard Nixon Foundation. His nationally syndicated radio show is heard in more than 120 cities across the United States every weekday afternoon, with an audience estimated at more than 2 million listeners every week. Hewitt also makes frequent appearances on all the major cable news networks and Sunday morning political talk show panels, and he is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. He is also the author of a dozen books, including two New York Times best-sellers.

Hewitt served for nearly six years in the Reagan administration in a variety of posts, including assistant counsel in the White House and special assistant to two attorneys general. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School and has been teaching constitutional law at Chapman University Law School since it opened in 1995.

Hugh joined CHQ&A’s John Merino for an in-studio conversation on June 27, shortly after delivering a lecture in the Chautauqua Amphitheater as part of a week themed “Moments That Changed the World.”