“You know, they say, ‘become a good listener’ and that’s all true. But before you become a good listener, you have to have someone who trusts you enough that they will share with you in an open-hearted way.” ~ Katya Gordon
Author, journalist, sailor and community radio host Katya Gordon says radio pulls together everything she believes in: a shared purpose, old fashioned connection to one another, a vast array of differing ideas and priorities, and plain old hard work and commitment.
Katya hosts a morning show on KTWH 99.5 FM in Two Harbors, MN. She interviews community leaders and talks about local events, issues, projects, and inevitable changes in the community. She’s a lovely host, warm and very grounded. I learn a lot by listening to what matters in a community that’s very different from my own.
Happily, Katya’s show airs right before mine on KTWH. She gave me a warm welcome when I joined the line-up there. And when I reached out to see if she’d join me on the show, she was full of ideas.
It ended up being a candid conversation about curiosity, spirituality, our many media biases, and the power in choosing to trust.
And speaking of media bias, that’s really where I think the lines are sharpest, where you really start to notice that the interviewer is not a robot. We are people too. And the challenge — and really a healthy challenge — of what would it take for candidates to feel equally safe in one of these public conversations on one radio station.
Listen to Choose to Be Curious #224: Curiosity, Community Radio & Choosing to Trust, with Katya Gordon
TRYING SOMETHING NEW: I’m trying out software (and workflow) to offer transcripts of the show. Scroll down for today’s first attempt. Let me know what you think. Thank you for listening (and reading!).
Get to know Katya Gordon through Amicus Adventure Sailing, which she owns and operates with her husband: https://amicusadventuresailing.com/credentials
Check out KTWH 99.5 FM, Two Harbors Community Radio: https://ktwh.org
I highly recommend James Bennett’s piece, “When the New York Times lost its way”. It’s long, but well worth the read: https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way
Want to read more about media and society? Pew Research Center is a good place to start: https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/news-habits-media/media-society/
Theme music by Sean Balick; “Temporal Slip” by CloudBreaker, via Blue Dot Sessions.
Want more related conversations about trust, community media and being values-driven? Try these C2BC classics: Curiosity, Values & Financial Planning, with Rebecca Borton; Trust – with Scott Nycum; Spiritually Curious, with Rev. Bryant Oskvig; Curiosity & Community Media, with Antoine Haywood.
You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Curiosity, Community Radio & Choosing to Trust, with Katya Gordon
Katya Gordon: [00:00:00] You know, they say, “become a good listener” and that’s all true. But before you become a good listener, you have to have someone who trusts you enough that they will share with you in an open-hearted way.
Lynn Borton: This is Choose to Be Curious, a show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life.
I’m your host, Lynn Borton. Welcome! Come, choose to be curious with us…
American broadcast journalist and war correspondent Edward R. Murrow once said, “A great many people think they are thinking when they’re really rearranging their prejudices,” and, “Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.”
I’ve been thinking about those lines attributed to Mr. Murrow ever since my guest Katya Gordon and I settled on today’s topic. I first came to know of Katya through the wonderfulness that is community radio. She’s a volunteer host of a morning show on [00:01:00] KTWH 99. 5 in Two Harbors, Minnesota. She interviews community leaders and talks about local events, issues, projects, and inevitable changes in the community. She’s a lovely host, warm and very grounded. I learn a lot by listening to what matters in a community that’s very different from my own.
Katya says radio pulls together everything she believes in: a shared purpose, old fashioned connection to one another, a vast array of differing ideas and priorities, and plain old hard work and commitment. And she believes KTWH brings out the best in people and is an antidote to many of the ills in society – isolation, virtual reality, our fast pace.
So, one day I reached out to Katya and asked if she would join me on Choose to Be Curious. I extended a pretty open invitation. [00:02:00] What might she like to talk about?
So here’s the thing about giving people a genuine invitation to tell you what they think and want to talk about: they might take you up on it. And Katya did, responding with a long list of possible topics, including taking on our own biases and the obligations we have as members of the media. Now, I’ve been at the show for nearly eight years and I’ll confess it took me a long time to think of myself as “the media”. But that’s a failure of my imagination and, actually, a pretty dangerous lack of appreciation for what it means to have any level of a platform at all. So that’s the topic we chose.
Katya gave me homework. She sent me, “When the New York Times Lost its Way, America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves.” It’s a long article by James Bennett, a senior editor for the Economist, [00:03:00] and former editorial page editor for The New York Times. He was forced out in June of 2020. He wrote, “The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.” Links to the article on my website.
So today we’re going to grapple with what can we in media (community or otherwise) –what can I—do to help dissolve the bubbles in which we—I—live and listen. I am delighted to have Katja Gordon join me today.
So welcome, Katya!
Katya Gordon: Well, thank you so much for having me, Lynn. This is a total pleasure.
Lynn Borton: Well, it’s really a delight and I want to thank you for giving me such a warm welcome about a year ago when I first joined the programming on KTWH.
Katya Gordon: I just loved that it was followed by Choose to Be Curious because it was just a path that I was on already as well. I always hope [00:04:00] that, that my show will spark curiosity of various sorts. And so then to have it analyzed in a different way right after was just bliss!
Lynn Borton: Yay! Yay! Well, that was sort of my reaction. I was like, oh, how nice to have a show like that leading into my show, was my feeling as well. So I think there’s some nice reciprocity there. So, what got you into radio?
Katya Gordon: Well, our town, actually just a few people in the city of Two Harbors, realized that there was an FCC opening and went to a lot of work for several years to get the license and at the time it seemed almost beyond like, we’re just not a big place. We’re very rural. Can we really support a whole radio station?
And I watched it for a few months, thinking: the thing about radio is once it’s on, it’s on! Someone has to be planning it or there, all the time. But [00:05:00] within a few months I was ready to jump in and I knew that I wanted to do interviews. To me, the whole purpose of local radio is to have public conversations.
And it’s, just, it’s absolutely unique. It’s different than a newspaper article, which is not necessarily as timely and it just is different in a human way to hear people talking to each other. It’s been everything. It’s been challenging. It’s been acutely delightful. It’s been eye-opening and it’s been uncomfortable.
I would say that I have been surprised at how difficult it is to get people talking honestly to each other if they are not already in total agreement about something. It’s easy to get two people on together to talk, for a shared promotion of an event or to talk about something where they’re both really coming from the same place. And, and now I think about it, it shouldn’t be that surprising because it’s really hard for people to talk to each other these [00:06:00] days about things about which there’s disagreement. And so, having a public conversation just ramps it up that much more. So no wonder people are very wary of having conversations on the air.
Originally, you know, I had dreams of having political candidate debates on the radio, things like that, and we have not been able to do stuff like that. We have been able to have political candidates separately sharing with us.
And speaking of media bias, that’s really where I think the lines are sharpest, where you really start to notice that the interviewer is not a robot. We are people too. And the challenge — and really a healthy challenge — of what would it take for candidates to feel equally safe in one of these public conversations, on one radio station you know, the radio station itself has a mission, but we also have all our shows, and our shows lead people to think of something, and then the people on our shows lead people to think of something. [00:07:00]
I had an original dream that this was going to be a station for everybody and everybody would be able to find something they wanted here. And, you know, to some extent, I still hope that’s true, but I have also just come to see that we’re a certain type of voice that maybe was not heard before in Two Harbors, but it’s not everybody’s voice and we have a long way to go to become everybody’s voice.
Lynn Borton: Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting to hear you say that because when I first got started, I had an idea that I might have shows where I’d have two people with differing ideas about things, trying to be curious with me, together. And I found that almost impossible to attract people into those conversations and feel comfortable with those conversations.
Katya Gordon: Yeah, every media has always had a source, a human source. [00:08:00] And it’s actually good to go back in history and look at like newspapers from a hundred years ago, because I had the mistaken impression that publishing things that were false, false facts, was like a new phenomenon and it’s absolutely not a new phenomenon at all.
Lynn Borton: (laughter) No…
And you know, that’s existed probably ever since there was the printed page. And so, you know, in a way, that’s nice. That helps us lighten up a little bit and just try to solve this as a problem that takes a lot of work. There’s no simple answers, like you say.
But I did want to share that there are some benefits to radio in particular that I think just cannot come anywhere else. And I think of a couple times. One was when this was, I guess, before everybody streamed sports online, but our football team made it deep into the playoffs, I think to the pre state game, and we had someone in the station, and we had a sportscaster at the game. And it was just like the Waltons of the old days, everyone in town hovered around their radio. [00:09:00] And they had a big touchdown in the last few seconds. And that moment pulled this town together in a way that does not happen much anymore — if only because we were all listening to the same source and the sportscaster was our own graduate from two years ago.
And then the other story I think of is the time that there was an incident that happened in the school, and it was a pretty simple incident and had involved a potential gun. And the schools were closed and the Facebook went wild and the rumor mill and the vitriol and, frankly, the parents, there were some parent threads that were really hard to stomach.
Anyway, I invited the superintendent — or no, he was the principal at the time — to, to come on the radio, [00:10:00] early the next morning and he did. As soon as he was able to speak about it, he just laid out all the facts that had, what had happened, he couldn’t share some names and there were things he couldn’t share, but he could share most of it. And he just laid out what had happened and that it was over and that there was actually no threat at the time and there still isn’t. And this is why they kept the elementary school open, even as they closed the high school. All over Facebook was that this interview was going to happen. So people were actually listening, and then it was archived on the website. And the whole thing just went phew….
Lynn Borton: Interesting.
Katya Gordon: …and disappeared, like all the energy. And what an amazing service that the radio played at that time. So. Yeah, radio has a, a really wonderful use to play even in our modern society with internet and,
Lynn Borton: Yeah. I think so, too. I think so, too. And, you know, interestingly, I interviewed a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who said, oh, I’m so excited to hear that you’re on the radio because radio has a kind of intimacy [00:11:00] that other media don’t necessarily have, and it has some serendipity because you, you will stumble on it in a way that—like, you’ll never stumble on a podcast, right? There’s just too much of it out there—but you might get into a car and flip on the radio and just hear programming that happens to be on when you happen to be in the car. So he was really excited that radio, because it literally goes into the public airspace, it kind of cuts across some of the echo chambers.
Katya Gordon: Yeah, it’s not as polished, you know, it’s, it’s just people having a conversation and and like you say, I think that’s part of the benefit too.
Lynn Borton: Yeah.
Katya Gordon: It was really different talking to this principal than it would have been to have him make a statement. I mean, it was absolutely different. But now he would reach out to me if he wants to get something out quickly. So there you go. There’s another benefit.
Lynn Borton: So, and that goes to something that you raised when we were corresponding, thinking about this conversation, about trust and choosing to trust. And my takeaway from that story is that, having had a fair reception, having had an invitation to come and sort of dispel the myths and the misunderstandings, he has some trust that now he can reach out to you and that you’re a good conduit for information.
So that’s a, that’s a way that media showing up in a respectful way to say, let’s, let’s just hear what there is to hear, opens the possibility, it sounds like, for more of that in the future.
Katya Gordon: I hope so. And I, and I believe that we are leading to the point where we can have people have the more difficult conversations, even with each other. You know, what it really takes is both sides feeling safe enough that they’re not going to be reamed over the coals. They’re not going to be judged for their opinions. [00:13:00] And so we’re getting there. We’re getting there.
Lynn Borton: One of the things that was in this Bennett article, thank you again, by the way, for sending me this article. I’ve been chewing on it for days. He has an interesting line about relying on the tools of empathy, humility, curiosity, which he described as useful in countering liberal bias. Now, I would imagine they’d be useful in countering any bias, but I wonder, as you think about your own experience and kind of how we might create better platforms for, as we say in my family, “less heat and more light” in the conversation.
You know, what do you think about those as tools and are they things that you use, either within your show or outside the show, because I know you made a personal commitment to do some outreach and listening? What, what tools have you used? What strategies have you used for that? [00:14:00]
Katya Gordon: Well, that’s a good question. I feel like it must start with curiosity because I know I started by just really getting that I did not understand why people were acting the way they were. And, really sort of taking stock of that situation and, and seeing where it went, like the only bitter end of that is these people are crazy. And I just wasn’t willing to accept that. I just didn’t believe it. And so I had to figure out what was happening and why people were doing what they were doing.
And, and once once you get curious, I feel, a lot of things start to open up and, it’s often very much easier to see this when you’re in the minority. So you really see the biases of the majority when they invade you. But if you’re part of the, vocal, or the majority, then you don’t notice it because you go right along with it.
And we noticed this in our newspaper, we hear a lot of people really love our columnists, our opinion writers. [00:15:00] And then other people really don’t like them, and I think it does have a lot to do with, if you agree with what they’re saying and you think those are the important issues, then it all is wonderful. But if that’s not your issue, or you don’t agree with it, then you notice the bias is just much more — and that is the challenge we’re at today.
And so a lot of what I see in the radio is – well, first of all, I just think it’s important to acknowledge and notice that they have polled samples of the media in the United States, and the people themselves tend liberal. Most people that are in the media tend liberal, and there’s a lot of questioning as to why that is, and, you know, that’s not always been true. Maybe it has to do with levels of education. Maybe it has to do with this or that. That was a good eye opener for me to just think, wow, like that has a huge implication on a lot of different things. And it made me start to notice, [00:16:00] why do I think these are the topics that are the ones that we should talk about? And it’s sort of an example of an opposite is that coming from a, like I’m a pretty religious person, a Christian person, and so I noticed that our radio station and our paper, despite the fact that I’d say probably a solid majority of the people are religious in this town, it’s just never brought up. As if…
Lynn Borton: Oh, interesting.
Katya Gordon: And, I feel like this “church state separation” sort of very vague reason has been given for that, which it doesn’t make sense to me at all, because there’s many things that we keep separate, but we’re still allowed to talk about. So, so I became sort of the voice that hasn’t been heard. And why aren’t we talking about it?
And another example is, you know, there’s so much talk about loneliness and I’ve read so many articles about loneliness and they all point to several solutions, like getting outside, talking to a therapist [00:17:00] but church is like never brought up and millions of Americans are much better in the loneliness world because of their church communities. To not even bring it up to me is missing part of the picture. Nobody’s trying to convert anyone of anything, but, you know, just to even talk about it. So those are the kinds of things… I think it’s wonderful for all of us to sort of realize our biases and then notice — because we all notice when we’re being trampled on a little bit, or we’re being ignored — and we all are very nuanced. We’re just not, all in one camp or another, no matter what people say. And the braver we get about sharing, well, I’m actually not totally in this camp, I think the safer these conversations will become.
Lynn Borton: Yeah. Yeah. In, in thinking about this conversation I also realized that curiosity starts to feel like disloyalty because our side, the people who think like we do, [00:18:00] are afraid of any betrayal. And so: that’s a bad place to be in, right? If even being curious about, eh, maybe there’s some nuance here I don’t understand, or what am I missing is perceived as betrayal as opposed to, oh, like that would be useful to know, because that’s a stuck place. Maybe we could get past that stuck place. We don’t, we don’t think about it that way. Now, when you were talking about the stories and what gets into the news and all, I became really conscious of that a long time ago, actually, when the Newseum in Washington, D. C., my favorite exhibit there, was they put up the front page of a newspaper from every state and many nations every day. And so you could see how a major story was covered or not, or what, was worthy of the front page [00:19:00] in these different media markets in these different communities all across the world. And it was, to me…
Katya Gordon: Fascinating!
Lynn Borton: Yes! Oh my gosh, best thing ever! And I don’t know if there’s a digital version of this somewhere. There was something about standing out on the sidewalk and just sort of slowly making your way down this case with these real newspapers, printed out there…But it was fascinating and really, really eye opening about how much I was shaped by the newspaper that I was looking at. So yes, I think what gets covered and what we pay attention to is really interesting. So do you have strategies for ways that you bust out of, out of that potential bubble?
Katya Gordon: Well one way is that I am so eager for feedback, and you know, we have this Minnesota nice thing going on in Minnesota, and it is true, And in a way, I think it has kept our state in a better, more civil place than many other places. [00:20:00] People are nice to each other. And so we get a lot more positive feedback than negative. When people really like what we do, they tell us. And if they really don’t like it, they, they stop subscribing, or they stop listening, or they just don’t tell us. So, the few times that I have people share with me something they didn’t like, or something I disagree with, I, I really try to latch onto it. I hope I don’t overwhelm them, but I want, I just want to be in that conversation so badly. And I feel it’s an honor to be in that conversation. So that’s, that’s one strategy to truly welcome disagreement or, yeah, just various types of conflict, around something.
For me, it’s a spiritual practice. It is like, there are things inside ourselves that we need to deal with. I think the way you spoke of disloyalty is a really big one. I think that sort of the tribal feeling is, is one [00:21:00] that I, you just have to get brave and and, and notice that we all have this. It’s part of human nature and we need to break out of it.
I am much, much more interested in hearing from people that I disagree with than people I agree with. The people I agree with, I already know what they think about everything. I don’t need to read it on the news or hear about it. I already know. And also when, when news happens, I want to hear what another side thinks about it. Cause it’s so easy to feel like there is only one side to this. Like, how could you possibly think another way? And, and whenever I hear someone say that, I think, well, you want to find out? And it often catches somebody up short because they’re actually not that interested. They just would rather be outraged. So… and then I have to be brave enough to, you know, challenge a member of my own tribe. So it’s just all these fun little curiosity challenges, I guess…
Lynn Borton: I think of those as, I mean, I think of those as curiosity practices, right?
Katya Gordon: Thank you. Much better term for it.
Lynn Borton: But you described this as kind of a spiritual practice and I think it really is at some level, it’s an article of faith that that kind of openness is important, at a very humane, communal level.
I actually think that’s pretty profound. And I think if we think of it that way, maybe it’s easier for us to find the courage to take the little steps. Not everybody has to do all the things that you did, but if each of us did one of the things that you did, that would be progress, right? That would be pretty cool.
Katya Gordon: I hope so. Yes. And I was noticing, even in this very conversation, like the way I framed that, I could have said, everyone’s got to make peace with their Maker, or what is your relationship to God in this, but that’s not a conversation we have on public radio so much, [00:23:00] so I sort of keep it in the secular.
And I do notice in the public, I think things are moving actually in a good direction. Because what I have noticed is a greater openness on public radio, and in public media of various kinds, for people to acknowledge that they are religious in some way, or that this is a spiritual thing for them or, and so I, I think there is progress with that. I’ve actually been pleased to notice that I’d say just in the last year or something. And I think it’s because of things like this. Like I mentioned churches before, that church communities can be beneficial places for people. And so I really hope we’re going in a good direction with all that.
Lynn Borton: All right. Well, I’m going to use the positive thrust of that. Let that be the note that we, we rest on. But before I let you go, will you join me in my Big Jar of Wannabe Analogies?
Katya Gordon: I would love to, of course!
Lynn Borton: [00:24:00] Oh, good. Okay. Okay. So. Here it is. A literal big jar. Slips of paper. One for you, one for me, one for the audience. And we’re going to make an analogy to curiosity with whatever is on these slips. Okay. Yours is saucepan. How is curiosity like a saucepan? Oh my gosh, mine is grimace. How is curiosity like a grimace? And I have one for the audience. Boy, I just have to say these words came from listeners and they are giving us a run for our money. So you want to go first or you want me to go?
Katya Gordon: yeah. I’ll let you go first…. Actually, no, I’ll go first. I can go first.
Saucepan is not a bad word for me because I am a huge user of my cast iron pans. I actually have five of them. Cast iron pans are where it’s at. We have a family friend, family and their, their son moved away and went to college and he took one of the family cars with him and the family said, that’s fine.[00:25:00] But when he talked about taking the family cast iron pan, they said, no, you need to get your own cast iron pan. That we cannot do without. And so I think of, yeah. Of the cast iron pan is one of the just deeply foundational, important pieces of a home and it’s about food. It’s about health. It’s about heat.
It’s all about. There’s one many wonderful things associated with with saucepans and and to relate that specifically to curiosity, you know, maybe the saucepan is the, the physical rendition in a home and curiosity is the conversational rendition in the home. Both things are needed inside to make a home a home.
Lynn Borton: Nice. Nice. I feel the same way about my cast iron pans, by the way. So how is curiosity like a grimace? [00:26:00] Well, I think of a grimace as being an expression of some discomfort, maybe even some unhappiness. And, and to our, to our last half hour of conversation, I think curiosity is sometimes about the fun and the delightful and all, but it’s also sometimes about the uncomfortable and the painful and, And a grimace – maybe it’s voluntary, maybe it’s involuntary – and I would like to see a way where curiosity becomes both involuntary and voluntary as a response to discomfort or pain. So that’s how I’ll make a connection. And audience, yours is cove molding. How is curiosity like cove molding? Let me know. Social media, #analogy.
Well, Katya. Thank you so much for this. [00:27:00] I’m so glad that we’re back-to-back on KTWH. And, and I think we should kind of keep talking offline.
Katya Gordon: I do too. This has been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Lynn Borton: You’ve been listening to Choose to Be Curious. I’m your host, Lynn Borton – thank you for joining us here today. You can find all my shows on my website at choosetobecurious.com. I hope you’ll follow me here, there, and on social media at @choosetobecurious.…where you can share your “cove molding” analogy, #ANALOGY.
Many thanks to my guest Katya Gordon. Links to KTWH, Amicus Adventure Sailing, and that piece by James Bennett on my website.
Thanks, too, to Sean Balick for our theme music. This is “Temporal Slip” by CloudBreaker, via Blue Dot Sessions.
I hope you’ll join us again next time. Until then, choose to be curious!
Listening to the Universe 