In this episode, host Tate Chamberlin delves into the profound silence surrounding hope and the role of youth in activism. Joined by next-generation leaders Royce Mann, Andini Makosinski, and Addie Strom, they confront the challenges facing a generation navigating institutional constraints, environmental distress, and corporate influence.

As they share their perspectives, we uncover the resilience and creativity that define today’s youth. Together, they redefine the "American Dream" and highlight the power of community and connection. Join us for an inspiring conversation that reveals how even in uncertainty, hope can ignite the spark of change.

The Hopeful Beat of the Next Generation

In this episode, Tate Chamberlin hosts Charli Cooksey, Founder and CEO of WEPOWER. For Charli, her calling to uplift marginalized communities and reshape policy often faces systemic barriers. When passion alone isn’t enough, how do we keep moving forward amid oppressive forces? Charli stands at a crossroads, balancing the need for rest with her commitment to activism. This journey is transformative yet painful, reminding us that our dreams, even if deferred, hold power. Charli’s story is still unfolding—rich with potential and heartache—showing us we can create, shape our world, and keep dreaming.

WEPOWER

In this podcast, host Tate Chamberlin is joined by internationally acclaimed musician Teneia Sanders and Rabbi Joshua Lesser in discussion about queer community, pride, and the perspective necessary to walk, hand in hand, through an increasingly hostile political landscape with tenacity and grace. Join us, in full color.

In Full Color

Imagine a city alive with stories—every corner whispering tales of dreams, struggles, and aspirations. It’s a place where communities don’t just live, but co-create their surroundings, weaving narratives into the very fabric of their environment. This is the essence of World Building—where storytelling becomes a force for transformation, turning visions into tangible realities. Today, we step into that world. Host, Tate Chamberlin, is joined by an incredible lineup of guests: visionary designer and storyteller Alex McDowell, urban innovator Meegan Elliot, systems thinker Mark Beam, artist and storyteller Ash Eliza Smith, and community builder Jenn Stein. Together, we’ll explore how world-building shapes not only our imagination but also the spaces we inhabit—and how, through collaboration and imagination, we can craft a future worth imagining.

It’s Dispatch from the Heartland. Join us, won’t you?

World Building

Beneath the surface of our planet’s icy crown lie stories of ancient times, fragile ecosystems, and communities woven into the glaciers’ icy embrace. These frozen giants—part of the cryosphere, the world’s vast frozen regions—are more than just stunning landscapes; they are vital sentinels of our climate’s health and the future of life on Earth. Yet, they are melting away before our eyes, especially the tropical glaciers that are vanishing faster than anyone expected.

Today, Tate Chamberlin explores this icy world with Marcela Fernandez. We’ll uncover why glaciers and the cryosphere matter beyond their breathtaking beauty—why they are essential to life, culture, and the stability of our climate. And most importantly, what we can do—together—to ensure these vital ecosystems don’t disappear forever.

It’s a story that doesn’t roar, but whispers—calling us to listen, to act. We’re at the World Oceans Summit in Nice, France. Join us, won’t you?

Glacier Nation

A vacant lot, once overlooked and forgotten amid the rush of urban life, now pulses with vibrant life—flowers bloom where concrete once stood, vegetables sprout in neglected corners, and hope takes root in every crack. Yet, even these transformed spaces remain fragile—vulnerable to neglect, gentrification, or future development that could erase their resurgence. Similarly, rural farmland faces its own challenges—fragile soils, unpredictable weather, and the razor-thin margins that make farming a constant gamble. While innovative crops like perennial wheat show promise for creating more resilient and sustainable agriculture—reducing the need for replanting and conserving water—convincing farmers to take risks with such unproven techniques remains a significant hurdle. It’s a story of resilience—rooted in the earth and driven by community spirit—connecting urban renewal with rural perseverance in the shared pursuit of food security and sustainability.

Today, we’re sharing stories of communities confronting climate change, dismantling systemic barriers, and working tirelessly to ensure equitable access to healthy food—because food security is fundamental to a thriving society.  Tate Chamberlin is joined by Nancy Williams, Founder of No More Empty Pots, Rachel Stroer, President of the Land Institute, and Miranda Miller Klugesherz, Executive Director of the Kansas Food Action Network. Together, we’ll reflect on personal experiences, systemic issues, and the collective power driving meaningful change.

We’re at Arbor Day Farms in Nebraska—join us, won’t you?

Food Security

Washington, D.C. isn’t just a backdrop of monuments and marble. It’s a living, breathing city—home to more than 700,000 people who work, who raise kids, who build their lives here. Known for decades as Chocolate City, D.C. carries a proud history of Black culture and resilience. And yet, unlike every other city in the United States, its residents watch democracy without fully taking part in it.

They pay billions in federal taxes. They serve in the military. And still, they live under taxation without representation—the very injustice that fueled the Boston Tea Party and launched the American Revolution. More than two centuries later, the capital of the United States remains the only city where that founding demand is still denied.

And here’s the twist—this federal district is saturated with law enforcement. Dozens of agencies with arresting authority overlap in the same small space: the Metropolitan Police, Capitol Police, DEA, FBI, Secret Service, Park Police, Transit Police. And more recently, the National Guard and ICE. A city layered with power, yet stripped of the most basic power its people should hold—the right to representation in Congress.

This is Dispatch from the Heartland. In today’s episode, Ty Hobson Powell brings urgency and fire to the fight for DC statehood, making the case to Corbett Landes and Tammy Buckner that it’s time for the capital to finally become the 51st state. This isn’t just politics. It’s about identity, equality, and the unfinished promise of democracy in the United States.

We’re at Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska—join us, won’t you?"

Taxation Without Representation- The Quest for DC Statehood

Here’s the thing about leaving. Sometimes you plan it for years — a better job, an education, a shot at something bigger. Other times it happens overnight. Governments fall. Food disappears. You run.

This episode of Dispatch from the Heartland is about human migration and displacement — one of the oldest patterns of our species. Moving for survival. Moving for hope. Moving because staying is no longer possible. It’s trauma. It’s hope. It’s a blank page.

In this episode, Tate Chamberlin sits down with Zohra Zori, Lucy Petroucheva, and Angela Eifert to talk about displacement, belonging, and the slow learning curve of new cultures. We’ll look at the mistakes, the forgiveness, and the “othering” that happens when you’re new. We’ll talk about refugee camps that stretch on for years, the difference between sustainability and dependence, and the unspoken emotions you carry when you leave everything behind.

This is a space for vulnerability. For beginning again. For understanding sovereignty even when choice has been stripped away. Because right now, families are uprooted. Cultures are colliding. Dreams are being carried across borders. And even in movement — even in loss — we hold on to the hope of a better life.

This is Dispatch from the Heartland. Join us, won’t you?

Human Migration and Displacement - Part Two

Every town has one.
A school.
A cafeteria.
A lunch line.
And somewhere in that line, a kid is staring down a plastic tray of food that — for millions — might be the only real meal they get that day.

We don’t often think of it this way, but the school meal program is the largest restaurant chain in the United States. Seven billion meals a year. Forty million kids. Bigger than Subway. Bigger than McDonald’s. Which makes it the biggest opportunity we have to change how we eat, how we grow food, and how we think about nourishment.

When we let the system run on the cheapest, most processed calories, the cost shows up in hospital bills, chronic illness, and communities that can’t afford to be healthy. In one of the richest countries in the world, eating clean, non-toxic food has somehow become a luxury. But it shouldn’t be. Healthy food should be a right.

So how did we get here? How did we build a system where the things that keep us healthy are the hardest to afford, while the things that make us sick are everywhere and cheap? Maybe it lives in the subsidies and programs meant to stabilize agriculture — systems that now keep us tied to old ideas of what food should look like.

Take cattle ranching: once the backbone of rural life, now caught between an industrial model that demands scale and a regenerative one that demands patience — and risk. Four companies control most of the meat market, while the people who tend the land have the least power to change it.

This episode, Tate Chamberlin talks with Nora Latorre, R.C. Carter, and Katie Stebbins — people working to shift the food system from the inside out. From how we feed our kids to how we nourish entire communities.

Because we are what we eat. And maybe the way we feed our children is the clearest reflection of the future we’re willing to build.

Nutrition Centered Economy

Turtle Island.
Before there were countries—before anyone called this land the United States, or Canada, or Mexico—this was Turtle Island. A continent of nations, overlapping territories, trade routes stretching farther than modern highways, and relationships thousands of years old.

Today, that history is being carried forward by contemporary Indigenous leaders at Fort Mason—San Francisco’s skyline in the backdrop, summit banners hanging over a conversation that reaches far beyond the city around it.

This is the First Nations Economic Compact. 

You’re in a conference room that usually sounds like quarterly forecasts, and suddenly Chief Redman is talking about an economic conversation older than all of that—older than the 1763 Royal Proclamation, older than colonial regulatory systems, older than the borders that now cut through nations whose trade routes once ran uninterrupted across the continent.

Long before GDP, First Nations had their own economic indicators: ecological balance, kinship networks, sustainable yields, inter-nation reciprocity. Systems the Doctrine of Discovery tried to erase. Systems that survived genocide, forced relocations, and treaties—signed, coerced, or never signed at all.

And yet: the nations remain.
The economies remain.
The knowledge remains.

Here, leaders are talking about restoring ancient trade corridors, sharing resources through ancestral law, and building a bio-economy centered on stewardship and community resilience. While modern governments argue over tariffs and trade wars, First Nations are putting forward something older and more future-ready: a sovereign economic compact drawn from traditional trade logic and built for today’s global market.

“If someone doesn’t want to deal with Canada or the United States… they can deal directly with First Nations,” Chief Redman says. It isn’t a request. It’s a reminder.

Suddenly, this summit doesn’t sound like policy talk—it sounds like nations dusting themselves off and reintroducing themselves. Not as stakeholders. Not as interest groups. But as governments.

This is what reconnection sounds like.
What continuity sounds like.
What a continent remembering itself sounds like.

Tate Chamberlin is with Chief Redman. Stay with us.

Music by Supaman

First Nations Economic Compact

I Am Interchange, is a must-hear movement that immerses you in the world of adventure journalism, where we fearlessly explore the monumental global challenges of our time. Through raw, unfiltered storytelling, we dive into the tension and share the stories from the front lines of systems change.
THIS SEASON:  It seems, now more than ever, that we have found ourselves on the cusp of monumental worldwide change. Whether we consider the environment, politics, infrastructure, health, economics, or equities across a broad swath of social constructs, the consensus is clear and urgent: all is not as it should be. The United Nations (UN), a consortium of 193 Member States from around the globe, agrees. In 2015, the UN unanimously adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calling for urgent action in global partnership to secure “peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” In alignment with the goals, HATCH — a curated network of innovators, artists, activists, and entrepreneurs working together to accelerate positive global change — focused its fall summit impact labs on topics related to their four impact pillars: EQUITY, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, and EMPOWERMENT This series will explore those on the frontlines of transformational systems change, accelerating solutions for these human challenges.

New tracks tagged #iaminterchange