Joe Josephson has a long political and public service history in Alaska, beginning in 1957 when he served as legislative assistant to Alaska Delegate in Congress, E. L. (Bob) Bartlett. In 1959, When Bartlett became Alaska's first United States Senator in 1959, Josephson continued as his legislative assistant until 1960. Josephson earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Chicago in 1953 and attended Columbia University Law School from 1953 to 1955, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He finished his law degree at the Catholic University of America in 1960. He was appointed that year by President John F. Kennedy as the Chair of the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He was admitted to the Alaska Bar Association in 1961 and 1962 and was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives. He held that position until 1966, when he became a member of the Anchorage City Council, later of the Borough Assembly. Following the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Josephson also served as State Co-Chair of the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission, appointed by Alaska Governor Bill Egan. Josephson served his first term in the Alaska State Senate from 1968 to 1972. In 1975, he was vice-chair of the Anchorage Charter Commission, which unified the Anchorage Borough and City of Anchorage. Between 1982 and 1988, he served again in the Alaska State Senate. He has served as president of the boards of Southcentral Alaska Red Cross, Congregation Beth Sholom, and Out North Theatre, and as a board member for Alaska Civil Liberties Union, Child Care Connection, Cook Inlet Historical Society, and Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship was also an adjunct instructor at UAA. Josephson, a husband and father of five, continues to practice law in Anchorage.

After a career as a teacher and prosecutor, Andy Josephson was elected to the Alaska State House of Representatives in 2013 and has continued to serve there since. His father came to Alaska in the 50s to work for Bob Bartlett in his quest to achieve statehood, and his grandfather founded the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the 1930s. Andy is a West High graduate with a BA in History from Whitman College, a Master’s in Teaching from UAA, and a law degree from Penn State, and has lived and worked in six communities across Alaska. He has worked as an intern with U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, a legislative aide, a public school teacher, an assistant district attorney, a lawyer in private practice, and an adjunct professor at UAA. Andy and his wife, Donna, live in Anchorage and enjoy kayaking, backpacking, tennis, swimming, and baseball.

The podcast has been edited to eliminate “dead spots” and maintain a semblance of order. Each "dead spot" is filled with two seconds of static.

Rev. Matt Schultz graduated from Westminster College with a BA in Art in 1995. He is married to Rev. Elizabeth Schultz. Together, they attended Princeton Theological Seminary and are ordained as pastors in the Presbyterian Church (USA). They live in Anchorage, Alaska, where they go on wild adventures with their three beautiful children, two awesome dogs, and one average cat. Since 2013, Matt has been the pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Anchorage and also serves with Christians for Equality, the Homelessness Leadership Council, and other city and statewide service and advocacy groups.

Matt Gray's East Anchorage Book Club podcast with Rev. Matt Schultz - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/east-anchorage-book-club-with-andrew-gray/id1592614366?i=1000670170928

Tom Choate is a mountain climbing legend, former college biology professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Montana, who was a ski infantryman and served in a US Army intelligence and reconnaissance unit at Fort Richardson during the Korean War, and was the first ranger naturalist in Mt McKinley National Park (now Denali National Park). Before coming back to Alaska in the late ‘70s, Tom and his family lived in New Zealand; he spent four years doing Antarctic research on penguins and their predators and spent ten years in the former Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) teaching, enjoying climbs of Kilimanjaro and other outdoor activities in Africa, and launching expeditions from there to the Himalayas and the Andes. He has reached the peak of Denali multiple times, spanning five different decades, and was the oldest person to summit Denali at 78 in 2013.

Slides - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mx7a8ecc4qxkhcozq1fjz/TomsSlides.pdf?rlkey=8bda99v8rew004gqkljnq3cdd&dl=0