Maija Katak Lukin served as Mayor of Kotzebue in 2015 when President Barack Obama visited. She later became superintendent of the National Park Service’s Western Arctic National Parklands. She is now the Native Relations Program Manager for the National Park’s Service’s Region 11 which encompasses Alaska. We discuss her early life, her commitment to the Inupiaq language, climate change's tangible impacts on the Arctic and more.

Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the author of the 2017 book, An American Sickness: how healthcare became big business and how you can take it back. The Washington Post describes the book as: “An authoritative account of the distorted financial incentives that drive medical care in the United States . . . Every lawmaker and administration official should pick up a copy of [it].”

Dr. Rosenthal was for 22 years a reporter, correspondent, and senior writer for The New York Times before becoming the editor in chief of Kaiser Health News, an independent journalism newsroom focusing on health and health policy. She holds an MD from Harvard Medical School, trained in internal medicine, and has worked as an ER physician. For over a decade she has been responsible for a popular segment on National Public Radio called, “the Medical Bill of the Month.”

Click here for, "Where the frauds are legal: welcome to the weird world of medical billing," by Elisabeth Rosenthal from The New York Times, Dec. 7, 2019.

Ron Hoffman is the lead pastor of Mountain City Church, formerly known as the Anchorage Baptist Temple. Anchorage Baptist was founded in 1956 by Pastor Don White under the name Baptist Bible Church. The church by whatever name has been a launching pad for conservative Republican politicians in Alaska for decades, and with its 2500 members, it maintains its political influence today. Ron Hoffman’s first contact with the church was in 1984 when he enrolled as a high school freshman at its associated school Anchorage Christian School, now known as Mountain City Christian Academy. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Liberty University in 1991, Ron returned to Anchorage with his wife Crystal and worked in the church’s youth ministry for the next 25 years and raised three children. In 2019, Jerry Prevo retired after 47 years as the head of the church; in May of that year, Ron became lead pastor at Mountain City Church.

Watch Pastor Ron's testimony about his early life here.

Watch Anchorage Police Department Critical Incident, Aug. 13, 2024, here.