Via phone, I caught up last night with Baratunde Thurston, a Boston-based writer, comedian and vigilante pundit whom I first met on Twitter .  It turns out that Baratunde and I share a couple of common experiences, more than twenty-five years apart in Cambridge.  In this interview, he talks about his personal history, his approach to comedy, his podcast, Twitter, and the recent Democratic presidential debate.

Intro and outro music from "Going to the Sun" composed and performed by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and Matthew Lyon. From their Glacier Journey CD.  Used by permission.

I'm at a board meeting of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) in Northampton, Mass., where today we focused on the organization's new Native Arts program to support Native American artists in New England and across the country.  I was struck by the role arts and culture have played in preserving the identity of native people through centuries of incredible hardship.  Before dinner, I interviewed Pamela Kingfisher of LarsonAllen, who is working with the Ford Foundation to help create an entirely new national foundation to support native arts.  In this episode, she provides some context and emphasizes the importance of the New England initiative, also supported by the Ford Foundation.

Background music is taken from the live performance before dinner by Thawn Harris and his wife Elanor Dove Harris, members of the Narraganset tribe in Rhode Island.