Being the first person to do something isn’t easy. There’s no blueprint for what you are doing, no conventional wisdom to fall back on when all else fails. There is also the pressure of expectations and all the people who are counting on your success. But it’s a way to show people what is possible. Being first means being a pioneer. And here in Connecticut, people are pioneering a wide range of fields every day.

GUESTS:

• Shelly Carter: Fire Chief at the Hamden Fire Department. She is the first woman and first person of color to serve in that role.

• Dawn Leaks Ragsdale: Inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Growth, a group created through a partnership between Yale and the city of New Haven that seeks to build opportunities for economic growth for all New Haven residents.

• Shiang-Kwei Wang: Campus President at CT State Gateway. She’s the first person to hold the title of “Campus President” and the first Asian American leader of Gateway.

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Oral history preserves the past by recording people’s real voices. It’s not just about recording the stories people tell. It’s also about the way they tell them. Oral history is about memory and humanity. It’s a form of history that anyone can be a part of.

This hour, we’re returning to our conversations with two Connecticut residents about the stories they have preserved through oral history.

Author and educator Mary Romney-Schaab talks about her father's experience as a Black person imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. And Amanda Rivera, a PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University, discusses the history of Connecticut's Puerto Rican communities.

GUESTS:

• Mary Romney-Schaab: retired teacher and author of An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: From Papiamentu to German. The book details her father’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II

• Amanda Rivera: PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies at Yale University. Her work explores activism and education reform in Puerto Rican communities in southern Connecticut.

This episode originally aired on April 25, 2025.

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For years, Dr. Jonathan Metzl thought about gun violence as a public health issue. His approach treated it like an epidemic and treated guns as a health risk. But as he studied a mass shooting that happened near where he lives in Nashville, he realized he had been missing something crucial for years— the cultural power of guns. This hour, as we reflect on the gun violence that has shaken the U.S. in recent weeks, we are listening back to our conversation with Dr. Metzl on his book What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.

GUEST:

• Dr. Jonathan Metzl: Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book is What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.

This episode originally aired on October 4, 2024.

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