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An interesting Podcast page

The initial podcast we will present here is an interview with retired educator Nancy Hobbs, who holds a PhD in Educational Leadership. She taught for many years in the Inland Northwest and has written several history books about the Long Beach Peninsula. The interviewer, Ed Anderson, is a co-founder of Alder Publishing. This interview was done for an Interdisciplinary Studies class at EWU.

An Interdisciplinary Studies Interview transcript for Eastern Washington University that was originally conducted between Nancy Hobbs and Ed Anderson April 29th, 2025.

Howdy, my name is Ed Anderson and I'm interviewing Nancy Hobbs, who is a retired teacher, an author, and holds a PhD in educational leadership. How are you doing Nancy?

I’m doing fine, thank you!

We have several questions for you today. Four, to be precise. They have to do with... education, multiculturalism, the environment, and the history of media as it pertains to today's current media. The first question is, how does education play a role in the field of publishing ecologically sound e-books and books made of recycled paper?

Well, education plays a big part in lots of things. If you are a teacher, of course education is a big subject, and you want to get the most out of your education so that you can pass it on to your students. That's one way education plays a role in the field of publishing ecologically sound e-books and books made of recycled paper. You also have to have the information about what recycled paper is. Of course, if you learned a little bit about nature and walking in the woods and that kind of thing, you know that wood is one of the things that they chop down. It's a forest product. They make paper out of trees, and so to use recycled paper is in a lot of ways, more efficient than regular paper.

That’s interesting. I did some studies, and they found that recycled paper with about 30% fiber content is what's good for sturdy paper that doesn't wrinkle, and there are different kinds of programs that publishers can use to publish books. Managed forests that are grown specifically for paper is one such option. And then there's recycled fiber content, and it can be a complex process, though it is worth the effort to put some research into. The process of recycling takes a certain amount of energy. E-books are another way to distribute books through the computer. It’s very common in college, to utilize an e-book.

You don't have to chop down a tree for that. You also don't have to drive to a bookstore. You can just sit at home and download your e-book. Just type away.

Now let's go to the second question. How does multiculturalism fit into the educational scope of these books?

Well, I think multiculturalism is very important. Our family had foreign exchange students, and the reason I thought about doing it was that we have three children, and the problem was taking them to another country to learn about cultures. It would be just as easy to bring children to our house to learn about culture, multiculturalism, and that kind of thing, rather than us going there. So that's what we did. We had foreign exchange students. One summer, our oldest daughter went to Spain and spent a month in Spain. We’ve taken in a lot of kids over the years.

Did she study Spanish in Spain?

Yes, though she studied it here initially. So that was helpful for her.

Then then you went to Japan?

We went to Japan. We got our way paid. A wealthy Japanese man who wanted Americans to know about the culture of Japan invited us. We had a good time. I think we were there over 20 some days. We saw three of the kids that we had in our home. So that was fun. They came to see us. Then one of the kid’s dads said, “You have to come over and visit us.” So, we had to go and spend the night with that family to, and that was fun. They took us around and showed us the cultural ways of the Japanese. So, really, we've learned a lot about cultures and mostly Japan.

Very good. in your teaching experience, how did multiculturalism become important for teaching a diverse group of students here in America?

You have a diverse mix of American students who originated in both America and from around the world. There are also foreign exchange students. There's quite a variety of cultures here in America.

What kinds of things did you stress in your teaching, all of these diverse students?

A lot of them were really excited about education. And some of the American kids were really inspired to go through the experience of relating to foreign exchange students. A lot of the kids from different cultures were really studious, and also some of the students from different countries would talk about their cultures. Once in a while we'd have a special day and they'd talk about their cultures in class, and we would explore.

What did they think of the school lunches? The American made school lunches.

I never heard any bad remarks about it, really. I think they were happy with it. Hamburgers, pizza, salads, spaghetti, toasted cheese sandwiches. Yeah, I think they were fairly happy with it.

That brings us to our third question. How does addressing the environment help children make the right choices in their lives regarding living in balance with nature? You actually taught biology; you studied biology and then taught biology. and you were affected by your experience, living near Long Beach and the ocean, the beach and the environment there.

Oh, yes. I love the beach, and it was always fun to walk along the beach and pick up critters or shells or anything that was marine life. And we had a couple of jetties, not far, and we could go there and look in the rocks and find marine life.

Is a jetty an outcropping of rocks?

Yes. And it kind of serves to balance the currents of the water. So, it's not quite so rough. And being outside on the beach was really fun.

Did you teach about the beach when you taught?

Not a lot about it. Because when I taught, actually, I taught in the Inland Northwest here. But when I was in high school, I took a biology class and the teacher had us doing different projects outside, and that was always fun.

How did teaching biology and the environment help children make the right choices in their lives. How does it help children to make good decisions?

I think that they can get an understanding of animals, living things and how they would treat them. It makes children aware of the forest and the ocean, the water. The colder areas, such as the North and South Pole. They would know about a different climate if they hadn't lived their whole life at the beach. They would know that it's kind of rainy here a lot. It would be this rainy windy area, but if they had lived inland, like Spokane, they would know that summers are hot.

How are the winters in the Inland Northwest and how are they near the ocean?

Winters are cold and snowy in the Inland Northwest. Once in a while we could have some snow at the beach. I can remember when I was a child. It snowed and the sand dunes were all covered with snow. I had a sled. I'd take it to the top of the sand dune and slide down. It was fun.

That brings us to our fourth question. How does a clear knowledge of past media help us make good decisions about current media? So, when I say past media, we did a study of charts in college, being a graphic representation of history, and they have changed over the years from marks on rocks to scrolls and books, to now utilizing computers to keep track of things. We also utilize multimedia, although, back in the old days before books, was the verbal tradition. Next, writing was invented, then printing after that, and then eventually television and the internet. Radio and movies also. How does say, for instance, if we wanted to know about some old author back in the 1600s, like Shakespeare, how is that past media in book form relevant today with computers, the Internet, television, movies and all of that?

Before we wrote history, we had to memorize stories. We'd sit around a campfire and tell a story. Our cultures still maintain that tradition. So, you sit around and tell the story and pass it on, down the generations. Then eventually there's some other ways to explain it or show it. I can remember when I was really young, my grandfather would take me to Western movies. So, I really had an understanding of how the United States had horses and ranches, things within that time element. And it was fun, and my grandfather had horses and cows and other things that kind of made it real to me. We saw movies about, Oh, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. You can see what they do or what they did by the stories that were passed on.

Early media referenced the times that they lived amidst, such as you were saying, early movies referenced cowboys because cowboys were popular in America, in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and even 50s, then we started the civil rights movement and people started growing their hair long. Now they do that again.

They take information about how to do your hair 40/ 50 years ago and apply it to today. So, I guess maybe that's one way it's similar. History goes in cycles. Old fashions become new fashions once again. I noticed the clothing even. You watch some of the shows on TV, they're back to where some of the fashions are the same now as they were 40 years ago.

Now, how does writing books about history, particularly the history of the Long Beach Peninsula, regarding the work of keeping a memory in a book or on the internet as an e-book or a website help people understand where they are now? Your books are really interesting. One of the books you gave me was about shipwrecks that occurred as boats tried to enter the peninsula where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean.

Yes. That's where they used to come and they still do. You could go over the bridge at a place from Oregon to the Washington side. You could look down and count the number of big ships that were taking goods up the river. And that was the same years and years ago. The only difference was there was no bridge. You got on a ferryboat, and you went from one side to the other. Which was fun. Now that they have technology for navigation, they don't make as many mistakes, like ships would see a light in the distance and think it was a particular lighthouse, and if it wasn't that lighthouse, they would end up on the shores.

How does technology help ships to navigate? You rarely hear of a shipwreck anymore. Whereas before you heard about it every once in a while.

Yes. Well, I think that some of the lighthouses have a light code and blink out their code and then the captain knows what lighthouse it is. They should have a pretty good idea where they are anyway. They have radio, they have satellite, all sorts of technology.

Yes, technology. Now we're going to go over some of the disciplines that we mentioned that we were going to address in our books for publishing, Earth science, philosophy, biology, and history, and I'm wondering what your opinion is. We’re going to address anthropology, physics and quite a few different topics. You can do research on the internet regarding much of this. And college libraries are a really good resource. What is your opinion regarding the disciplines and including a mix of disciplines in literature for people of all ages, particularly young people.

My opinion, I think is that it is important to have a large variety of topics, because many of our cultural ideas are based upon different stories, and the disciplines are a very important part of the process. And people get their ideas, I think, from looking at different cultures both in the past and in the future, while thinking of a story idea. So, if you appreciate live action movies, romantic comedies, science fiction, adventure, detective, and cartoons, some of them have really hopped around while some of them have gone back in history. They often include elements of the disciplines in an interdisciplinary context. Remember, that the disciplines are the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. I believe in my opinion it is to take those topics and mix them, so that children going into school will know a little bit more about each of them. That way they have a good understanding of how world culture is developing.

That summarizes our talk about interdisciplinary studies, education, multiculturalism, environmentalism and multimedia. Thank you, Nancy.

You're welcome. I hope it does some good