Let's Chat Rebels October 3, 2024

What is Let's Chat Rebels?

Let’s Chat Rebels with Star is your inside look at the diverse and fascinating lives of UNLV students, professors, faculty, and alumni. Join me, Star, as I host engaging conversations with guests from all corners of campus—whether they're exploring unique majors, pursuing exciting careers, or sharing interesting hobbies. It's a fun, insightful way to get to know the amazing people that make up the UNLV community.

Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Hello and welcome to Let's chat rebels the podcast. Mates get to know your fellow students and faculty through fun and intriguing conversation. My name is Starr, your host of this podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you all are ready to hear from one of the amazing guests that I have for you this

Unknown Speaker 0:31
week. So I'm really looking forward to announcing this week's guest. He will technically be my first professor, slash faculty to be on this podcast, and he just so happens to be one of the professors I have this semester, like always, I'll let the guest introduce themselves. So guest, if you wouldn't mind, please state your name and what you teach here, here at UNLV, hi. My name is TR Whicher. I teach at the School of Journalism and Media Studies. I teach feature writing, news writing, urban journalism and storytelling and design. Yes. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited. Your grade will not depend on that. Yeah, that was actually one of my first questions. I was like, who's your favorite student?

Unknown Speaker 1:12
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So

Unknown Speaker 1:15
are you from Las Vegas? And if not, where are you from? No, originally. I'm a Midwesterner, so I grew up outside of Chicago. Oh, my gosh, I'm from Chicago. Oh, really, whereabouts?

Unknown Speaker 1:26
Well, I just know I was born there, okay, yeah, I didn't grow up there, but I was born there, and then my family moved out to LA and that's where I was raised. Okay, that's funny. I was born in Philadelphia, but grew up outside of Chicago, so I still think of myself as a

Unknown Speaker 1:41
Midwesterner, you can't there's a rule that if you grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, you're not really allowed to claim Chicago itself is where you're from. So So Chicago land. I did live in the city for a bit, but I've been in Las Vegas for

Unknown Speaker 1:59
17,

Unknown Speaker 2:01
1818, years. So 2006

Unknown Speaker 2:05
Yeah, so I've been here for for a while, for for for a minute. Okay, so what brought you out here to Vegas? My folks had retired, sort of semi retired, out here in the early 2000s and I was, I was working as a

Unknown Speaker 2:23
as a journalist, yeah, in Kansas City, and I quit a job. I moved to New York City because, you know, it's the greatest city in the world. You did live in New York City, I did for not that long right after, for about a year and a half after 911

Unknown Speaker 2:42
i and they hit in in while I was there. They had moved out here,

Unknown Speaker 2:49
New York is a tough place to make a go of it if you don't have a job, which I did not have. I was just, you know, bouncing around from room to room, couch to couch, doing freelance, whatever doing, like, journalism stuff out there, yeah, it was, yeah, it was freelancing,

Unknown Speaker 3:07
and, you know, applying for jobs. I went there very overconfident that it would take no time at all to find a job. You know, I'd put all my stuff in storage. I was telling my friends, this will take six weeks, you know, are you free? Like, six weeks from now, are you free? We'll get the stuff, we'll move it in then.

Unknown Speaker 3:27
And that never happened, you know, when I, when I left New York, I was,

Unknown Speaker 3:33
I had applied to graduate school, and I was waiting on on a job,

Unknown Speaker 3:40
and I thought, well, let me just, you know, save some money and, like, wait it out. Wait to see whether the school thing came through. Wait to see where the job thing came through at home, which was now Las Vegas, you know.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
And the both came through. And I decided to go to school. But school didn't start for eight or nine months, or whatever it was. So I found a job here. So you basically had the choice of either going to school or, like, starting your job. Yes, yes. Like a I was offered a job in at a publication in Boston

Unknown Speaker 4:18
and or I could go to graduate school, and it was sort of the I only applied to one school. It was kind of like, either really, I'm either getting in, if I get in, I'll probably take the opportunity, or if I don't, probably it wasn't meant to be. So I chose the school route, and so came out here just to, you know, past the time, and, like I said, fell into a job here at the at the weekly Las Vegas weekly,

Unknown Speaker 4:48
for that's my career had been spent in alternative weekly. So I'd worked for weeklies in Kansas City and for many years in Denver at the start of my so you'd been like.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Like, so many different places, couple, couple, yeah, wow.

Unknown Speaker 5:03
But I've been here for a long time, so I, you know, to so too. So 2006

Unknown Speaker 5:09
you know, got out of school. I got out of graduate school, came here, and

Unknown Speaker 5:17
Vegas is funny. You know, you just everything that sort of happened to me here, it's just stuff you kind of fall into. I didn't have a I didn't have a master plan, and which is funny, because I think of myself as is a pretty organized, like a planner type, you know, it was always like, Okay, where am I going to be five years? I didn't really have that. I started teaching as an adjunct at the community college, CSN, just to make a few extra bucks. And then I got back to a job came in. I think maybe it was back at the weekly somewhere with the Greenspun Corporation. And I, you know, worked locally for a while, but I kept teaching on the side, because I liked it. And sort of gradually, I, you know, made my way over here to to the journalism program. Okay, so where did you attend undergrad? I went to the University of Missouri. University of Missouri, okay, so that's in Columbia, Missouri, midway between St Louis and Kansas City. Oh, nice. So I studied journalism and English, okay? And then for your graduate, you said you went to University of Chicago, University of Chicago. So that was,

Unknown Speaker 6:28
I had thought maybe I was going to become a,

Unknown Speaker 6:32
I mean, I technically sort of am a professor. I'm a visiting lecturer. Is really my, is my formal designation? I don't have a PhD. But I thought I when I went to grad school, I thought, oh, maybe this will be the first step. I was in my early 30s, I'll go get a PhD in,

Unknown Speaker 6:50
and I could never figure it out. I could never and that was in at some point, you have to kind of pick a lane and, you know, commit and say, This is the discipline, this is the sort of specialty. This is going to go, you know, hard, you know, full out down that path. And I had a hard time with that, because I was interested in a lot of different things. And maybe, in retrospect, maybe I should have just picked a lane, and I could have, sort of,

Unknown Speaker 7:19
you found my way to those other interests over time, but it sort of felt like I didn't want to, I didn't want to choose, you know, so So I studied, I write a lot about cities, urbanism, architecture, city planning, that kind of stuff, design.

Unknown Speaker 7:39
And so I took a lot of classes and a lot of disciplines. I thought, well, I'll be some kind of city professor of something, yeah. But could never, quite, you know, pick that sort of specific discipline lane, and

Unknown Speaker 7:53
I was okay with that. I wasn't, you know, it's, I like where I'm at,

Unknown Speaker 7:59
I like where I'm at here. I like the teaching, and I still get to, still get to write, still am sort of a practicing professional journalist. Okay, so you still continue to write on the side, yeah. Besides, yeah, just professor, yeah. I contribute to to an engineering magazine. So I write stories about infrastructure, like if someone builds a big public works project somewhere,

Unknown Speaker 8:26
you know, like a new airport or train station, or, you know, some big a stadium, a library, hospital, those kind of big ticket kind of issues, I'll write about those that's really cool. So really cool. So it's good to it feels like I'm, I think I'm a better teacher, because I still have my hand in your passion on sort of doing the work, yeah, so I don't you know. So most of my insights for what they're worth in class are just derived from, you know, just years of trial and error and, you know, messing up and making mistakes and trying to write, tell stories a little bit better. Yeah, so I have a, you know, some sense of, you know, what,

Unknown Speaker 9:15
what techniques work, what, what techniques don't work.

Unknown Speaker 9:19
You know, when I wins a sentence that I think readers will kind of, you know, be engaged by, versus one where maybe you're just not being clear, or, you know, you're boring everybody. I'm

Unknown Speaker 9:33
kind of figuring that out too, because, like, I was telling you earlier, I sub so I kind of vaguely, like, understand, like, I mostly just teach, like, elementary schoolers cool. And so this week I actually got the opportunity to, like, be with a class for like, a long term amount of time. Like, usually it's just like, I'll be there for like a day or two. But this week I actually got to be there for this is, like my third day teaching them. So like, now I can kind of like, see, like, what is like working? What is it? And like, right, yeah, right.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Yeah, but teaching is hard. It is, it is. I mean, you realize, I would imagine, it's the same for you that you get in front of the classroom and a you can see everything, and you feel like students always feel like, you know, kids are on their phones. I mean, they're doing things where they're thinking like nobody, nobody. No one can see me, no one. But you see sort of everything. And you see every

Unknown Speaker 10:31
if you say something or make a point that you think is good, or, you know, you can see enthusiasm. If you make a point where everybody's kind of like, Dude, you're wasting our time. One's class looks like, you see, you see it all, you know, and it's that can be really, that can be really intimidating and daunting, definitely, yeah, just seeing like, yeah, I don't know when they don't understand something, but, like, you know, they don't understand something, but then they don't want to, like, raise their hand or something exactly, and then it's like, you don't want to, like, force them to raise their hand, either, like, say something if they don't want to, but Exactly, yeah. But it's fun if you see, when you see somebody who you feel like, for just a moment, like, they get something, or they find the language to sort of express themselves, or they have kind of a cool idea. Or, you know, it's always the most fun when the students kind of teach each other, and they're sort of bouncing off of each other, and you can just kind of step back and kind of let that happen, or when they surprise you, when somebody comes up with some take that you're like, Oh, I had a take, but your take is, like, a lot better than my that's, that's exciting, yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty rewarding, yeah, yeah, definitely, when I go into it, like, because, again, I'm a Sub, so I'm kind of just like, thrown into, yeah, like, so I'm like, Oh, this is what they're learning. And sometimes I don't even know. So then I'm just like, who knows? So do you know what the lesson plan is before you, before you come to class, or what they're doing that day? Because this week, I'm subbing for my friend, she let me know prior, okay, but normally, like, they let you know the day of, like, you read the, yeah, like the morning of So sometimes I'm like,

Unknown Speaker 12:23
sometimes I'm like, I'm not sure if I know how to teach this. So then again, I ask a lot of questions to the students. I'm like, Who knows how to do something? Can explain it? Because I only know so much, right? Yeah, right. That's, that's, that's an extra level of, yeah, of challenge, Yeah, most definitely. So do you want to become a teacher? No, actually, I mostly just got into it because my friend, she's into teaching, and she knew that I just, I was just, like, looking for a job that I'm able to offer some flexibility for me. And so subbing, she was like, that could be something that you could try out and, like, just do but I know definitely starting subbing. I don't see myself being like a full time teacher, mostly just because I feel like I can only handle it in like, short doses, like, I don't know I could do it. These are elementary kids, yeah, well, technically, I can sub up from kindergarten to 12th grade if I wanted to. But mostly I just grabbed her to the elementary schooler, because I'm just like, I feel like that's where I shine academically. Yeah. Are the kids well behaved? Or are they, I mean, because one thing about like college, you for the most part, like, you can just focus on the material, and everybody's kind of sort of an adult, yeah. But with like, literal, like, small kids can be, I don't know, it can be very difficult depending on the class. I've definitely had some issues, like, with a second grade class before, like, there's a couple students who just did not want to listen to me at all, and unfortunately, like, I had to, like, send them to another class. But the class that I have now, they're actually really good, and for the most part, when I'm teaching something, they like, like, they be quiet and like, listen, which is good. And then it wait. Like, it warmed my heart because, like, today they're just like, they're all like, when's the teacher coming back? I was like, oh, on Monday. And they're like, are you gonna come back? I was like, Do you guys want me to come back? And they're like, Yeah. And I was like, yeah. I was like, Oh, okay. That makes me feel like I'm doing something, right?

Unknown Speaker 14:19
That's cool. You know, it's funny. All it takes is one, one kind word. Like, you know, they have this thing rate my professors. Oh, yeah, which I used to go on now, I've learned better in subsequent years. I don't even know if anybody, I don't even know if anybody uses this anymore, but, but, like, 10 years ago, yeah, and I would go on and I'd like, read, you know, my, you know what students were saying about me, and boy, oh, boy, like, you know they say that, you remember, like, if somebody says something nice to you, like, you kind of take that for granted. But if somebody says something mean to you, that's that, like, wrecks your whole day, like you.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
That's the thing that you sort of hold on to. And it was like, Okay, I'll try to be a better teacher, but I got to get off this thing, because it's but, but, but all that to say,

Unknown Speaker 15:13
really, if you get one, if you feel like you've made a difference with one student, you know, and you know, the semester will come around and maybe a student will come by and say, Hey, that was cool. I dug your class, you know, thanks. Then you feel like, okay, all you know you can, yeah, it was worth it. You can handle, you know, you can handle all of, all the rest of it, yeah, no, that's definitely a good point, yeah, but I wanted to circle back to you said you had, like, many interests, right? So were you always interested in journalism, or did you have like, what were the other like, fields or careers that you were potentially thinking about? Yes, I always was. I was always interested in writing. I always wanted to be a writer since, like, fifth grade,

Unknown Speaker 16:03
I had one awesome teacher, Mrs. Fawell, who this was, like the year where I first had to wear glasses, and so I was very self conscious about that, and very introverted. And she was,

Unknown Speaker 16:16
bless her heart, she passed away a couple of, couple of years ago,

Unknown Speaker 16:22
she was wonderful. She's very encouraging.

Unknown Speaker 16:26
And so when I went off to college, that really was just a decision of, do I want to be a like a do I want to get an English degree or a journalism degree that that said to your

Unknown Speaker 16:41
to your question, the other things that I was sort of mulling over them, and I was always interested in architecture, and so I thought disciplines I was thinking about included architecture, sociology, Urban Studies, geography, I love maps and sort of, you know urban design

Unknown Speaker 17:06
literature? Yeah, and there's probably some program out there that I just didn't find that, like, Hey, you could have done all of these things great but,

Unknown Speaker 17:18
but all of those things were, were kind of instill to this day, you know, politics and rhetoric and how people communicate and talk to each other, and ideas about how to make cities better. You know, more equitable, more beautiful, more efficient. You know, Las Vegas is an interesting place to kind of write about and think about cities, because it's so

Unknown Speaker 17:47
in a lot of ways it's, you know, it's a typical American city, but in a lot of other ways, it is very atypical. It just kind of thumbs its nose at conventions of, you know? Well, here's how American cities operate, well, but there's Las Vegas, which does it differently. So it's, it's kind of an interesting place to to be, and this is an interesting time here. It's been a lot of growth in Las Vegas and cities, you know, some growing pains. But cities feels like it's kind of coming into its own. It feels like there's more

Unknown Speaker 18:24
civic pride here. I think the sports teams, oh, yeah, definitely, as much as I sort of feel like we all focus a little bit too much on sports sometimes, yeah, I do think as a, as a, as a thing that has brought people together. And that sounds kind of cheesy.

Unknown Speaker 18:43
I do think there's something to that here where you can kind of, Hey, that's my team. You know, there's always been a town where, like, you know, it's a town of transplants, and you follow your the team from wherever you're from. And in some ways, it's almost like you're still, like half of you are still in that place rather than this place. So it's nice to have, you know, to root for the aces and you know, the Golden Knights and

Unknown Speaker 19:10
even the Raiders.

Unknown Speaker 19:12
Are you not a Raiders fan? Well, I lived in Denver and Kansas City. Both of those are AFC West teams, historically, the one those teams hate each other, but they both hate the Raiders even more.

Unknown Speaker 19:24
And when I was a kid,

Unknown Speaker 19:26
I said I was born in Philadelphia. When I was about five or six, the Raiders played the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

Unknown Speaker 19:34
And I was at a he was with my parents, and they were with friends of theirs some party, and there was a the host, or some guy at the party was a big Raiders fan, and the Raiders won the game, yeah. And when they when they scored, when they did something, well, he was, like, really

Unknown Speaker 19:50
effusive with his praise. And I was just like, you know, tears rolling down my cheeks at like, five, like, you know, make the man stop. You know, that's.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
My teeth. So I've had a, I've had a long standing, you know, animosity towards the Raiders, but, but, but, you know, the longer that they're here, I'm kind of like, you know what? I guess they have, they have to be my team to, I suppose.

Unknown Speaker 20:16
So it's okay, yeah, sorry. Life goes on.

Unknown Speaker 20:21
You can't be that five that wounded five year old for your entire life. At some point you gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. Yeah, I'm not into sports like that, so I don't have a favorite team. Okay, thing, so I can't relate,

Unknown Speaker 20:34
but I do think it's cool when people have a passion for sports. Sometimes I wish I had the same passion, but unfortunately, none of my family has ever really been into sports. Oh, wow.

Unknown Speaker 20:45
It is what it is, yeah, fair enough. Fair enough is what it is. Okay. Well, I thought it was really cool that I think you're still like, through journalism, you're still able to kind of include all of your passions, like you said, like your journalism, like, you're able to include, like, talking about architecture and stuff like that. So I feel like it is really cool that journalism is very, like, I don't know the word. It's like, multifaceted, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's a great word, yeah. That's, um, fortunate in that sense that I get to sort of, you know, come to class and

Unknown Speaker 21:18
think about things that are of interest to me. Try, try to make them of interest to

Unknown Speaker 21:24
to students. And, you know, I

Unknown Speaker 21:28
mean, I still love to write. I still love storytelling. And, you know, kicking around ideas,

Unknown Speaker 21:35
you know, sitting down with students who are trying to figure out, find their way through some story that they're excited about, that they're passionate about, that's, that's really exciting. Because you can, you know, when you see them, kind of, they'll surprise you, like, Oh, I didn't know they had that in them. Okay, great. And you see, you know, when they roll up their sleeves and really kind of dig in and,

Unknown Speaker 22:04
you know, that's, that's really, that's really exciting, that's good stuff. Yeah, most definitely, I bet, like seeing like them be passionate about it, and then it's also kind of something you're passionate about. So it's, like, kind of something you can share, I guess, yeah, yeah, for sure, yes, yeah. So for the last few minutes of the podcast, I like to play a game interviewee that I have, and I try to like,

Unknown Speaker 22:28
I don't know, curate it a little bit, just specifically towards them. So I thought this game would be fun, because I'm assuming you teach a lot of Gen Zers, right? Yes, I think so. Do you happen to know any like Gen Z term slash like slang. I do not. I do not. I'll be honest with you, I am a I'm a Gen Xer, and so I'm a member of the sort of, you know, maligned, forgotten generation. We're between the baby boomers who, like, have all the money and power, and the millennials who everybody loves, who loves to hate, and they're the biggest cohort, and and Gen Z is just like, Oh yeah, you guys, you guys with the divorce parents and my parents have stayed together for 50 plus years, just for the record, but we were like, the latchkey kids And this sort of, you know, I don't know, snarky, you know, adults before we were, you know, fully formed adults, kind of, kind of folks, so we kind of get lost in the shuffle. I'm still not quite sure what the difference is between Millennials and Gen Zers. Like, I've asked folks, like, what? Like, I have a very, I have a sense of how maybe both are different from Xers, but I'm not that sure how they're different from each other. There's a slight difference. I think it's just an age thing, I guess. I don't know, but I guess it's just a slight difference in, like, interest and things like that.

Unknown Speaker 23:54
But yeah, going back to Gen Z terms. So do you have, do you have some? Maybe you can teach me here. Yeah. So I'm gonna give them to you, and I want you to guess what you think they are. I feel like, I feel like you can, like, use context clues of what this means. I'm all ears. Okay, so the first one I'm guilty of using a lot, and it's period, um,

Unknown Speaker 24:17
like, the end,

Unknown Speaker 24:19
like, I'm not like, like, that's like, that's like, that's all there is to say about it. Period, like, that's, yeah, that's, that's like, one way you could do it. Or sometimes, like, you can, like, like, let's put something that you did good today, or, like, something that you're proud of.

Unknown Speaker 24:35
I taught a good class today, yeah? Period, okay. Like, kind of, like, it could be, like, approval. Or like, I see, yeah, all right, period. And sometimes I just use it kind of as a filler,

Unknown Speaker 24:47
yeah. Okay, so the next one is bet b, e, t.

Unknown Speaker 24:53
That means something other than making a wager on some sporting event, yeah? So I'm.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
And that's like, that's like, the actual definition. But a lot of Gen Zers, they tend to just like, they'll just use it as like a sentence within itself, or like as like a reply. So okay, I found this on chat GBT because I was trying to find an example. But it's like, thinking, can beat me in that game that bet. Okay. That's like, Okay, let's see. Show me Yeah. Like, urges are green. Like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:24
okay. The next one I feel like, should be easy. Sus

Unknown Speaker 25:34
now I should know this somewhere, someone I know is going to

Unknown Speaker 25:42
listen to this. I feel like, I feel like, I feel like I've like, I've heard this, and I should know what this is, but definitely, like a shortened form of a word we like to give me, give me a hint. Give me a hand. Okay, that dude over there, he's kind of says, oh, right, suspect, yeah, or suspicious, yeah, no, okay, okay, yes, okay, okay, right, okay, that's good, yeah, I like that. Okay, that's good, yeah, so yes. And then the last one, okay, period, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:12
see like he's already using,

Unknown Speaker 26:18
make him a Gen Z or here, before this podcast is over. Okay, the last one, um, which I don't even know if it's popular anymore, but it's Riz.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
Riz, yeah, our eyes easy.

Unknown Speaker 26:32
This is another one I feel, I feel like I have heard, or, should know, give me a hand. Okay, so let me try to use it in a sentence. So, oh, so and so he was flirting, or like John was flirting with Katie over there, and he got a date with her. He's got that. Riz,

Unknown Speaker 26:49
okay, that's

Unknown Speaker 26:51
right, I get it. I get it by the context, charisma, yeah, no, it's literally a short form of charisma. Oh, yeah. Oh. Riz careers. F Yeah, yes. Up.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
Game is what we would, yeah, okay, he or she, whoever has game has Riz, okay, that's literally what it means. Okay, okay, okay, I'm gonna ask my wife tonight, if she knows anything I'm gonna have. No, I'm gonna say, Do I have

Unknown Speaker 27:21
I guess if you have to ask, the answer is no,

Unknown Speaker 27:26
she'll probably say, if you have to ask, the answer is no.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
Should have thought about that before I before I opened my mouth. I mean, you married her. These are hard to marry you. So that's true. That's That sounds like Riz to me. Well, maybe,

Unknown Speaker 27:42
okay, well, that's all the terms that I got for you. And I think that's like the towards the end of this podcast, did you want to shout out anything that you're doing, any classes or clubs that you're

Unknown Speaker 27:54
actually may i Yeah, a couple things. Real briefly, we are trying to next spring, launch a student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. So anyone out there who might be interested in that, you can contact me. Todd, T, O, D, D, dot Witcher, W, I, T, C, H, E, [e-mail],

Unknown Speaker 28:17
two, we are trying to launch a next spring to showcase student, work, stories, podcast, photography, video. But if that sounds interesting to you, you have any thoughts or think you might want to participate, please come see me. Lastly, every spring, I teach this awesome class called Urban journalism, journalism 366

Unknown Speaker 28:37
it's an elective, three credits. I call it the field trip class where we we get off campus and get out into Las Vegas, and we talk about its history, its story, ways to write about it, report about it, think about it, live in it. And that encompasses everything from sort of serious issues facing the city to all of the sort of awesome arts and cultural that we've got going here. But the real sort of onus of the class we take, I don't know, like five or six field trips, we just sort of get out of the classroom and walk around the city. It's a lot of fun. So if anyone is interested in that, please come see me. Journalism, 366 three credits, Wednesdays, it'll be one day a week next semester. Wednesdays for like, two and a half hours, something like that. Thank you for thank you for letting me make that, make those definitely everyone should go check out all of those different things that you're a part of in the classes that you have, because you are a pretty good professor, I would like to say, but thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. Thank you for the invitation. This is a lot of fun.

Unknown Speaker 29:42
Of course, that's a wrap.

Unknown Speaker 29:44
Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai