About Global Voices Radio
Global Voices Radio is a dba for the non-profit corporation, SPLAB (SPokenword LAB) based in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1993. Our I.R.S. 501(c)(3) number is 91-1618296.
For over eleven years we created weekly radio interview programs focused on the challenges facing our world with a unique whole-systems perspective. First as It Plays in Peoria Productions, then as Global Voices Radio, until the organization shifted its focus to the spoken and written word, we created programming to support more just and democratic approaches to the issues that transcend borders and to the ways communities may respond to these challenges.
SPLAB continues as a laboratory of consciousness using the spoken and written word to build community and teach people how to deepen their own consciousness through a writing discipline. On March 8, 2010, the Board of Directors voted to change the organzation's name to SPokenword LAB or SPLAB.
Click here for Mission, Vision and Values (pdf)
Many of the programs are available for a contribution.
On February 13, 2007, we launched Organic Poetry.org as an extension of the literary-oriented consciousness work.
About host Paul Nelson:
"...a genius interviewer and visionary" - Larry Dossey, M.D.
"(his) sense of the mythic is down and dirty as well as sublime" - Jean Houston
"...a real radio intuitive" - Mona Lisa Schultz, M.D., Ph.D.
"...An original thinker and poet of the airwaves." - Jane Leavy, Author
Paul Nelson’s epic Slaughter explores the history, mythology and ecology of a place, a meeting-ground for various cultural interchanges, both good and bad, in the tradition of Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems or W.C. Williams’ Paterson, but uniquely his own. It is a pleasure to read—enlightening, serious, funny, and overflowing with life.
—Sam Hamill
Here’s one more big hunk of the American shoulder, as Olson carved his from the North East, Nelson takes his from the Pacific North West. It’s beautiful time-space in new words.
-Michael McClure
A selected list of programming:
- Violence Against Women - Lisa and Mary Ellen Stone
- African-American Literature - Ethelbert Miller, Howard University
- Sustainable Food Systems - Tom Forster - Taproot Farm
- Same Sex Marriage - John Fisher
- TV and its Effects on Youth - Gloria DeGaetano
- Indian Activism - Russell Means, American Indian Movement
- Northwest Coast Indian Spirituality - Beaver Chief, Lummi Tribe
- Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks - Loretta Napoleoni.
- The History of the Decline of Wild Salmon - David Montgomery.
Click here to see the current SPLAB Board of Directors
Paul Nelson
Founding Director, Since 1993, (but not a Board Member)
A radio professional from 1980 to 2006, Paul Nelson researched, hosted and produced over 450 original Global Voices Radio
programs. He has worked as a on-air host, news anchor, and public affairs coordinator in Chicago, Seattle, Baltimore and
other markets. An award-winning journalist praised by his many guests as a thoughtful, sensitive and insightful interviewer,
Paul is a respected poet and teacher very active in the Puget Sound literary community. His two pubished books are
Organic Poetry (VDM, Verlag, Germany, October 2008) and A Time Befire Slaughter
(Apprentice House, May 2009), shortlisted for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature in 2010. Learn more about Paul.
Fred "Beaver Chief" Jamison
Board Member Emeritus from 1998 - June 8, 2001
Beaver Chief was a unique, multifaceted, uninhibited Northwest Coast Native American who came from a long line of Shamans and Chiefs who have passed the accumulated wisdom (known as the Traditional Teachings) from generation to generation for many thousands of years. He passed away on June 8, 2001 and we will miss him dearly.