How old are the footprints at White Sands? It depends on who you ask. Scientists are currently divided on this question, but the division is one that is propelling more research with the goal of determining whether humans have been in North America for 23,000 years or closer to 15,000 years.

The ditch weed, or Ruppia, is at the center of this debate. What can a plant tell us about carbon dating to determine the age of the footprints at White Sands? What are the pitfalls of depending on an unreliable organic material? Dr. John Taylor-Montoya, director of the Office of Archaeological Studies, and Dr. David Rachal, a geoarchaeology consultant, have a lot to say about the scientific debate about the age of the footprints—and about the research that needs to be done to resolve the question.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Dr. David Rachal’s White Sands research papers

White Sands field interview with Dr. David Rachal

History, Science, Mythology, and the First Americans article in Summer 2023 issue of El Palacio

New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

If you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio Magazine! Subscribe to El Palacio today.

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

What is art, and who gets to define it? The Convergence x Crossroads: Street Art from the Southwest exhibition at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque provides an entry point to this conversation.

Former National Hispanic Cultural Center curator Rebecca Gomez and street artist Strike have a lot to say about the challenges and contradictions inherent to creating a street art exhibition. By bringing street art into a museum setting, the exhibition challenges stereotypes, blurs the boundaries between gallery art and street art, and invites viewers to reflect on what it means to create art in the face of some of life’s biggest challenges.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Convergence X Crossroads: Street Art from the Southwest

Gil Rocha

Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas

South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque

Murals in Barelas Neighborhood in Albuquerque

Illegal? Art Show in Las Cruces

Borderland Jam in El Paso, Texas

Paint Louis graffiti art festival in St. Louis, Missouri

For further reading and more resources, view the full show notes.

***

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

If you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio Magazine! Subscribe to El Palacio today.

***

Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

Some stories persist for hundreds of years. La Llorona is one such story. Though there is much speculation about where exactly the original story began, it is clear that La Llorona as a legend and myth has staying power. What is it about the weeping woman that has captured our imaginations for centuries? And how has the story of La Llorona changed over time?

Irene Vásquez, chair of the Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico, has a lot to say about why this folk tale is so compelling and how the best stories take on a life of their own.

Mentioned In This Episode:

UNM Chicana and Chicano Studies

Southwest Hispanic Research Institute

Gloria Anzaldúa’s La Llorona story

Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa

COVID-19 version of La Llorona story as referenced in Regeneración: A Xicanacimiento Studies Journal

Roots of La Llorona story

2019 La Llorona film set in Guatemala

The Curse of La Llorona film

“Woman Hollering Creek” La Llorona story by Sandra Cisneros

“La Lloroncita” song by Rómulo Castro y el Grupo Tuira

For further reading and more resources, view the full show notes.

***

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

If you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio Magazine! Subscribe to El Palacio today.

***

Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

Let’s be honest: these are turbulent times for us all. No matter who you are and what your personal circumstances are, it’s likely that you may be in need of some remedies or poetry—or both! Santa Fe Poet Laureate Tommy Archuleta offers both in his new collection, Susto.

The book of poems weaves poetry about love and loss with meditations on the New Mexican landscape. Threaded between the poems are remedios for a broken heart. No matter your ailment, these remedios are bound to offer some relief.

“With each evolution of each draft, there's just this beauty that was coming out,” Archuleta says. “Because being asked, ‘Why the heck do you write about death so much? My God, all of you guys--all the way back to Dante.’ … I don't know what his excuse is, but I think the reason is because it's a way of embracing the present life that you do have.”

ENCOUNTER CULTURE EPISODES TO CATCH UP ON:

From Goatheads to Grand Canyons with Laura Camp

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Learn more about Tommy Archuleta’s readings and poetry workshops

Request a reading or workshop from Tommy Archuleta

Susto, poetry collection written by Tommy Archuleta, Santa Fe Poet Laureate

CulturePass
New Mexico State Library

For further reading and more resources, view the full show notes.

***

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

If you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio Magazine! Subscribe to El Palacio today.

***

Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

Dispelling misconceptions about street art, discovering ancient footprints that reconfigure our origin stories, and delving into remedios for a broken heart… A new season of Encounter Culture is coming your way October 2024!

Follow the podcast or subscribe in your favorite app and follow El Palacio Magazine on Instagram @elpalaciomagazine for updates.

EPISODES TO CATCH UP ON:

Science Fiction for Social Justice

Prison Art as an Assertion of Humanity

From Goatheads to Grand Canyons with Laura Camp

ALSO MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Tommy Archuleta, Santa Fe Poet Laureate

Convergence x Crossroads: Street Art from the Southwest at National Hispanic Cultural Center

Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA)

New Mexico Arts

Lincoln Historic Site

CulturePass

***

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

If you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio Magazine! Subscribe to El Palacio today.

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

What does the space history have to do with science fiction? More than you’d think! Among the many exhibitions the New Mexico Museum of Space History offers is one called Sci Fi & Sci Fact: Two Worlds Collide. As Chris Orwoll, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Space History shares, TV shows and movies like Star Trek and Star Wars were greatly influential to NASA employees. And that’s just one example!

On the flip side, contemporary technologies can influence artists, writers, and filmmakers. For Los Alamos native, science fiction novelist, and astrophysicist student, Ness Brown, the connection between art and science is clear: “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Ness Brown’s horror sci-fi novel, The Scourge Between Stars

MEGACON

Comic-Con

International Space Hall of Fame

Roswell Museum

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit http://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org

Museum of International Folk Art curators Patricia Sigala and Chloe Accardi are dedicated to co-collaborating exhibitions alongside community members. For the upcoming exhibition, Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy, this commitment to community feedback and engagement is particularly strong.

What began as a small exhibition in the museum’s Gallery of Conscience last year, will be opening as a much larger show on August 9, 2024. Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy will feature a wide range of prison art from across the country and the world. Local collaborations with formerly incarcerated Santa Fe artists and children whose home lives have been impacted by incarceration have been crucial to the process.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

EC0501: Listen to the Land: Art at Bosque Redondo with Dakota Mace, Daisy Trudell-Mills, and Kéyah Keenan Henry

Santa Fe YouthWorks

Sites of Conscience

Brown v Board of Education School-to-Prison Pipeline initiative

Love Pa’ Mi Gente Shine Through Me, by Jimmy Santiago Baca in the Spring 2024 issue of El Palacio

John Paul Granillo

Carlos Cervantes

Golden Venture

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org