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In this episode, Bailey Flannery sits down with Captain Paul Lamarre III to discuss the winding life path that has led him to become the Executive Director of the historic freighter and museum ship the SS Col. James M. Schoonmaker; the Director of the Port of Monroe; a member of the Board of Directors for the National Museum of the Great Lakes; the President of the American Great Lakes Port Association; and, most importantly, a man who does not waste a single moment and a son who makes his dad proud. Their conversation touches on:

• Paul's childhood on (in) the Detroit River and the long Lamarre family legacy of captaining on the Great Lakes.
• How a cancer diagnosis in his twenties brought Paul back to these waterways, inspiring his life's work of championing the histories and futures of the Great Lakes maritime industry.
• Relationship-centered leadership and cultural change on the Great Lakes.
• How the maritime industry is embracing the responsibility and opportunity of environmental stewardship.
• The profound roles small ports like the Port of Monroe are playing in supporting green infrastructure and local economies, creating a "better quality of life and community that surround the waterway."
• The Sophia Loren of tugboats.

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Dr. Juanita Lyons and Steven Johnson recount how their father, Albert Johnson, founded the Motor City Yacht Club in 1960s Detroit to help foster a black power boating community when other local yacht clubs were exclusively white. Juanita and Steven also share memories of their childhood spent boating, swimming, fishing--living, really, on the Detroit River and the Great Lakes, as well as how this shaped their passionate adulthood relationships with these bodies of water. They also speak to the dramatic changes they have witnessed in boating culture and policing throughout the years (including "river rage"), ultimately calling us to respect and love the water and others who frequent it.

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Lissa MacVean is currently a researcher and lecturer at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, where she studies the physics of water in lakes, estuaries and marine coastal environments. But before she began her more formal studies of waterways, Lissa actually grew up along the Detroit riverfront in a commune based out of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, which was dedicated to high-quality, affordable housing, “shared economic lifestyle,” and racial integration.

In this episode, we explore Lissa’s childhood in the commune, how this connects to her present work studying the physics of bodies of water, and the lasting impact of the now-dissolved Detroit riverfront commune.