Minnesota native Rachael Kilgour's songs have been called "brave and humane." That's well put. Rachael is not afraid to write, or to sing that thing that needs to be said, even at the risk of making everyone in the room (including herself) uncomfortable. Many songwriters don't risk so much on a stage. Vulnerability takes courage. Rachael never shies away from the true thing, even when it's the hard thing. But then, so much tenderness and empathy shines through even the most piercing lines that it's impossible for the listener to be afraid of going there with her. It was a privilege to witness and experience this from a few feet away on stage this past August and September, on a Midwest tour with Rachael this year. Getting to hear her, from the best seat in the house, was well worth the challenges presented by touring in the age of Corona.Beyond that, you should know that Rachael is both a grand prize winner of the esteemed international NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition and a winner of the 2017 Kerrville New Folk Contest. She has been featured at NYC’s Lincoln Center, at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and by the ASCAP Music Cafe at the Sundance Film Festival. Rachael is also the recent recipient of an “Artist Initiative Grant” from the state of Minnesota, which she is utilizing to create new recorded work.We review Star Trek (the Original Series), Season 1, Episode 13, “The Conscience of the King." Topics include: Rachael’s background in the Arctic Minnesota and Canadian Tropics, the NewSong Songwriting Competition and how it was a diving board for both Rachael and I, in very different times in our lives, “creating art around it” or how to turn trauma into songs, Hamlet, a play within a play within a play, “night lighting” on the Enterprise, this episode not as a whodunit but as an examination of moral and ethical complications, "Star Trek Day" (Sep 8th), why was it so hard to identify Kodos’ body and how was Kodos able to kills so many people so quickly, the Galactic Cultural Exchange Project, Qo’noS and Minneapolis as sister cities, why does the Vulcan lyre use a Western musical scale?, the nine year tour, Rachael and Grace on tour in the Midwest during Covid, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, “Because survival is insufficient," why we should continue to make, appreciate, and support art in trying times, Kirk is just trying to straight male fix everything without asking for help from Spock or anyone else, the power imbalance between Kirk and Lenore, Martha’s weird reaction to Tom dying, Grace Lee Whitney’s last Original Series scene, Vulcans and alcohol, Lenore’s cringey porno dialogue, Kirk as Hamlet, Lenore as Ophelia, “Beyond Antares,” Gene L. Coon, (“the other Gene”), Nazis, the Nuremberg trials, Central and South America, the Catholic Church, Adolf Eichmann and “the banality of evil,” why didn’t they cancel the play at this point?, the origins of the Vulcan salute and “Live Long and Prosper” (LLAP), and Leonard Nimoy’s Jewish heritage and immigrant story.