In Deep With Angie Coiro: Interviews

Show #150 | Guest: Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. As did thousands of young gay people, Jones moved to San Francisco in the early ’70s, nearly penniless, finding a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual liberation. Jones met lovers, developed intense friendships, and found his calling in “the movement.” Jones dove into politics and activism, taking an internship in the office of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, who became Jones’ mentor before his murder in 1978. With the advent of the AIDS crisis in the early ’80s, Jones emerged as one of the gay community’s most outspoken leaders. He co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and, later, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the largest public art projects in history. | Show Summary: From longtime activist Cleve Jones comes a sweeping, beautifully written memoir about a full and remarkable American life. Jones brings to life

Show #148 | Guests: Will Durst- the New York Times calls him “possibly the best political comic in the country.” Fox News agrees “he’s a great political satirist,” while the Oregonian hails him as a “hilarious stand-up journalist.” This former radio talk host, oyster shucker, and margarine smuggler currently writes a nationally syndicated humor column, and his scribblings have appeared in Esquire, George, the San Francisco Chronicle, National Lampoon, The New York Times and scads of other periodicals. Hilton Obenzinger teaches writing and American Studies at Stanford. He writes fiction, poetry, history and criticism, has studied the uses of humor, and taught stand-up comedy. He’s taught on the Yurok Indian Reservation, operated a community printing press in San Francisco’s Mission District, co-edited a publication devoted to Middle East peace, worked as a commercial writer and instructional designer. Linda Levine’s career blends academia, performance, and coaching. She’s been a San Jose State University ins

Show #147 | Guest: Jewelle Gomez is a writer, activist, and the author of many books including Forty-Three Septembers, Don’t Explain, The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. The Gilda Stories was the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen United States cities | Show Summary: Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez’s sexy vampire novel. This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who “shares the blood” by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes,

Show #145 | Guests: Professor Charles Postel of San Francisco State University is an historian of political thought and social movements. His study of the Populist movement of the 1890s, The Populist Vision (Oxford, 2007), received the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award. He has taught at UC Berkeley, Sacramento State University, and the University of Heidelberg (Germany), and is a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. Dr. Paul Marcille is the President-Elect of the California Psychological Association. He has a private psychology practice in Palo Alto and is Director of Undergraduate Programs and a Professor at Palo Alto University. | Show Summary: In Deep’s first show after the election was about venting feelings, and ways to cope and conquer. You can listen or download to either version of our post-election show. The Radio cut is just as it was heard on our stations and streams. The audio has been trimmed to fit the stations’ broadcast clocks, and several profanities have been bleeped

Show #146 | Guests: Alan Snitow’s films include the award-winning “Between Two Worlds,” “Thirst”, “Secrets of Silicon Valley”, and “Blacks and Jews.” He was a producer at the top-rated KTVU-TV News, the Bay Area Fox affiliate, for 12 years. Before that, he was the News Director at Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio station, KPFA-FM, winning the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award for Best Local Newscast. Snitow served on the boards of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Film Arts Foundation, California Media Collaborative, Food and Water Watch, and as Board President of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA and a graduate of Cornell University. Deborah Kaufman’s films include the award-winning “Between Two Worlds,” “Thirst”, “Secrets of Silicon Valley”, and “Blacks and Jews.” She founded and for 13 years was Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest independent Jewish film showcase in the world. Kaufman has been a Board member of t

Show #144 | Guest: Dr. Daniel Levitin is a leader in his field, Dean of Social Sciences at the Minerva Schools at KGI in San Francisco, and a faculty member at the Center for Executive Education in the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. There is no question Big Data has become a dominant theme of our culture, or that there is more information available to us than ever before oftentimes used to deceive, misdirect, and obfuscate. Dr. Levitin shows us how to sharpen our critical thinking skills so that we can critically evaluate claims that charlatans, the media, and politicians would have us swallow without a second thought. | Show Summary: Dan Levitin: A Field Guide To Lies. The New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind and This Is Your Brain on Music brings us a primer to the critical thinking that is more important and necessary now than ever. There’s no more perfect time than election season to join us for an event that asks us not to passively accept statistical data and faulty argument

Show #143 | Guest: Jeff Chang is Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, at Stanford University. He is the author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation. | Show Summary: We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation – Jeff Chang in conversation with Angie Coiro. In these provocative, powerful essays, acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon’ Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing.

Show #142 | Guests: Dr. Debra Satz, Stanford University, is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities and Arts; Corene Kendrick, Staff Attorney, Prison Law Office | Show Summary: The Department of Justice is detaching from contracts with private incarceration companies. Prison activists laud the beginning of the end of prison profitization – but of course the practice isn’t restricted to the federal government. States and counties guarantee up to 90% capacity in the contracts they sign with private companies. When is a profit-centered model appropriate in a given market – and who gets to make that call? Is that a strictly philosophical consideration, or should it have real-world impact on market regulation? How do the answers play out in other democracies?

Show #141 | Guest: Fiscal Times columnist David Dayen recounts how these ordinary Floridians challenged the most powerful institutions in America armed only with the truth—and for a brief moment they brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees. | Show Summary: In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history—a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit b

Show #140 | Guest: Joel Selvin is an award-winning journalist who has covered pop music for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1970. Selvin is the author of the bestselling Summer of Love and coauthor, with Sammy Hagar, of the number-one New York Times bestseller, Red. He has written twelve other books about pop music. | Show Summary: Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day. Rock historian and music critic Joel Selvin returns to In Deep, with his new book, Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day. In this breathtaking cultural history filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s.

Show #139 | Guest: Geoffrey Nunberg is an adjunct full professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. His many books include the landmark Going Nucular, named one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2004 by Amazon.com and made best-of-the-year lists by the San Jose Mercury News, the Boston Globe, the Hartford Courant, and the Chicago Tribune. He’s a recipient of the Linguistic Society of America’s Language and the Public Interest Award. He also worked on the development of linguistic technologies for Xerox. | Show Summary: Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton is “wacky”. Clinton claims Trump is “dangerously incoherent.” In the political world, nearly every word is carefully honed to convey specific messages to a deliberately targeted audience. From the choice of vernacular to the number of syllables, the chosen language speaks volumes about America’s culture and subcultures – and the people who want their vote. Linguist Geoff Nunberg joins Angie to unravel what this election’

Show #138 | Guest: Rabia Chaudry, author of Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial. | Show Summary: In 2014, the podcast Serial, a spinoff of This American Life, captured the imagination of millions of listeners around the globe. Co-created by host Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, the broadcast uses investigative journalism to create a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. Serial's first season focused on Adnan Syed's trial, and subsequent murder conviction of his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. The reason Sarah Koenig decided to investigate Adnan's case in the first place was due to one woman, Rabia Chaudry. Angie sits down with Rabia for an unforgettable exploration of her astonishing story.

Show #137 | Guest: Dr. BJ Miller is Zen Hospice Project’s Senior Director and Advocate. BJ also serves as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and is an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the country’s very first outpatient palliative care clinics. | Show Summary: BJ Miller summarizes the lessons of his work at UCSF Medical Center’s Zen Hospice Project in two words: “Love matters”. Dr. Miller brings his life experience as a student of art, an amputee, and a Buddhist to his goal of making San Francisco a great place to die. The Project combines spiritual centeredness and palliative care to bring patients, their families, and their caregivers the space to embrace the end of life. While in college BJ Miller lost his legs and part of an arm in an accident. He went on to compete in the Paralympics, study art, and move into medicine, first in rehabilitative care, then finding his calling in hospice work. Angie and BJ wil

Show #136 | Guest: Beth Pratt Bergstrom | Show Summary: Did you know that a mountain lion, known as P-22, lives in the middle of Los Angeles, that the Facebook campus in Silicon Valley provided a home for an endearing family of wild gray foxes, or that wolves have returned to California after a ninety-year absence, led by the remarkable journey of the wolf OR-7? Author Beth Pratt Bergstrom joins Angie for a discussion of the evolving state of wild animals in urban environments.

Show #135 | Guest: Journalist Jon Carroll retired last November after 33 years at the Chronicle. Carroll collected a host of accolades and awards over his decades in journalism including the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Magazine Award. | Show Summary: Jon Carroll stepped into the shoes of legendary columnist Charles McCabe at the San Francisco Chronicle. He stepped down in 2015. In those three decades he churned out over eight thousand columns - writing, as he put it himself, "about cats, politics, children, religion, more cats, travel, word games and strange, almost unknowable things." He sits down with Angie to discuss his career and his life since retirement.

Show #134 | Guest: Author Antonio Garcia Martínez is a former Facebook executive, and also previously CEO of Adgrok, which he sold to Twitter, and a former strategist at Goldman Sachs. Chaos Monkeys:Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley is his first book. | Show Summary: Technology veteran and now author, Antonio García Martínez, discusses his new book, Chaos Monkey. Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder).

Show #133 | Guests: Sajid A. Khan has been a Public Defender in San Jose, CA since 2008. He has a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley and a law degree from UC Hastings. Imani Gandy, Senior Legal Analyst with Rewire and co-host of This Week in Blackness Prime. | Show Summary: Why has the verdict of one rape trial caused a multi-country storm of fury? The debate over former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner's sentence incorporates sexism, racism, classism, and a clash over how much leeway a judge has in the sentencing process. Angie probes the call for Judge Aaron Persky to step down or be removed, the unexpected reach and impact of the victim's statement, and the appropriate relationship between societal standards and the legal system.

Show #132 | Guest: Mary Roach is a funny and fascinating writer who first arrived in San Francisco in the early 1980s. She’s written six hugely popular science books including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013). Clearly a common theme throughout Mary's books is a literary treatment of the human body. When asked by NPR how she picks her topics, she replied, "Well, it's got to have a little science, it's got to have a little history, a little humor - and something gross." | Show Summary: Mary Roach’s new book Grunt tackles the science behind being a soldier. In it, Mary visits a re-purposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for facing combat wounds. She also samples caffeinated meat, sniffs a WWII stink bomb, and tends to the missiles on a nuclear submarine. Once you listen to this insightful interview, ou'll never see the art of war the same way again.

Show #130 | Guest: Ari Rabin-Havt, the author of Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics, where he carefully documents the carefully concealed, ever-growing industry of organized misinformation, paid to create and disseminate lies in the service of political agendas. His revelatory history of this public-deception industry uncovers the ideological groups shaping American politics with coordinated assaults on the truth. | Show Summary: Ari and Angie examined our post-truth political landscape: distortions of truth transformed into common knowledge by a powerful network of special-interest groups and politicians.