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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/14894617/billie-holiday\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Billie Holiday\u003c/a>‘s life and artistry have been analyzed, scrutinized, interpreted and embellished more than any other jazz singer in history. But the first biographer to fully immerse herself in the world of Lady Day was a New York journalist and avid Holiday fan named Linda Lipnack Kuehl. For some eight years in the 1970s, Kuehl interviewed everyone she could find who had a personal association with Holiday—musicians, managers, childhood friends, lovers and FBI agents among them. Then, before she could finish her biography, Kuehl died: In 1978, her body was found on a Washington, D.C. street. Her death was ruled a suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13889923\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 270px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13889923\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2020-12-03-at-12.08.21-PM.png\" alt=\"Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who spent eight years trying to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday.\" width=\"270\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2020-12-03-at-12.08.21-PM.png 270w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2020-12-03-at-12.08.21-PM-160x124.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Linda Lipnack Kuehl spent eight years trying to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Kuehl family)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kuehl left behind a trove of notes, transcripts and some 200 hours of interviews on cassette tapes—mostly in shoeboxes, some labeled, some not. That archive is where director James Erskine first began pulling together the story Kuehl was never able to finish. His new documentary, \u003cem>Billie (\u003c/em>out Dec. 4 on VOD and in select theaters), is about both Holiday—as told through the voices of people who knew her—and Kuehl’s obsession with crafting her biography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d like to write something that is real,” we hear Kuehl tell one of her interviewees in the film, “that is really Lady Day, and people who don’t see her in any sentimental way, you know? Really, as she is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Erskine describes Kuehl as “a brilliant interviewer” who tracked down everybody from various stages of Holiday’s life. “What was extraordinary was it felt like an archaeological journey,” he says, “because it felt like we were excavating voices lost to the past.” Those now-deceased jazz voices include Count Basie, Charles Mingus, John Hammond, Jo Jones and Sylvia Syms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She excited me with just three notes,” drummer Roy Harte tells Kuehl. “She looked like a panther. It’s the only way I can describe it. With the most unbelievable face in the world,” marvels Syms, singer and Holiday’s friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To give the documentary a cohesive structure—and to make sense out of the 200 hours of interview material—Erskine says, “We had a discipline that people speaking in the film should only be speaking about an event that they actually witnessed … because otherwise the material was just sort of overwhelming\u003cem>.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKimh-iPd_0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of most provocative moments in the documentary is Kuehl speaking with Jones, a jazz drummer who toured the country with Holiday when they were both in Basie’s band. Jones questions whether Kuehl, a white woman, is capable of understanding the racism they faced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Miss Billie Holiday didn’t have the privilege of using a toilet. The boys at least could go out in the woods,” Jones tells Kuehl. “You don’t know anything about it because you never had to subjugate yourself to it. Never.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For \u003ca href=\"https://afamstudies.columbia.edu/content/farah-jasmine-griffin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Farah Jasmine Griffin\u003c/a>, author of \u003cem>If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday,\u003c/em> Kuehl’s interview with Jones is “extraordinary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I found his passion, his truth-telling, all of his wisdom … his honesty, his courage—I found him so compelling,” Griffin says. “And I was very happy that the filmmakers gave him as much space as they did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film reaffirms some oft-told legends about Billie Holiday: She could curse up a storm; had affairs with men and women (according to some, Tallulah Bankhead among them); liked to get high from cannabis, heroin and cocaine; and often surrounded herself with men who treated her horribly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re also reminded that when Holiday sang “Strange Fruit,” she was “fighting inequality before Martin Luther King, Jr,” as Mingus puts it. (Holiday sang the haunting indictment of lynching to white and Black audiences as early as 1939.) Mingus tells Kuehl, “That might be why the cops were against her. Not just junk”—alluding to Holiday’s arrest, in 1947, for narcotics possession, another event in Holiday’s life that Kuehl probed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her interview with Jimmy Fletcher, the narcotics agent assigned to conduct surveillance of Holiday, Kuehl asks him whether a big star like Holiday “would have been a target because it would have been a lot of publicity for an agent.” Fletcher concedes, “Well, not just for an agent. For the Bureau of Narcotics.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Erskine, Kuehl’s tireless efforts to uncover the truth about Holiday lead to all kinds of revelations. “You certainly get the sense that the more interviews Linda did, the closer she did get to this sort of underground, seedy world,” he says. In the documentary, Kuehl’s sister says the family does not believe she died by suicide. Erskine isn’t sure. “You do start to wonder,” he says, “if she was maybe doing a lot more than just uncovering Billie’s life, but also the political forces that wanted to silence her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=New+Documentary+%27Billie%27+Explores+Mysteries+Of+Billie+Holiday+And+Her+Biographer&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"title": "In 2020, Neo-Nazis and Serial Killers Have No Place in a Newspaper's Obituary Section",
"headTitle": "In 2020, Neo-Nazis and Serial Killers Have No Place in a Newspaper’s Obituary Section | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Thursday, Nov. 12, the obituary section of \u003cem>The New York Times \u003c/em>gave prominent space to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/tom-metzger-dead.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tom Metzger\u003c/a>, a neo-Nazi and the founder of the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Above the 1,000 word obituary, Metzger was presented in a black and white photo from 1980, sitting behind a desk, quietly examining paperwork. It was an image so unremarkable it took me a full minute to notice the shotgun propped up on the California flag behind him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-13882786\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final.jpg 180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final-160x176.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px\"> The very next day, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> granted serial killer Peter Sutcliffe—who mutilated and murdered at least 13 women and girls (police suspect the number is higher)—\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/13/peter-sutcliffe-obituary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a lengthy obituary\u003c/a>. At 1,150 words, it was accompanied by a large black and white photo of Sutcliffe wearing a suit. (This photo choice at least had the decency to involve the back of a police van.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no doubt that the deaths of both of these men warranted news reports. And outlets like Sky News (which presented Sutcliffe’s death through a lens that focused on his \u003ca href=\"https://news.sky.com/story/yorkshire-ripper-serial-killer-peter-sutcliffe-has-died-12131042\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">victims first\u003c/a>) and \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/us-news-race-and-ethnicity-oregon-california-portland-423e3e8fff78b45a39a7353f1a6702df?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AP\u003c/a> (which took the time to name \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulugeta_Seraw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mulugeta Seraw\u003c/a>, the Black man whose murder Metzger was found legally liable for) have proven such reports can give dignity to the victims of both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, the format of the newspaper obituary focuses on the individual who has died. It’s that format that permitted \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> to wait 20 paragraphs before mentioning Seraw by name. And it’s why \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> named only two of Sutcliffe’s victims after three full paragraphs about his schooling, family background and love life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> has repeatedly gone out of its way to present its obituaries section as hallowed, noble ground. Two years ago, it created “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=REGIWALL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Overlooked\u003c/a>,” a space in which the newspaper retroactively writes obituaries for significant figures that were deemed unworthy at the time of their deaths. “Since 1851,” the “Overlooked” homepage declares, “obituaries in \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> have been dominated by white men. Now, we’re adding the stories of other remarkable people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Vanessa Gould’s 2016 documentary, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVafxOpEReM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Obit\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the viewer is given a fly-on-the-wall look at the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>‘ obituary team in action. The staff is seen wrestling with fact-checking, deadlines and the task of figuring out whose lives to immortalize in their pages. The editorial staffers talk often in the film about who is “worthy” of their posthumous limelight, and approach the task with an unerring sense of respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I really admire the people I write about generally,” journalist Douglas Martin says at one point. “It becomes a little love affair in a sense and they’re important to you. And I think you bring that feeling, that warmth that you develop over time to all these people.” [aside postid='pop_20585']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fellow writer Margalit Fox adds: “It’s almost never depressing because we’re almost always writing about someone… who has died after a long, rich, creative, fulfilling life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary does make clear that the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>‘ obituary subjects are not always chosen for being likable folks. “The one thing all the subjects have in common besides being dead,” reporter William Grimes says, “is that their lives had an impact of one sort or another. The word ‘impact’ is infinitely elastic. That impact can be of world-shaking importance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there is a difference between writing an obituary for world leaders who committed heinous acts, and writing them for people who are unremarkable outside of their capacity to commit evil. Neither Sutcliffe nor Metzger were elected officials, or born into prominence, or people who achieved greatness. Neither would they inspire any moral philosophizing, like the “Would I have done it in the same circumstances?” discussion in \u003cem>Obit\u003c/em> about the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> obituary for \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/obituaries/01cnd-tibbets.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the brigadier general who dropped the first atomic bomb\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, granting Sutcliffe and Metzger obituaries this lengthy, with photos, in prominent newspapers, gives them a legitimacy neither deserves. And while Sutcliffe is not the first serial killer to receive an obit in \u003cem>The Guardian—\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/16/guardianobituaries.ukcrime\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Myra Hindley\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/15/ian-brady-obituary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ian Brady\u003c/a> both got one (Brady’s at least bothered to include the names of his victims)—the newspaper should have grown past the point of doing so by now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best practices in journalism are fluid and ever-changing. For example, after Anderson Cooper announced his decision to stop\u003ca href=\"https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2019/not-naming-mass-shooters-much-is-now-the-norm/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> naming mass shooters\u003c/a> for fear of inspiring more, an increasing number of journalists followed suit. If you apply Cooper’s logic to print in 2020, at a time when America is visibly wrestling with racial justice issues, it’s baffling to consider why the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> would grant a Klansman the column space it just did. [aside postid='arts_13879768']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does anyone actually care that the Yorkshire Ripper was also “a keen reader [and] showed an interest in ceramics,” as reported in \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>? Do we gain anything from hearing that Metzger learned electronics in the army, as detailed in \u003cem>The Times\u003c/em>? It’s doubtful. In 2020, if a newspaper obituary section is having a quiet week, wouldn’t it make more sense to honor some of the 1,500 \u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-nhs-deaths-healthcare-workers-covid-care-doctors-nurses-a9665386.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">British\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://khn.org/news/lost-on-the-frontline-health-care-worker-death-toll-covid19-coronavirus/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">American\u003c/a> healthcare workers that have died on the COVID-19 frontlines?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The editors are besieged by people who don’t understand being a worthy person and a virtuous person does not make you a newsworthy person,” \u003cem>NYT\u003c/em> journalist William Grimes says in \u003cem>Obit\u003c/em>. “Often they’ll get a phone call from someone saying ‘My uncle subscribed to the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> all his life and it was a religion for him. And it would just be so gratifying to the family if he could have an obituary.’ I’ll bet there’s 10 or 15 calls like that every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the state of the world as it is, I for one would gladly read an obituary about a normal life well-lived over one about an evil doer. In the case of those who are newsworthy solely for deeds that have harmed others, a news report of their passing would surely suffice. Not only is the warmth and life detail inherent in obituary writing an ill fit for such people, it frequently is not something afforded to their victims.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The warmth and life detail inherent in obituary writing shouldn't be granted to objectively evil people, argues Rae Alexandra.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n Thursday, Nov. 12, the obituary section of \u003cem>The New York Times \u003c/em>gave prominent space to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/tom-metzger-dead.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tom Metzger\u003c/a>, a neo-Nazi and the founder of the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Above the 1,000 word obituary, Metzger was presented in a black and white photo from 1980, sitting behind a desk, quietly examining paperwork. It was an image so unremarkable it took me a full minute to notice the shotgun propped up on the California flag behind him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-13882786\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final.jpg 180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Rae-Alexandra-KQED_180_final-160x176.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px\"> The very next day, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> granted serial killer Peter Sutcliffe—who mutilated and murdered at least 13 women and girls (police suspect the number is higher)—\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/13/peter-sutcliffe-obituary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a lengthy obituary\u003c/a>. At 1,150 words, it was accompanied by a large black and white photo of Sutcliffe wearing a suit. (This photo choice at least had the decency to involve the back of a police van.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no doubt that the deaths of both of these men warranted news reports. And outlets like Sky News (which presented Sutcliffe’s death through a lens that focused on his \u003ca href=\"https://news.sky.com/story/yorkshire-ripper-serial-killer-peter-sutcliffe-has-died-12131042\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">victims first\u003c/a>) and \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/us-news-race-and-ethnicity-oregon-california-portland-423e3e8fff78b45a39a7353f1a6702df?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AP\u003c/a> (which took the time to name \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulugeta_Seraw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mulugeta Seraw\u003c/a>, the Black man whose murder Metzger was found legally liable for) have proven such reports can give dignity to the victims of both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, the format of the newspaper obituary focuses on the individual who has died. It’s that format that permitted \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> to wait 20 paragraphs before mentioning Seraw by name. And it’s why \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> named only two of Sutcliffe’s victims after three full paragraphs about his schooling, family background and love life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>he \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> has repeatedly gone out of its way to present its obituaries section as hallowed, noble ground. Two years ago, it created “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=REGIWALL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Overlooked\u003c/a>,” a space in which the newspaper retroactively writes obituaries for significant figures that were deemed unworthy at the time of their deaths. “Since 1851,” the “Overlooked” homepage declares, “obituaries in \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> have been dominated by white men. Now, we’re adding the stories of other remarkable people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Vanessa Gould’s 2016 documentary, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVafxOpEReM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Obit\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the viewer is given a fly-on-the-wall look at the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>‘ obituary team in action. The staff is seen wrestling with fact-checking, deadlines and the task of figuring out whose lives to immortalize in their pages. The editorial staffers talk often in the film about who is “worthy” of their posthumous limelight, and approach the task with an unerring sense of respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I really admire the people I write about generally,” journalist Douglas Martin says at one point. “It becomes a little love affair in a sense and they’re important to you. And I think you bring that feeling, that warmth that you develop over time to all these people.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fellow writer Margalit Fox adds: “It’s almost never depressing because we’re almost always writing about someone… who has died after a long, rich, creative, fulfilling life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary does make clear that the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>‘ obituary subjects are not always chosen for being likable folks. “The one thing all the subjects have in common besides being dead,” reporter William Grimes says, “is that their lives had an impact of one sort or another. The word ‘impact’ is infinitely elastic. That impact can be of world-shaking importance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there is a difference between writing an obituary for world leaders who committed heinous acts, and writing them for people who are unremarkable outside of their capacity to commit evil. Neither Sutcliffe nor Metzger were elected officials, or born into prominence, or people who achieved greatness. Neither would they inspire any moral philosophizing, like the “Would I have done it in the same circumstances?” discussion in \u003cem>Obit\u003c/em> about the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> obituary for \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/obituaries/01cnd-tibbets.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the brigadier general who dropped the first atomic bomb\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, granting Sutcliffe and Metzger obituaries this lengthy, with photos, in prominent newspapers, gives them a legitimacy neither deserves. And while Sutcliffe is not the first serial killer to receive an obit in \u003cem>The Guardian—\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/16/guardianobituaries.ukcrime\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Myra Hindley\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/15/ian-brady-obituary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ian Brady\u003c/a> both got one (Brady’s at least bothered to include the names of his victims)—the newspaper should have grown past the point of doing so by now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best practices in journalism are fluid and ever-changing. For example, after Anderson Cooper announced his decision to stop\u003ca href=\"https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2019/not-naming-mass-shooters-much-is-now-the-norm/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> naming mass shooters\u003c/a> for fear of inspiring more, an increasing number of journalists followed suit. If you apply Cooper’s logic to print in 2020, at a time when America is visibly wrestling with racial justice issues, it’s baffling to consider why the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> would grant a Klansman the column space it just did. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does anyone actually care that the Yorkshire Ripper was also “a keen reader [and] showed an interest in ceramics,” as reported in \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>? Do we gain anything from hearing that Metzger learned electronics in the army, as detailed in \u003cem>The Times\u003c/em>? It’s doubtful. In 2020, if a newspaper obituary section is having a quiet week, wouldn’t it make more sense to honor some of the 1,500 \u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-nhs-deaths-healthcare-workers-covid-care-doctors-nurses-a9665386.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">British\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://khn.org/news/lost-on-the-frontline-health-care-worker-death-toll-covid19-coronavirus/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">American\u003c/a> healthcare workers that have died on the COVID-19 frontlines?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The editors are besieged by people who don’t understand being a worthy person and a virtuous person does not make you a newsworthy person,” \u003cem>NYT\u003c/em> journalist William Grimes says in \u003cem>Obit\u003c/em>. “Often they’ll get a phone call from someone saying ‘My uncle subscribed to the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> all his life and it was a religion for him. And it would just be so gratifying to the family if he could have an obituary.’ I’ll bet there’s 10 or 15 calls like that every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the state of the world as it is, I for one would gladly read an obituary about a normal life well-lived over one about an evil doer. In the case of those who are newsworthy solely for deeds that have harmed others, a news report of their passing would surely suffice. Not only is the warmth and life detail inherent in obituary writing an ill fit for such people, it frequently is not something afforded to their victims.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "In 'City So Real,' An Election is Only the Beginning",
"headTitle": "In ‘City So Real,’ An Election is Only the Beginning | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The spine of the Steve James documentary series \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>is the 2019 campaign that led to Lori Lightfoot becoming mayor of Chicago. But the heart of it is the conviction that no single election, no matter how hard-fought and no matter how high-stakes, is the single cause of or cure for problems that are systemic and longstanding. Director Steve James (\u003cem>Hoop Dreams\u003c/em>, but also fine films like \u003cem>Life Itself \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Abacus: Small Enough To Jail\u003c/em>) may not have gotten the story he anticipated when he started, but the one he tells here has arrived right on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s Chicago mayoral race turned into a real scramble, particularly after Rahm Emanuel decided not to run for reelection. A large field of candidates scrapped to get on the ballot for the February race. Fourteen of them did. Of those, Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle advanced to a runoff, and Lightfoot became mayor in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James doesn’t begin with a deep examination of the election, though: He begins by introducing the city. His camera lingers on porches, at protests, at the enormous Bud Billiken Parade. And he begins to introduce you to mayoral candidates who, even in a huge city like Chicago, are working hard at the kind of one-on-one retail politics—shake a hand, have a cup of coffee—that might seem obsolete. These candidates are operating in a city that finds itself in crisis in a number of ways, all of which community activists and organizers have long been trying to address. James resists any simple explanation of Chicago: There are scenes that illuminate the deep divide not just between white and black residents, but among Chicagoans across other lines: generational and experiential, to name two, as well as political.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve James is a mostly invisible filmmaker. What you see is what he shot, out in the city. He does talk to people and he does have them speak to the camera, but it’s done where they are, in the moment, rather than seated and lit in a studio. There’s no narration; there are limited words on the screen, other than identifications of people speaking. It’s an immersive style that’s well-suited to longer formats like a five-plus-hour series, because rather than pointing to the subtleties of the city he’s profiling, as he might have to in a feature film, he lets them show themselves like a slowly developing photo in a darkroom, and that kind of filmmaking takes time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQ85DEVpbc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, when the story begins, Chicago is deeply divided over the trial of Jason Van Dyke, the police officer who would eventually be convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The shooting and the trial, as the film opens, are a wound, open and painful. Police violence is already the subject of large protests; the city’s handling of the video of McDonald’s shooting, which happened back in 2014, is as much a focus of public anger as the shooting itself. Chicago is also being used as a talking point because of its high murder rate, by people who have little actual interest in its well-being and little knowledge of the work going on in its communities to reduce violence. It’s in this environment that this very contentious election begins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even though the election is a storyline full of twists, the film is deliberate and quiet. There’s a lot about \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>that reminded me of the work of Frederick Wiseman, the celebrated documentarian who makes long films that document sprawling systems by watching their small gears turning in close-up—he most recently made \u003cem>Ex Libris \u003c/em>about the New York City Public Library; \u003cem>Monrovia, Indiana \u003c/em>about a midwestern city in transition; and \u003cem>City Hall \u003c/em>about the city government of Boston. Wiseman has endless patience for spending, say, 20 minutes just watching a public hearing or a board meeting or a celebration of Veteran’s Day. While James doesn’t go that far, this is still a series about how small things are the engines driving big things, as much as the other way around. Who even makes it to the ballot, for instance, is determined in a series of dull institutional rooms where an administrator sitting at a little table under fluorescent lights decides disputes over the validity of signatures on a petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first four of the five episodes follow the election, from around the time Emanuel announced he wouldn’t run again through the election of Lightfoot (although almost no time is spent on the runoff; only on the initial campaign that landed her in the top two). The fifth episode, which is perhaps the most surprising, is an update covering the spring and summer of 2020, a year after Lightfoot was elected. When we meet her again, she has become the mayor responsible for COVID-19 policies. While she ran for mayor in a time of enormous anger over police violence, she remains vehemently opposed to calls to reduce or eliminate police funding, even as police responses to protests in Chicago are much as they are everywhere else. And the divides between residents of her city remain. A white guy waiting outside a barbershop that’s finally about to reopen after its pandemic closure is asked whether he’s been surprised by the unrest in the city. It doesn’t, he says casually. “That happens every time someone—one of them get killed. They riot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The balance that’s so effective here is that James brings out the scale of the election—the money and the attention and the effort that’s involved in winning it — but then demonstrates that even this massive undertaking is a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the systemic problems that need solving. The outcome of the mayoral election doesn’t do anything about racism on its own; it doesn’t do anything about police violence unless it leads to some other kind of change. As the film presents the election’s consequences, Lightfoot’s election provides Chicago with a somewhat different set of priorities, and a mayor who was willing to be quite aggressive in fighting the pandemic. But big things happening in the city are still happening: The super-expensive Lincoln Yards development didn’t stop. The relocation of a large scrap yard to a poorer, browner neighborhood didn’t stop. Police violence is top of mind for activists, much as it was before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson is absolutely not that elections don’t matter. These candidates were profoundly different in some respects; one was Garry McCarthy, the police superintendent who had been fired for mishandling the Laquan McDonald murder. Bill Daley was in this field, running to become the city’s third Mayor Daley. James spends a lot of time with the fascinating candidacy of Willie Wilson, a businessman and frequent political candidate who goes from church to church late in the campaign speaking to congregations and saying essentially, “Vote for who you want; by the way, I brought a large donation for your church.” And Lightfoot, as she notes, is a trailblazer, a black woman who’s also the first openly gay mayor of a city the size of Chicago. These candidates were plenty different. The series doesn’t question that it mattered who won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson of that final episode is that systemic problems are extraordinarily hard to solve, and they require discipline and commitment across years. Watching \u003cem>City So Real\u003c/em>, it’s easy to feel pretty glum about the likelihood that these profound divides, brightly illuminated in Chicago in this series but present in many other places, will ever improve at all. But at the same time, James tracks a number of younger candidates who didn’t become mayor, but who remain, a year after the election, deeply involved in advancing the well-being of their city and their neighborhoods. They have a commitment that is not exclusive to electoral politics; electoral politics are one part of a broader strategy that, even in defeat, they pursue. You can think of that as sad, that maybe people who \u003cem>really\u003c/em> care about their communities wind up abandoning politics as hopeless and move on to nonprofits or for-profits or academia. Or you can think of it as hopeful: a recognition that there are a million things you can do to try to bring the things you care about to fruition. Running for office is only one. Voting is another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s nothing that will take the place of commitment across years, commitment that shows up not only in times of crisis and not only from the people who are most affected and vulnerable. \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>arrives with the message that no matter what happens in any one election, it’s going to take a lot more than that one election to determine the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>City So Real \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>originally aired on Nat Geo; all five episodes can now be streamed on Hulu.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27City+So+Real%2C%27+An+Election+Is+Only+The+Beginning&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The spine of the Steve James documentary series \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>is the 2019 campaign that led to Lori Lightfoot becoming mayor of Chicago. But the heart of it is the conviction that no single election, no matter how hard-fought and no matter how high-stakes, is the single cause of or cure for problems that are systemic and longstanding. Director Steve James (\u003cem>Hoop Dreams\u003c/em>, but also fine films like \u003cem>Life Itself \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Abacus: Small Enough To Jail\u003c/em>) may not have gotten the story he anticipated when he started, but the one he tells here has arrived right on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s Chicago mayoral race turned into a real scramble, particularly after Rahm Emanuel decided not to run for reelection. A large field of candidates scrapped to get on the ballot for the February race. Fourteen of them did. Of those, Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle advanced to a runoff, and Lightfoot became mayor in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James doesn’t begin with a deep examination of the election, though: He begins by introducing the city. His camera lingers on porches, at protests, at the enormous Bud Billiken Parade. And he begins to introduce you to mayoral candidates who, even in a huge city like Chicago, are working hard at the kind of one-on-one retail politics—shake a hand, have a cup of coffee—that might seem obsolete. These candidates are operating in a city that finds itself in crisis in a number of ways, all of which community activists and organizers have long been trying to address. James resists any simple explanation of Chicago: There are scenes that illuminate the deep divide not just between white and black residents, but among Chicagoans across other lines: generational and experiential, to name two, as well as political.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve James is a mostly invisible filmmaker. What you see is what he shot, out in the city. He does talk to people and he does have them speak to the camera, but it’s done where they are, in the moment, rather than seated and lit in a studio. There’s no narration; there are limited words on the screen, other than identifications of people speaking. It’s an immersive style that’s well-suited to longer formats like a five-plus-hour series, because rather than pointing to the subtleties of the city he’s profiling, as he might have to in a feature film, he lets them show themselves like a slowly developing photo in a darkroom, and that kind of filmmaking takes time.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/QyQ85DEVpbc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/QyQ85DEVpbc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, when the story begins, Chicago is deeply divided over the trial of Jason Van Dyke, the police officer who would eventually be convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The shooting and the trial, as the film opens, are a wound, open and painful. Police violence is already the subject of large protests; the city’s handling of the video of McDonald’s shooting, which happened back in 2014, is as much a focus of public anger as the shooting itself. Chicago is also being used as a talking point because of its high murder rate, by people who have little actual interest in its well-being and little knowledge of the work going on in its communities to reduce violence. It’s in this environment that this very contentious election begins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even though the election is a storyline full of twists, the film is deliberate and quiet. There’s a lot about \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>that reminded me of the work of Frederick Wiseman, the celebrated documentarian who makes long films that document sprawling systems by watching their small gears turning in close-up—he most recently made \u003cem>Ex Libris \u003c/em>about the New York City Public Library; \u003cem>Monrovia, Indiana \u003c/em>about a midwestern city in transition; and \u003cem>City Hall \u003c/em>about the city government of Boston. Wiseman has endless patience for spending, say, 20 minutes just watching a public hearing or a board meeting or a celebration of Veteran’s Day. While James doesn’t go that far, this is still a series about how small things are the engines driving big things, as much as the other way around. Who even makes it to the ballot, for instance, is determined in a series of dull institutional rooms where an administrator sitting at a little table under fluorescent lights decides disputes over the validity of signatures on a petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first four of the five episodes follow the election, from around the time Emanuel announced he wouldn’t run again through the election of Lightfoot (although almost no time is spent on the runoff; only on the initial campaign that landed her in the top two). The fifth episode, which is perhaps the most surprising, is an update covering the spring and summer of 2020, a year after Lightfoot was elected. When we meet her again, she has become the mayor responsible for COVID-19 policies. While she ran for mayor in a time of enormous anger over police violence, she remains vehemently opposed to calls to reduce or eliminate police funding, even as police responses to protests in Chicago are much as they are everywhere else. And the divides between residents of her city remain. A white guy waiting outside a barbershop that’s finally about to reopen after its pandemic closure is asked whether he’s been surprised by the unrest in the city. It doesn’t, he says casually. “That happens every time someone—one of them get killed. They riot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The balance that’s so effective here is that James brings out the scale of the election—the money and the attention and the effort that’s involved in winning it — but then demonstrates that even this massive undertaking is a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the systemic problems that need solving. The outcome of the mayoral election doesn’t do anything about racism on its own; it doesn’t do anything about police violence unless it leads to some other kind of change. As the film presents the election’s consequences, Lightfoot’s election provides Chicago with a somewhat different set of priorities, and a mayor who was willing to be quite aggressive in fighting the pandemic. But big things happening in the city are still happening: The super-expensive Lincoln Yards development didn’t stop. The relocation of a large scrap yard to a poorer, browner neighborhood didn’t stop. Police violence is top of mind for activists, much as it was before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson is absolutely not that elections don’t matter. These candidates were profoundly different in some respects; one was Garry McCarthy, the police superintendent who had been fired for mishandling the Laquan McDonald murder. Bill Daley was in this field, running to become the city’s third Mayor Daley. James spends a lot of time with the fascinating candidacy of Willie Wilson, a businessman and frequent political candidate who goes from church to church late in the campaign speaking to congregations and saying essentially, “Vote for who you want; by the way, I brought a large donation for your church.” And Lightfoot, as she notes, is a trailblazer, a black woman who’s also the first openly gay mayor of a city the size of Chicago. These candidates were plenty different. The series doesn’t question that it mattered who won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson of that final episode is that systemic problems are extraordinarily hard to solve, and they require discipline and commitment across years. Watching \u003cem>City So Real\u003c/em>, it’s easy to feel pretty glum about the likelihood that these profound divides, brightly illuminated in Chicago in this series but present in many other places, will ever improve at all. But at the same time, James tracks a number of younger candidates who didn’t become mayor, but who remain, a year after the election, deeply involved in advancing the well-being of their city and their neighborhoods. They have a commitment that is not exclusive to electoral politics; electoral politics are one part of a broader strategy that, even in defeat, they pursue. You can think of that as sad, that maybe people who \u003cem>really\u003c/em> care about their communities wind up abandoning politics as hopeless and move on to nonprofits or for-profits or academia. Or you can think of it as hopeful: a recognition that there are a million things you can do to try to bring the things you care about to fruition. Running for office is only one. Voting is another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s nothing that will take the place of commitment across years, commitment that shows up not only in times of crisis and not only from the people who are most affected and vulnerable. \u003cem>City So Real \u003c/em>arrives with the message that no matter what happens in any one election, it’s going to take a lot more than that one election to determine the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>City So Real \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>originally aired on Nat Geo; all five episodes can now be streamed on Hulu.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27City+So+Real%2C%27+An+Election+Is+Only+The+Beginning&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘The First Angry Man’ Assesses Legacy of Prop. 13 Firebrand Howard Jarvis",
"headTitle": "‘The First Angry Man’ Assesses Legacy of Prop. 13 Firebrand Howard Jarvis | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>California’s adoption of “The Golden State” as our official nickname in 1968 invoked the Gold Rush’s promise of riches and the gleaming achievement of the Golden Gate Bridge. For many, it also referred to the gold standard of best-in-nation schools and highways. California was No. 1 with a bullet, in the jargon of the pop charts of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward 40 years to 2008, and the luster was gone. How we got there, and here, is recounted in Jason Cohn’s fascinating and insightful documentary, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://firstangryman.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The First Angry Man\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. The film airs at 8pm tonight on KQED and 3pm Monday, Oct. 19 on KQED Plus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were starting a family in Berkeley around the time when California was in financial free-fall, and the media was talking about California as a failed state,” Cohn recalls. “Meg Whitman was running for governor literally talking about the possibility of filing for bankruptcy. We couldn’t pay our bills, we were furloughing workers, schools had been cut and then cut more. It was clear to me that it wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved by tightening our belts further.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The schools were broken and infrastructure was falling apart. There was a ton of debate, with most everyone citing Prop. 13 as a central, unalterable factor. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like the conversation ended there,” Cohn says. “And everybody knew what they knew about Prop. 13, which was frankly not very much. It was this thing that had happened 30 years ago and it had cut property taxes. Depending on your ideological starting point, it was the reason you or your parents were able to keep their house or the reason California was in such dire financial circumstances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888087\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-800x520.png\" alt=\"Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"520\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888087\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-800x520.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-1020x663.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-160x104.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-768x499.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-1536x999.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0.png 1658w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Curious about the dearth of actual information about Proposition 13 and its architect and champion, Cohn tracked down a copy of \u003cem>I’m Mad as Hell\u003c/em>, the ghostwritten, self-mythologizing autobiography of Prop. 13 salesman Howard Jarvis. The proposition itself, approved by voters in 1978, amended the state constitution to cap—and effectively reduce—property taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I would make a cheap kind of DIY [film], my wife [producer Camille Servan-Schrieber] and I do all of the work, do all the shooting and all the editing, just do it on the cheap, maybe on credit cards, just on the California problem,” Cohn explains. “Then I read how scholars view it, as a watershed moment that divided two completely different eras in terms of how people think about the role of government. It’s much bigger than taxes, it’s much bigger than California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first era spans the New Deal, the Great Society and the War on Poverty, when government claimed a mandate to create opportunity and raise people up. That ended with the Reagan era, a period when, as the former California governor put it, government is seen as the problem and not the solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to be in this era,” Cohn says, “where there’s a very limited view of what government can do to create economic equality, to limit the savage effects of capitalism, the tendency of capitalism to create massive disparities between the super-rich and everybody else, and it all started here in California in 1978 with this rather limited issue that on its surface didn’t seem like it would be that big. But its impacts, its consequences have been almost immeasurable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prop. 13 fever, as it was called, became a national phenomenon. It particularly infected states with an initiative system, but if it could happen in a liberal state like California, it could—and did—happen anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-800x450.png\" alt=\"Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888086\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0.png 1916w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once Cohn saw archival footage of Howard Jarvis, an unvarnished, seemingly unsophisticated septuagenarian who loved debating, who cheerfully insulted his opponents and played loose with the truth in the service of telling a story with an emotional hook, he realized he had a main character that would hold an audience. (If Jarvis, who died in 1986, sounds a bit Trumpian, check out \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film also has a solid supporting character in Jerry Brown. The governor declined Cohn’s requests for an interview, though he is colorfully represented via period news footage as a smart politician who nonetheless underestimated Jarvis’ populist appeal and strategic chops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the happy “winners” of Prop. 13’s tax cuts are amply depicted in \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em>, the losers are represented by the University of California system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a big struggle for us in telling the story because we wanted to show what the consequences of disinvestment in the public sphere have been, and the public sphere is very, very large,” Cohn explains. “You have the option of trying to do a survey: Show potholes in streets and talk to police about being understaffed and show our aging water infrastructure. We could talk about forest management and how we’re making ourselves vulnerable to fires. If you tried to talk about all of them, it would just go on forever and have no focus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888085\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-800x450.png\" alt=\"Former California governor Gray Davis, who was recalled by voters, in 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888085\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-1020x573.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-1536x863.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0.png 1916w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former California governor Gray Davis, who was recalled by voters, in ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Galvanized by the state’s ongoing cuts to its contribution to public higher education, Cohn and Servan-Schrieber honed in on the far-reaching effects. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1978 when Prop. 13 passed, student debt in California was somewhere in the general vicinity of zero dollars,” Cohn notes. “I think it’s $1.5 trillion nationally now. That is a travesty, and a shadow on the economy and a tremendous burden to put on young people and their families. Everyone is affected by this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to illuminating the lamentable effects of Prop. 13 that, in fact, many people anticipated, the UC section has a second, important function: It pulls \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> into the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Camille, senior producer Stephen Talbot and I do tend to work in the history realm as documentary filmmakers a lot. One reason we love it is because you’re not chasing your tail all the time: ‘Oh, this just happened and we have to run out and film that,’ because your story’s changing day by day. When you’re doing a history film, you can almost write your script before you start shooting. That said, what’s the point in doing a history film that has no relevance to the current day? If it doesn’t tell you something about the world we live in now, there’s no point in watching it, and there’s no point in making a film that nobody wants to watch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"From KQED's California Voter Guide\" link1='https://www.kqed.org/voterguide/proposition-15-business-property-taxes,Proposition 15: Should taxes on commercial and industrial property be raised to generate billions of dollars a year for schools and local government services?' hero=https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/2020/10/KQED-Election-2020-Aside-Prop-15.png]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s fortuitous, if not prescient, that the filmmakers incorporated race as a theme. Without suggesting that voters for Prop. 13 were racist—although Jarvis wasn’t shy about using dog whistles to rouse his supporters’ enthusiasm—\u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> notes the growing disapproval for government’s mission to affect change by promoting racial equality through affirmative action and fair housing policy. People who are angry at the government are angry about paying taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohn’s decision to incorporate the role that race played in how people viewed taxation and government in the late 1970s has been vindicated by the events of the last couple years, which exposed the extent to which racial justice and economic justice are meted out unevenly in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very bad about what’s happened, but it shows that we were telling the right story,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> doesn’t propose solutions to the problems that stemmed from Prop. 13. It does note that just as California was ahead of the country in anti-tax fervor, we may now be leading the curve to adopt more rational positions about government and taxes. If so, more of what glitters in California will be gold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We did pass Prop. 30, which was a self-inflicted tax,” Cohn says, referring to the 2012 vote that raised income and sales taxes to pay for schools. “It’s \u003cem>very\u003c/em> unusual in the history of America for voters to beg the government to tax them more. And it passed by a very significant margin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Jason Cohn unearths the colorful saga of the infamous 1978 proposition, one of the first anti-tax measures in the United States.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California’s adoption of “The Golden State” as our official nickname in 1968 invoked the Gold Rush’s promise of riches and the gleaming achievement of the Golden Gate Bridge. For many, it also referred to the gold standard of best-in-nation schools and highways. California was No. 1 with a bullet, in the jargon of the pop charts of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward 40 years to 2008, and the luster was gone. How we got there, and here, is recounted in Jason Cohn’s fascinating and insightful documentary, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://firstangryman.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The First Angry Man\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. The film airs at 8pm tonight on KQED and 3pm Monday, Oct. 19 on KQED Plus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were starting a family in Berkeley around the time when California was in financial free-fall, and the media was talking about California as a failed state,” Cohn recalls. “Meg Whitman was running for governor literally talking about the possibility of filing for bankruptcy. We couldn’t pay our bills, we were furloughing workers, schools had been cut and then cut more. It was clear to me that it wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved by tightening our belts further.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The schools were broken and infrastructure was falling apart. There was a ton of debate, with most everyone citing Prop. 13 as a central, unalterable factor. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like the conversation ended there,” Cohn says. “And everybody knew what they knew about Prop. 13, which was frankly not very much. It was this thing that had happened 30 years ago and it had cut property taxes. Depending on your ideological starting point, it was the reason you or your parents were able to keep their house or the reason California was in such dire financial circumstances.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888087\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-800x520.png\" alt=\"Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"520\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888087\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-800x520.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-1020x663.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-160x104.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-768x499.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0-1536x999.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis03_1_0.png 1658w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Curious about the dearth of actual information about Proposition 13 and its architect and champion, Cohn tracked down a copy of \u003cem>I’m Mad as Hell\u003c/em>, the ghostwritten, self-mythologizing autobiography of Prop. 13 salesman Howard Jarvis. The proposition itself, approved by voters in 1978, amended the state constitution to cap—and effectively reduce—property taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I would make a cheap kind of DIY [film], my wife [producer Camille Servan-Schrieber] and I do all of the work, do all the shooting and all the editing, just do it on the cheap, maybe on credit cards, just on the California problem,” Cohn explains. “Then I read how scholars view it, as a watershed moment that divided two completely different eras in terms of how people think about the role of government. It’s much bigger than taxes, it’s much bigger than California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first era spans the New Deal, the Great Society and the War on Poverty, when government claimed a mandate to create opportunity and raise people up. That ended with the Reagan era, a period when, as the former California governor put it, government is seen as the problem and not the solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to be in this era,” Cohn says, “where there’s a very limited view of what government can do to create economic equality, to limit the savage effects of capitalism, the tendency of capitalism to create massive disparities between the super-rich and everybody else, and it all started here in California in 1978 with this rather limited issue that on its surface didn’t seem like it would be that big. But its impacts, its consequences have been almost immeasurable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prop. 13 fever, as it was called, became a national phenomenon. It particularly infected states with an initiative system, but if it could happen in a liberal state like California, it could—and did—happen anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-800x450.png\" alt=\"Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888086\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_jarvis01_0.png 1916w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis is the subject of a new documentary, ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once Cohn saw archival footage of Howard Jarvis, an unvarnished, seemingly unsophisticated septuagenarian who loved debating, who cheerfully insulted his opponents and played loose with the truth in the service of telling a story with an emotional hook, he realized he had a main character that would hold an audience. (If Jarvis, who died in 1986, sounds a bit Trumpian, check out \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film also has a solid supporting character in Jerry Brown. The governor declined Cohn’s requests for an interview, though he is colorfully represented via period news footage as a smart politician who nonetheless underestimated Jarvis’ populist appeal and strategic chops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the happy “winners” of Prop. 13’s tax cuts are amply depicted in \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em>, the losers are represented by the University of California system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a big struggle for us in telling the story because we wanted to show what the consequences of disinvestment in the public sphere have been, and the public sphere is very, very large,” Cohn explains. “You have the option of trying to do a survey: Show potholes in streets and talk to police about being understaffed and show our aging water infrastructure. We could talk about forest management and how we’re making ourselves vulnerable to fires. If you tried to talk about all of them, it would just go on forever and have no focus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13888085\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-800x450.png\" alt=\"Former California governor Gray Davis, who was recalled by voters, in 'The First Angry Man.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13888085\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-1020x573.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0-1536x863.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/fam_gray_davis_0.png 1916w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former California governor Gray Davis, who was recalled by voters, in ‘The First Angry Man.’ \u003ccite>(KCET)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Galvanized by the state’s ongoing cuts to its contribution to public higher education, Cohn and Servan-Schrieber honed in on the far-reaching effects. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1978 when Prop. 13 passed, student debt in California was somewhere in the general vicinity of zero dollars,” Cohn notes. “I think it’s $1.5 trillion nationally now. That is a travesty, and a shadow on the economy and a tremendous burden to put on young people and their families. Everyone is affected by this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to illuminating the lamentable effects of Prop. 13 that, in fact, many people anticipated, the UC section has a second, important function: It pulls \u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> into the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Camille, senior producer Stephen Talbot and I do tend to work in the history realm as documentary filmmakers a lot. One reason we love it is because you’re not chasing your tail all the time: ‘Oh, this just happened and we have to run out and film that,’ because your story’s changing day by day. When you’re doing a history film, you can almost write your script before you start shooting. That said, what’s the point in doing a history film that has no relevance to the current day? If it doesn’t tell you something about the world we live in now, there’s no point in watching it, and there’s no point in making a film that nobody wants to watch.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s fortuitous, if not prescient, that the filmmakers incorporated race as a theme. Without suggesting that voters for Prop. 13 were racist—although Jarvis wasn’t shy about using dog whistles to rouse his supporters’ enthusiasm—\u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> notes the growing disapproval for government’s mission to affect change by promoting racial equality through affirmative action and fair housing policy. People who are angry at the government are angry about paying taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohn’s decision to incorporate the role that race played in how people viewed taxation and government in the late 1970s has been vindicated by the events of the last couple years, which exposed the extent to which racial justice and economic justice are meted out unevenly in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very bad about what’s happened, but it shows that we were telling the right story,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The First Angry Man\u003c/em> doesn’t propose solutions to the problems that stemmed from Prop. 13. It does note that just as California was ahead of the country in anti-tax fervor, we may now be leading the curve to adopt more rational positions about government and taxes. If so, more of what glitters in California will be gold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We did pass Prop. 30, which was a self-inflicted tax,” Cohn says, referring to the 2012 vote that raised income and sales taxes to pay for schools. “It’s \u003cem>very\u003c/em> unusual in the history of America for voters to beg the government to tax them more. And it passed by a very significant margin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Craig Foster on the Underwater Journey He Took With His 'Octopus Teacher'",
"headTitle": "Craig Foster on the Underwater Journey He Took With His ‘Octopus Teacher’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>A few years ago, South African documentary filmmaker Craig Foster felt burnt out from years of working on arduous nature films. Needing a reset, he returned to the underwater kelp forests off the southwest tip of Cape Town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My earliest memories, my deepest and most powerful memories were of this incredible coast and diving in what I call ‘my magical childhood forest,’ ” Foster says. “It is one of the greatest ecosystems on this planet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster vowed to dive—without a wetsuit or oxygen tank—every day for a year into the chilly waters near where he grew up. The ocean was sometimes as cold as 46 degrees, but his body gradually adapted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Day after day, I slowly started to get my energy back and realized that there was this whole new way of looking at this underwater forest. And I started to come alive again,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The waters were teeming with sea creatures, but Foster says his encounters with one particular octopus stood out. Over a series of dives, the octopus began coming out of her den to hunt or explore while Foster watched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when I realized: This animal trusts me. She no longer sees me as a threat, and her fear changes to curiosity,” he says. “That’s when the real excitement comes and you think, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m being let into the secret world of this wild animal’—and that’s when you feel on fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster chronicles his underwater encounters in the kelp forest in the new Netflix film, \u003cem>My Octopus Teacher,\u003c/em> and the book, \u003ca href=\"https://seachangeproject.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sea Change\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the dangers of diving off the western cape of South Africa \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s called the “Cape of Storms” for a good reason—enormous waves and some of the biggest surfing waves in the world. And people are scared of sharks and big animals and that kind of thing, which aren’t actually really a danger at all. But the one thing that is very dangerous are these enormous seas. And I have come very close a few times to losing my life and I’ve been sucked into underwater caves. … So if you’re dedicated to diving every day, especially, you have to be very, very careful and try to read the weather very well, try to read the currents and then don’t venture into those very dangerous places during those times. There’s always some little place you can find to get in, which is relatively safe, but it took a while to learn exactly how to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why he chooses to free dive—without a wetsuit or oxygen—in these extremely cold waters \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You feel alive, you feel awake, you feel stimulated. But because you can feel that water on your skin, you can feel the slight temperature differences, you feel much closer to nature. You feel more amphibious, in a way. I like to ponder on the amphibious nature of our humanness and diving in this way, with this method, brings out that amphibious nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, it took me quite a long time [to get used to the cold]. … I remember shivering for about a year, every day. And then one day, I just stopped shivering and I was like, “Wow, my body is getting used to this. I can thermoregulate.” And I slowly started to figure out how to keep comfortable and keep warm. And of course, your body adapts. But the interesting thing is, if I’ve had a bad day or I haven’t slept well or I’ve had an injury, I go in the water and it’s very difficult for me to thermoregulate. If I’ve had a great day, I’ve slept well, I’m feeling strong, I can stay in for a very long time, up to two hours. But if I’m compromised mentally, I can sometimes be cold within 20 minutes. … I’ve noticed exactly the same with other people. The cold is a kind of a mirror to how you are feeling mentally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what it’s like diving inside the underwater kelp forest \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s truly like being in an underwater forest. … It’s like being in this magical other world that is very different to any world that you might have seen on land, and [there are] animals living in all different levels of the forest. A coral reef is two dimensional in comparison in many ways, and there’s tremendous biodiversity and very exotic animals. And because there’s so many predators, many of these animals are very, very cryptic. So you can easily dive in a forest … and not see an animal that’s been watching you almost every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The excitement for me has been to slowly uncover the secret lives of many of these cryptic animals. My incredible octopus teacher, she helped me in many ways to uncover many of those lives, because she’s in the middle of this food web. And to know her, you have to know so many animals that she preys on, and of course her predators as well, and then all the scavengers that come to her den. She’s this amazing teacher in many ways for the other lives of the animals in the forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13887989\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13887989\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/my-octopus-teacher_octous-walking_craig-foster_wide-bb00e7137b272974cd82f31538c650336bc6edb5-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The octopus that Craig Foster bonded with while making the 'My Octopus Teacher' documentary.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“The excitement for me has been to slowly uncover the secret lives of many of these cryptic animals,” says Craig Foster. “My incredible octopus teacher, she helped me in many ways to uncover many of those lives, because she’s in the middle of this food web.” \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> On the octopus “armoring” by covering herself in rocks \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I found is that octopus, they’ve got all sorts of ways of dealing with predators. And of course, you’d have known about the inking, you know about the whole camouflage and everything. But one of the last resorts that they do, if they’re in the right kind of environment, they will suddenly, very, very quickly pick up up to 70 shells and stones and sometimes even bits of algae and cover their whole body with them by turning their arms over their head because the head is the very sensitive part of an octopus anatomy. And if a predator bites or interferes with the head, there’s often a really big problem. So with the suckers, they pick up all these pieces and then in a very short space of time—in seconds—they cover themselves and they’re suddenly armored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what octopus suckers feel like on your skin \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’d be surprised how incredibly powerful the suction is, and they are covered in a kind of octopus slime that makes it adhere more strongly, but they are very, very strong. I mean, if you try and pull directly back when that animal is holding you, it’s really very, very difficult and you’d have to force it. So you have to gently twist and turn if you need to go up to have a breath of air, because you don’t want to pull too hard on that animal. So you have to kind of curl and twist to break that incredibly powerful suction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On watching the octopus begin to decline \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was obviously difficult. You get close to an animal like this and I was certainly dreading [her death]. But at the same time, I guess in some ways it’s better than a human death, because it’s quite merciful. It’s quite short. … When she gets to the end of her life, she becomes senescent, senile. So her brain starts to not work so well. So she’s not fully aware of what’s going on, and that brought some comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On still visiting the octopus’ den after her death and feeling her presence \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She had a few dens but her main den, where she spent most of the time, I went to visit that den today, this morning. It’s a great feeling to go there. I just dive down and kind of silently thank her for this incredible teaching that she’s given me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happens is once she moves out of the den, it soon fills up completely with sand. So it’s basically just a rock edge. But what’s so interesting is that other octopuses seem to be able to somehow sense exactly where she’s denned and they have made a den in exactly that same place. I’ve seen this at other sites as well. … Maybe they [have] some incredible ability to smell, because then they have to excavate and dig the whole den up; there’s no sign of it having been there. I’m sure in a few weeks or a month I will find another octopus in exactly that same place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Filmmaker+Finds+An+Unlikely+Underwater+Friend+In+%27My+Octopus+Teacher%27+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A few years ago, South African documentary filmmaker Craig Foster felt burnt out from years of working on arduous nature films. Needing a reset, he returned to the underwater kelp forests off the southwest tip of Cape Town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My earliest memories, my deepest and most powerful memories were of this incredible coast and diving in what I call ‘my magical childhood forest,’ ” Foster says. “It is one of the greatest ecosystems on this planet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster vowed to dive—without a wetsuit or oxygen tank—every day for a year into the chilly waters near where he grew up. The ocean was sometimes as cold as 46 degrees, but his body gradually adapted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Day after day, I slowly started to get my energy back and realized that there was this whole new way of looking at this underwater forest. And I started to come alive again,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The waters were teeming with sea creatures, but Foster says his encounters with one particular octopus stood out. Over a series of dives, the octopus began coming out of her den to hunt or explore while Foster watched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when I realized: This animal trusts me. She no longer sees me as a threat, and her fear changes to curiosity,” he says. “That’s when the real excitement comes and you think, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m being let into the secret world of this wild animal’—and that’s when you feel on fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster chronicles his underwater encounters in the kelp forest in the new Netflix film, \u003cem>My Octopus Teacher,\u003c/em> and the book, \u003ca href=\"https://seachangeproject.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sea Change\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/3s0LTDhqe5A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3s0LTDhqe5A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the dangers of diving off the western cape of South Africa \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s called the “Cape of Storms” for a good reason—enormous waves and some of the biggest surfing waves in the world. And people are scared of sharks and big animals and that kind of thing, which aren’t actually really a danger at all. But the one thing that is very dangerous are these enormous seas. And I have come very close a few times to losing my life and I’ve been sucked into underwater caves. … So if you’re dedicated to diving every day, especially, you have to be very, very careful and try to read the weather very well, try to read the currents and then don’t venture into those very dangerous places during those times. There’s always some little place you can find to get in, which is relatively safe, but it took a while to learn exactly how to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why he chooses to free dive—without a wetsuit or oxygen—in these extremely cold waters \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You feel alive, you feel awake, you feel stimulated. But because you can feel that water on your skin, you can feel the slight temperature differences, you feel much closer to nature. You feel more amphibious, in a way. I like to ponder on the amphibious nature of our humanness and diving in this way, with this method, brings out that amphibious nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, it took me quite a long time [to get used to the cold]. … I remember shivering for about a year, every day. And then one day, I just stopped shivering and I was like, “Wow, my body is getting used to this. I can thermoregulate.” And I slowly started to figure out how to keep comfortable and keep warm. And of course, your body adapts. But the interesting thing is, if I’ve had a bad day or I haven’t slept well or I’ve had an injury, I go in the water and it’s very difficult for me to thermoregulate. If I’ve had a great day, I’ve slept well, I’m feeling strong, I can stay in for a very long time, up to two hours. But if I’m compromised mentally, I can sometimes be cold within 20 minutes. … I’ve noticed exactly the same with other people. The cold is a kind of a mirror to how you are feeling mentally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what it’s like diving inside the underwater kelp forest \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s truly like being in an underwater forest. … It’s like being in this magical other world that is very different to any world that you might have seen on land, and [there are] animals living in all different levels of the forest. A coral reef is two dimensional in comparison in many ways, and there’s tremendous biodiversity and very exotic animals. And because there’s so many predators, many of these animals are very, very cryptic. So you can easily dive in a forest … and not see an animal that’s been watching you almost every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The excitement for me has been to slowly uncover the secret lives of many of these cryptic animals. My incredible octopus teacher, she helped me in many ways to uncover many of those lives, because she’s in the middle of this food web. And to know her, you have to know so many animals that she preys on, and of course her predators as well, and then all the scavengers that come to her den. She’s this amazing teacher in many ways for the other lives of the animals in the forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13887989\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13887989\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/my-octopus-teacher_octous-walking_craig-foster_wide-bb00e7137b272974cd82f31538c650336bc6edb5-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The octopus that Craig Foster bonded with while making the 'My Octopus Teacher' documentary.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“The excitement for me has been to slowly uncover the secret lives of many of these cryptic animals,” says Craig Foster. “My incredible octopus teacher, she helped me in many ways to uncover many of those lives, because she’s in the middle of this food web.” \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> On the octopus “armoring” by covering herself in rocks \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I found is that octopus, they’ve got all sorts of ways of dealing with predators. And of course, you’d have known about the inking, you know about the whole camouflage and everything. But one of the last resorts that they do, if they’re in the right kind of environment, they will suddenly, very, very quickly pick up up to 70 shells and stones and sometimes even bits of algae and cover their whole body with them by turning their arms over their head because the head is the very sensitive part of an octopus anatomy. And if a predator bites or interferes with the head, there’s often a really big problem. So with the suckers, they pick up all these pieces and then in a very short space of time—in seconds—they cover themselves and they’re suddenly armored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what octopus suckers feel like on your skin \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’d be surprised how incredibly powerful the suction is, and they are covered in a kind of octopus slime that makes it adhere more strongly, but they are very, very strong. I mean, if you try and pull directly back when that animal is holding you, it’s really very, very difficult and you’d have to force it. So you have to gently twist and turn if you need to go up to have a breath of air, because you don’t want to pull too hard on that animal. So you have to kind of curl and twist to break that incredibly powerful suction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On watching the octopus begin to decline \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was obviously difficult. You get close to an animal like this and I was certainly dreading [her death]. But at the same time, I guess in some ways it’s better than a human death, because it’s quite merciful. It’s quite short. … When she gets to the end of her life, she becomes senescent, senile. So her brain starts to not work so well. So she’s not fully aware of what’s going on, and that brought some comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On still visiting the octopus’ den after her death and feeling her presence \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She had a few dens but her main den, where she spent most of the time, I went to visit that den today, this morning. It’s a great feeling to go there. I just dive down and kind of silently thank her for this incredible teaching that she’s given me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happens is once she moves out of the den, it soon fills up completely with sand. So it’s basically just a rock edge. But what’s so interesting is that other octopuses seem to be able to somehow sense exactly where she’s denned and they have made a den in exactly that same place. I’ve seen this at other sites as well. … Maybe they [have] some incredible ability to smell, because then they have to excavate and dig the whole den up; there’s no sign of it having been there. I’m sure in a few weeks or a month I will find another octopus in exactly that same place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Filmmaker+Finds+An+Unlikely+Underwater+Friend+In+%27My+Octopus+Teacher%27+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Totally Under Control' and 'Time' are Two Very 2020 Documentaries",
"headTitle": "‘Totally Under Control’ and ‘Time’ are Two Very 2020 Documentaries | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>I doubt I’m alone when I say that this year has been a blur: Sometimes it feels like only yesterday that I was going to the office or heading outside without a mask, and sometimes it feels as though an eternity has passed. This past week I watched two absorbing new documentaries that both seem to bend and distort our sense of the passage of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of them, which is actually called \u003cem>Time\u003c/em>, spans more than two decades. The other one, titled \u003cem>Totally Under Control,\u003c/em> focuses on the very moment we’re living in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Totally Under Control\u003c/em> is the latest documentary from the prolific Alex Gibney, who directed it with Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan. It’s a cool but damning account of our government’s response to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/816707182/map-tracking-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">COVID-19 outbreak \u003c/a>that crams several months’ worth of increasingly grim headlines into two hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzTzgf9i4vw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it’s as persuasive and well researched as you’d expect from Gibney, the director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/03/26/395579453/church-of-scientology-calls-new-hbo-documentary-bigoted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Going Clear \u003c/em>\u003c/a>and \u003cem>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room\u003c/em>, it might feel redundant to anyone who’s been glued to the news lately. But it’s still bracing to see the details laid out as forcefully and with such measured anger as they are here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using socially distanced camera setups to ensure everyone’s safety, the filmmakers sat down with journalists, doctors, health experts and government officials. Nearly all of them agree that a deadly airborne virus capable of asymptomatic transmission would always have posed a formidable threat in the U.S. But they also agree it was the president’s relentless downplaying of that threat and his disdain for science that led us to where we are now, with a devastated economy and more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/09/22/911934489/enormous-and-tragic-u-s-has-lost-more-than-200-000-people-to-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">200,000 Americans dead.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie focuses on several key areas where efforts to fight the virus broke down, starting with the technical flaws and bureaucratic logjams, involving the CDC and the FDA, that frustrated early attempts at mass testing. This was followed by \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820795727/can-the-u-s-crowdsource-its-way-out-of-a-mask-shortage-no-but-it-still-helps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">shortages of protective equipment\u003c/a> for frontline healthcare workers, not helped by the Trump administration’s refusal to intervene on the states’ behalf. And then of course there’s the ongoing nationwide debate over \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/21/880832213/yes-wearing-masks-helps-heres-why\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">face coverings\u003c/a>; a medical supply executive who says he voted for Trump in 2016 expresses shock that wearing a mask in a pandemic could have become so intensely politicized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glut of information presented here is dizzying but lucid. We hear about the sidelining of knowledgeable scientists like the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier and federal vaccine expert \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/06/920985099/government-scientist-tops-up-whistle-blower-complaint-and-quits-nih\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Rick Bright \u003c/a>when they tried to sound the alarm. And then there’s the irony that Trump himself \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/03/919898777/timeline-what-we-know-of-president-trumps-covid-19-diagnosis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tested positive\u003c/a> for the virus just a day after this movie was completed. That’s how fast the news is these days: Even a documentary this urgent, and this obviously timed for the upcoming election, can’t help but feel already out of date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with its occasional repetitions and oversights, \u003cem>Totally Under Control \u003c/em>gripped me from moment to moment. In a very different way, so did \u003cem>Time\u003c/em>, the first documentary feature directed by Garrett Bradley. It’s a co-production between \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> and Amazon Studios, and it’s one of the most sublime and beautiful documentaries I’ve seen this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of \u003cem>Time \u003c/em>is a Black woman named Sibil Fox Richardson, who goes by Fox Rich. In 1997 she planned to open a hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, La., with her husband, Rob. When an investor backed out, the desperate couple tried to rob a bank. No one was hurt and no money was stolen. Rich, who drove the getaway car, got a plea bargain and served three and a half years. Rob was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 60 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq6Hh07oLvs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rich began shooting videos of herself and of their sons so Rob could catch up with all the little moments he’d missed: birthdays and graduations, amusement park trips and pool parties. It added up to a treasure trove of home-movie footage that Rich handed over to Bradley several years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the same time, Bradley began filming new footage of Rich, now a successful businesswoman; her now-grown children; and her tireless efforts to secure her husband’s release. The result is this sprawling yet intensely intimate chronicle, shot in black-and-white, of a couple’s enduring love and a family’s 21-year pursuit of justice. In one moving scene, Rich speaks about her thwarted hopes that Rob would be released in time to see his sons grow up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Time \u003c/em>is about the cruelty of growing up without a father and growing older without a husband. It’s also about the injustice of a prison system that Rich has spent much of the past two decades speaking out against—by filing appeals and making phone calls on her husband’s behalf, and by giving speeches for the benefit of other people in similar situations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without revealing the outcome of the story, I’ll say that I found it emotionally overwhelming both times I watched the movie—at Sundance earlier this year, where it won a directing prize, and again at home this past week. It runs a short 81 minutes, but by the end, you feel so acutely connected to this family’s joy and pain that years really do seem to have passed. I cherished every moment of this movie, because each one stands in for so many others that have been lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Totally+Under+Control%27+And+%27Time%27+Are+Two+Very+2020+Documentaries&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I doubt I’m alone when I say that this year has been a blur: Sometimes it feels like only yesterday that I was going to the office or heading outside without a mask, and sometimes it feels as though an eternity has passed. This past week I watched two absorbing new documentaries that both seem to bend and distort our sense of the passage of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of them, which is actually called \u003cem>Time\u003c/em>, spans more than two decades. The other one, titled \u003cem>Totally Under Control,\u003c/em> focuses on the very moment we’re living in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Totally Under Control\u003c/em> is the latest documentary from the prolific Alex Gibney, who directed it with Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan. It’s a cool but damning account of our government’s response to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/816707182/map-tracking-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">COVID-19 outbreak \u003c/a>that crams several months’ worth of increasingly grim headlines into two hours.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/YzTzgf9i4vw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/YzTzgf9i4vw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>While it’s as persuasive and well researched as you’d expect from Gibney, the director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/03/26/395579453/church-of-scientology-calls-new-hbo-documentary-bigoted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Going Clear \u003c/em>\u003c/a>and \u003cem>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room\u003c/em>, it might feel redundant to anyone who’s been glued to the news lately. But it’s still bracing to see the details laid out as forcefully and with such measured anger as they are here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using socially distanced camera setups to ensure everyone’s safety, the filmmakers sat down with journalists, doctors, health experts and government officials. Nearly all of them agree that a deadly airborne virus capable of asymptomatic transmission would always have posed a formidable threat in the U.S. But they also agree it was the president’s relentless downplaying of that threat and his disdain for science that led us to where we are now, with a devastated economy and more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/09/22/911934489/enormous-and-tragic-u-s-has-lost-more-than-200-000-people-to-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">200,000 Americans dead.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie focuses on several key areas where efforts to fight the virus broke down, starting with the technical flaws and bureaucratic logjams, involving the CDC and the FDA, that frustrated early attempts at mass testing. This was followed by \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820795727/can-the-u-s-crowdsource-its-way-out-of-a-mask-shortage-no-but-it-still-helps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">shortages of protective equipment\u003c/a> for frontline healthcare workers, not helped by the Trump administration’s refusal to intervene on the states’ behalf. And then of course there’s the ongoing nationwide debate over \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/21/880832213/yes-wearing-masks-helps-heres-why\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">face coverings\u003c/a>; a medical supply executive who says he voted for Trump in 2016 expresses shock that wearing a mask in a pandemic could have become so intensely politicized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glut of information presented here is dizzying but lucid. We hear about the sidelining of knowledgeable scientists like the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier and federal vaccine expert \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/06/920985099/government-scientist-tops-up-whistle-blower-complaint-and-quits-nih\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Rick Bright \u003c/a>when they tried to sound the alarm. And then there’s the irony that Trump himself \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/03/919898777/timeline-what-we-know-of-president-trumps-covid-19-diagnosis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tested positive\u003c/a> for the virus just a day after this movie was completed. That’s how fast the news is these days: Even a documentary this urgent, and this obviously timed for the upcoming election, can’t help but feel already out of date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with its occasional repetitions and oversights, \u003cem>Totally Under Control \u003c/em>gripped me from moment to moment. In a very different way, so did \u003cem>Time\u003c/em>, the first documentary feature directed by Garrett Bradley. It’s a co-production between \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> and Amazon Studios, and it’s one of the most sublime and beautiful documentaries I’ve seen this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of \u003cem>Time \u003c/em>is a Black woman named Sibil Fox Richardson, who goes by Fox Rich. In 1997 she planned to open a hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, La., with her husband, Rob. When an investor backed out, the desperate couple tried to rob a bank. No one was hurt and no money was stolen. Rich, who drove the getaway car, got a plea bargain and served three and a half years. Rob was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 60 years.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/kq6Hh07oLvs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/kq6Hh07oLvs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Rich began shooting videos of herself and of their sons so Rob could catch up with all the little moments he’d missed: birthdays and graduations, amusement park trips and pool parties. It added up to a treasure trove of home-movie footage that Rich handed over to Bradley several years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the same time, Bradley began filming new footage of Rich, now a successful businesswoman; her now-grown children; and her tireless efforts to secure her husband’s release. The result is this sprawling yet intensely intimate chronicle, shot in black-and-white, of a couple’s enduring love and a family’s 21-year pursuit of justice. In one moving scene, Rich speaks about her thwarted hopes that Rob would be released in time to see his sons grow up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Time \u003c/em>is about the cruelty of growing up without a father and growing older without a husband. It’s also about the injustice of a prison system that Rich has spent much of the past two decades speaking out against—by filing appeals and making phone calls on her husband’s behalf, and by giving speeches for the benefit of other people in similar situations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without revealing the outcome of the story, I’ll say that I found it emotionally overwhelming both times I watched the movie—at Sundance earlier this year, where it won a directing prize, and again at home this past week. It runs a short 81 minutes, but by the end, you feel so acutely connected to this family’s joy and pain that years really do seem to have passed. I cherished every moment of this movie, because each one stands in for so many others that have been lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Totally+Under+Control%27+And+%27Time%27+Are+Two+Very+2020+Documentaries&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Now Playing! Journalism and Activism Light up the Home Screen",
"headTitle": "Now Playing! Journalism and Activism Light up the Home Screen | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Fall is usually the serious season in the movie business—as in serious themes, not serious money. The big dollars won’t roll in till Halloween horror week and Christmas escapist week, and potentially for a few Oscar wannabes. Barring, that is, an escalated public-health crisis and civil society catastrophe. But we can be optimistic, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Hollywood waits, watches and worries about the state of moviegoing, serious documentaries are everywhere. It’s an election-year phenomenon, to be sure: Filmmakers are determined to not just inform people about a social issue, but to drive us to vote. The slender lines between journalism and activism, and activism and diatribes, are in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nStreaming on \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Netflix\u003c/a> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeff Orlowski (\u003cem>Chasing Ice\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Chasing Coral\u003c/em>) constructed his environmental documentaries on breathtaking, globe-hopping visuals, so it’s quite a come-down to be stuck in stark, unfurnished rooms with a parade of earnest talking heads. \u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em>, which lifts the curtain on the various curses of social media, is especially annoying for those of us who were bored to numbness 20 years ago (or more) by the “wisdom” and “vision” of tech boy wonders with bad haircuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filmmaker rounds up a retinue of former executives and high-level engineers from the usual suspect companies who’ve seen the light—actually, the darkness—of algorithmic persuasion, behavioral manipulation, smartphone addiction and adolescent maladjustment. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These successful, smug men (the Greek chorus does include one female techie and a couple female professors, who only serve to underline Silicon Valley’s homogeneity), who profited enormously from the rise of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest and others, sound the alarm on platforms and devices. Surely it’s coincidental that the mavens now have children whose access to platforms and devices they carefully manage and restrict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a respite from the parade of interviews, Orlowski intersperses the hokey but effective drama of an imaginary suburban family whose youngest, impressionable members are mesmerized by the beeps, buzzes and likes emitted by their smartphones. \u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em> makes some valuable points, but Orlowski seems oblivious to a major contradiction: His cautionary immersion in the psychology of manipulation employs a wall-to-wall soundtrack to keep the viewer on edge. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, and if you’re wondering, the haircuts haven’t improved since 1995.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"499\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13886719\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-800x333.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-1020x424.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-160x67.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-768x319.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stacey Abrams in ‘All In: The Fight For Democracy.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Amazon Studios)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>All In: The Fight for Democracy\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nStreaming on \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FRSNBLL\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon Prime Video\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It can be hard to discern if the numerous political documentaries released in recent weeks are aimed at the hardcore base of informed newsies or the broader population that sees the effects of policies but isn’t interested in the behind-the-scenes battles. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés’s documentary about the organized efforts to suppress votes going back to the end of Reconstruction skillfully speaks to both groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stacey Abrams, who would have won the election for governor of Georgia two years ago except for her Republican opponent’s multi-pronged strategy to screw hundreds of thousands of voters out of their rights, is our clear-eyed guide through this illuminating, infuriating doc. But author and historian Carol Anderson steals the show as the film’s righteous, impassioned conscience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Abrams campaign and the theft of that election in broad daylight comprise the emotional climax of \u003cem>All In\u003c/em>. The film’s centerpiece, however, which Garbus and Cortés spotlight with a megawatt bulb, is the Roberts Court’s 2013 gutting of the long-standing Voting Rights Act. A must-see, but keep your blood-pressure medicine nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886720\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13886720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kerry Morrison in ‘Miracle in the Desert.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the filmmakers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nOpens Sept 22 on \u003ca href=\"https://www.miracleinthedesert.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">VOD\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a transplant from another state, I discovered California’s largest lake from \u003cem>Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea\u003c/em>, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer’s wildly entertaining tale of the boom and bust of a mid-20th-century SoCal leisure spot. They hung out with the forgotten holdovers, beach rats and off-the-grid survivors who stayed in their homes long after the world passed by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifteen years on, Greg Bassenian takes a much more sober approach to the same territory. \u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em> contains the same footage of 1950s water skiers and the snazzy yacht club where Sinatra and other celebrities from Los Angeles (150 miles northwest of the sea) and Palm Springs (30 miles) hung out, but its real concern is ecological and environmental.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Salton Sea keeps shrinking, which means more of the lakebed is exposed, more dust is launched into the air and the public health consequences continue to increase. Bassenian builds a persuasive case for California’s immediate adoption and funding of a plan to increase the sea’s water level, then slides into a sustained harangue for the last 10 minutes of the film. To be fair, his various interviewees’ frustration with the state’s prolonged inaction is completely understandable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current problem and its solution should rightly command our attention. But I took a second moral from Bassenian’s detailed chronicle of the sea’s origins and evolution, which amounts to a catalog of hubris, corruption, unintended consequences and natural disasters: Man has a way of mucking things up. You guessed it: \u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em> doesn’t leave you feeling optimistic.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "While Hollywood waits, watches and worries about the state of moviegoing, serious documentaries are everywhere.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Fall is usually the serious season in the movie business—as in serious themes, not serious money. The big dollars won’t roll in till Halloween horror week and Christmas escapist week, and potentially for a few Oscar wannabes. Barring, that is, an escalated public-health crisis and civil society catastrophe. But we can be optimistic, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Hollywood waits, watches and worries about the state of moviegoing, serious documentaries are everywhere. It’s an election-year phenomenon, to be sure: Filmmakers are determined to not just inform people about a social issue, but to drive us to vote. The slender lines between journalism and activism, and activism and diatribes, are in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nStreaming on \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Netflix\u003c/a> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeff Orlowski (\u003cem>Chasing Ice\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Chasing Coral\u003c/em>) constructed his environmental documentaries on breathtaking, globe-hopping visuals, so it’s quite a come-down to be stuck in stark, unfurnished rooms with a parade of earnest talking heads. \u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em>, which lifts the curtain on the various curses of social media, is especially annoying for those of us who were bored to numbness 20 years ago (or more) by the “wisdom” and “vision” of tech boy wonders with bad haircuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filmmaker rounds up a retinue of former executives and high-level engineers from the usual suspect companies who’ve seen the light—actually, the darkness—of algorithmic persuasion, behavioral manipulation, smartphone addiction and adolescent maladjustment. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These successful, smug men (the Greek chorus does include one female techie and a couple female professors, who only serve to underline Silicon Valley’s homogeneity), who profited enormously from the rise of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest and others, sound the alarm on platforms and devices. Surely it’s coincidental that the mavens now have children whose access to platforms and devices they carefully manage and restrict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a respite from the parade of interviews, Orlowski intersperses the hokey but effective drama of an imaginary suburban family whose youngest, impressionable members are mesmerized by the beeps, buzzes and likes emitted by their smartphones. \u003cem>The Social Dilemma\u003c/em> makes some valuable points, but Orlowski seems oblivious to a major contradiction: His cautionary immersion in the psychology of manipulation employs a wall-to-wall soundtrack to keep the viewer on edge. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, and if you’re wondering, the haircuts haven’t improved since 1995.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886719\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"499\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13886719\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-800x333.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-1020x424.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-160x67.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/all-in-the-fight-for-democracy-UVSD_SG_00210_rgb_1200-768x319.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stacey Abrams in ‘All In: The Fight For Democracy.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Amazon Studios)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>All In: The Fight for Democracy\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nStreaming on \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FRSNBLL\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon Prime Video\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It can be hard to discern if the numerous political documentaries released in recent weeks are aimed at the hardcore base of informed newsies or the broader population that sees the effects of policies but isn’t interested in the behind-the-scenes battles. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés’s documentary about the organized efforts to suppress votes going back to the end of Reconstruction skillfully speaks to both groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stacey Abrams, who would have won the election for governor of Georgia two years ago except for her Republican opponent’s multi-pronged strategy to screw hundreds of thousands of voters out of their rights, is our clear-eyed guide through this illuminating, infuriating doc. But author and historian Carol Anderson steals the show as the film’s righteous, impassioned conscience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Abrams campaign and the theft of that election in broad daylight comprise the emotional climax of \u003cem>All In\u003c/em>. The film’s centerpiece, however, which Garbus and Cortés spotlight with a megawatt bulb, is the Roberts Court’s 2013 gutting of the long-standing Voting Rights Act. A must-see, but keep your blood-pressure medicine nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886720\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13886720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Kerry-Morrison-Desert-Shores_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kerry Morrison in ‘Miracle in the Desert.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the filmmakers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nOpens Sept 22 on \u003ca href=\"https://www.miracleinthedesert.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">VOD\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a transplant from another state, I discovered California’s largest lake from \u003cem>Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea\u003c/em>, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer’s wildly entertaining tale of the boom and bust of a mid-20th-century SoCal leisure spot. They hung out with the forgotten holdovers, beach rats and off-the-grid survivors who stayed in their homes long after the world passed by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifteen years on, Greg Bassenian takes a much more sober approach to the same territory. \u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em> contains the same footage of 1950s water skiers and the snazzy yacht club where Sinatra and other celebrities from Los Angeles (150 miles northwest of the sea) and Palm Springs (30 miles) hung out, but its real concern is ecological and environmental.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Salton Sea keeps shrinking, which means more of the lakebed is exposed, more dust is launched into the air and the public health consequences continue to increase. Bassenian builds a persuasive case for California’s immediate adoption and funding of a plan to increase the sea’s water level, then slides into a sustained harangue for the last 10 minutes of the film. To be fair, his various interviewees’ frustration with the state’s prolonged inaction is completely understandable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current problem and its solution should rightly command our attention. But I took a second moral from Bassenian’s detailed chronicle of the sea’s origins and evolution, which amounts to a catalog of hubris, corruption, unintended consequences and natural disasters: Man has a way of mucking things up. You guessed it: \u003cem>Miracle in the Desert: The Rise and Fall of the Salton Sea\u003c/em> doesn’t leave you feeling optimistic.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Feels Good Man' Traces Pepe the Frog From Hate Symbol to Democracy Icon",
"headTitle": "‘Feels Good Man’ Traces Pepe the Frog From Hate Symbol to Democracy Icon | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>You’ve probably seen him by now—the thin, red lips. The big, expressive eyes. The deep green skin. Sometimes he looks innocent and sweet, like a friend crashing on your couch. Other times he looks like a smugly grinning jerk. The thing about Pepe the Frog is that he can be whatever you want him to be—a stoner icon, a symbol of hatred and bigotry, a beacon of democracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new documentary \u003cem>Feels Good Man\u003c/em> traces Pepe through all these transformations, and follows the frog’s creator, cartoonist Matt Furie, and his at-times futile attempts to try to control something inherently uncontrollable: memes. The movie attempts to set the record straight and make clear who Pepe is, but functions more as a case study in how we communicate now and the collateral damage that communication leaves behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiqZWw5vYs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Furie is a meek, soft spoken guy who feels more comfortable alone at a drafting table than at the forefront of online discourse. Pepe started as a character in Furie’s 2005 small indie comic \u003cem>Boys Club\u003c/em>. One comic in particular featured Pepe urinating with his pants pushed all the way down to his ankles, explaining to his roommate that it “feels good, man.” It was a punchline that became a slogan for a certain carefree lifestyle that thrives in between beers and bong hits. From there Pepe was excerpted, repeated, excerpted, repeated—each time drifting further away from his original context, and away from Furie’s hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t really have the resources to stop it, ” says Furie in an interview with NPR. “Nobody really knew what the protocol was because it’s all online.” There’s not much you can do about anonymous teenagers posting inside jokes online. And for a long while, it stayed that way—just jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t until it got really bad that I stepped up and wanted to try and take a stand,” says Furie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary explains in detail how and why it got really bad (and it did), but the short version is: Pepe started getting so popular with mainstream culture that the original fans of this no-longer “inside” joke tried to push the normies away with even edgier versions of Pepes—racist Pepes, homophobic Pepes, anti-semitic Pepes. This coincided with President Trump’s similarly trolling presidential campaign, and the then-burgeoning “alt-right” movement, and all of a sudden Furie saw his own creation end up on the Anti-Defamation League’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-the-frog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">list of hate symbols\u003c/a>, with the normiest of normies, Hillary Clinton, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/15/12926976/hillary-clinton-trump-pepe-the-frog-alt-right-explainer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">explaining why Pepe was bad\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this all feels a little stupid—that’s all intentional. Through interviews with journalists and experts on extremism on the internet, the documentary explores the well-oiled right wing propaganda machine built on bad faith arguments meant to make you feel unsure, and dumb, and ridiculous. If you go back and look at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">plethora\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/its-not-easy-being-green/499892/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">of interviews\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a49057/pepe-frog-creator-voting-hillary/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Furie did\u003c/a> around the time of the ADL listing, there’s a sense of wishful thinking on Furie’s part: that this is just a phase, Pepe won’t be a hate symbol forever. He tried working with the ADL and fellow cartoonists to flood the online space with “positive” Pepe imagery. He tried “killing” Pepe in one of his comics to wash his hands of it. Both fundamental misunderstandings of how the internet works. But the documentary’s director, Arthur Jones says those were the tools Furie had available to him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were his earnest attempts to try to express the true intentions of Pepe as a character,” says Jones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885870\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885870\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/gettyimages-1173238050-e53b99fafa93cf9adefbea7ff1dc1de2b6b53165-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Pepe became a symbol of resistance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Pepe became a symbol of resistance. \u003ccite>(Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the corners of the internet where racist Pepes run rampant, earnestness doesn’t count for much. Lawsuits, on the other hand, do. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731520403/alex-jones-to-pay-15-000-in-pepe-the-frog-copyright-infringement-case\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The wins\u003c/a> Furie collects under his belt in the movie are mostly legal ones, using copyright law to issue take down notices, file suits, etc. Which he was only able to do through the help of a law firm working pro-bono. See, cartoons taken out of context aren’t new, nor solely relegated to the internet. Stroll down any boardwalk and you’ll eventually catch some bootleg \u003cem>Minions \u003c/em>merch. But these are mostly kept in check through legal actions by people who can afford them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Furie] doesn’t have this multi-million dollar conglomerate behind him pushing the character and the branding of Pepe,” says the documentary’s producer Giorgio Angelini. “So in that void, the collective consciousness of the internet creates that brand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as the internet has shown time and time again, if you allow its collective consciousness to fill a void, that void will get filled with Nazis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Furie wasn’t wholly wrong when he said that the link between Pepe and hatred would last forever. Pepe showing up at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/pepe-the-frog-meme-hong-kong/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pro-democracy protests\u003c/a> in Hong Kong in 2019 took the filmmakers by surprise. Elsewhere, on the popular live streaming platform Twitch, Pepes are thrown around in the chat apolitically, mostly devoid of the problematic baggage he was saddled with four years ago. But who knows how long this will last. With another presidential election in just a few months, the meme wars will only continue to heat up, and phases do tend to repeat themselves given a long enough time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking to Furie over Zoom, there was a Pepe plushie hanging on a wall over his shoulder. Furie has at times been sick, defensive and exasperated with Pepe. But as much as the internet can separate Pepe from Furie, Furie can never really separate himself from Pepe—and so clearing Pepe’s name is just as important as clearing his own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Feels+Good+Man%27+Traces+Pepe+The+Frog+From+Hate+Symbol+To+Democracy+Icon&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A film about how Pepe the Frog became one of the most prolific images on the internet—and how his creator fought to get him back.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You’ve probably seen him by now—the thin, red lips. The big, expressive eyes. The deep green skin. Sometimes he looks innocent and sweet, like a friend crashing on your couch. Other times he looks like a smugly grinning jerk. The thing about Pepe the Frog is that he can be whatever you want him to be—a stoner icon, a symbol of hatred and bigotry, a beacon of democracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new documentary \u003cem>Feels Good Man\u003c/em> traces Pepe through all these transformations, and follows the frog’s creator, cartoonist Matt Furie, and his at-times futile attempts to try to control something inherently uncontrollable: memes. The movie attempts to set the record straight and make clear who Pepe is, but functions more as a case study in how we communicate now and the collateral damage that communication leaves behind.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZEiqZWw5vYs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZEiqZWw5vYs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Furie is a meek, soft spoken guy who feels more comfortable alone at a drafting table than at the forefront of online discourse. Pepe started as a character in Furie’s 2005 small indie comic \u003cem>Boys Club\u003c/em>. One comic in particular featured Pepe urinating with his pants pushed all the way down to his ankles, explaining to his roommate that it “feels good, man.” It was a punchline that became a slogan for a certain carefree lifestyle that thrives in between beers and bong hits. From there Pepe was excerpted, repeated, excerpted, repeated—each time drifting further away from his original context, and away from Furie’s hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t really have the resources to stop it, ” says Furie in an interview with NPR. “Nobody really knew what the protocol was because it’s all online.” There’s not much you can do about anonymous teenagers posting inside jokes online. And for a long while, it stayed that way—just jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t until it got really bad that I stepped up and wanted to try and take a stand,” says Furie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary explains in detail how and why it got really bad (and it did), but the short version is: Pepe started getting so popular with mainstream culture that the original fans of this no-longer “inside” joke tried to push the normies away with even edgier versions of Pepes—racist Pepes, homophobic Pepes, anti-semitic Pepes. This coincided with President Trump’s similarly trolling presidential campaign, and the then-burgeoning “alt-right” movement, and all of a sudden Furie saw his own creation end up on the Anti-Defamation League’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-the-frog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">list of hate symbols\u003c/a>, with the normiest of normies, Hillary Clinton, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/15/12926976/hillary-clinton-trump-pepe-the-frog-alt-right-explainer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">explaining why Pepe was bad\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this all feels a little stupid—that’s all intentional. Through interviews with journalists and experts on extremism on the internet, the documentary explores the well-oiled right wing propaganda machine built on bad faith arguments meant to make you feel unsure, and dumb, and ridiculous. If you go back and look at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">plethora\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/its-not-easy-being-green/499892/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">of interviews\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a49057/pepe-frog-creator-voting-hillary/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Furie did\u003c/a> around the time of the ADL listing, there’s a sense of wishful thinking on Furie’s part: that this is just a phase, Pepe won’t be a hate symbol forever. He tried working with the ADL and fellow cartoonists to flood the online space with “positive” Pepe imagery. He tried “killing” Pepe in one of his comics to wash his hands of it. Both fundamental misunderstandings of how the internet works. But the documentary’s director, Arthur Jones says those were the tools Furie had available to him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were his earnest attempts to try to express the true intentions of Pepe as a character,” says Jones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885870\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885870\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/gettyimages-1173238050-e53b99fafa93cf9adefbea7ff1dc1de2b6b53165-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Pepe became a symbol of resistance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Pepe became a symbol of resistance. \u003ccite>(Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the corners of the internet where racist Pepes run rampant, earnestness doesn’t count for much. Lawsuits, on the other hand, do. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731520403/alex-jones-to-pay-15-000-in-pepe-the-frog-copyright-infringement-case\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The wins\u003c/a> Furie collects under his belt in the movie are mostly legal ones, using copyright law to issue take down notices, file suits, etc. Which he was only able to do through the help of a law firm working pro-bono. See, cartoons taken out of context aren’t new, nor solely relegated to the internet. Stroll down any boardwalk and you’ll eventually catch some bootleg \u003cem>Minions \u003c/em>merch. But these are mostly kept in check through legal actions by people who can afford them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Furie] doesn’t have this multi-million dollar conglomerate behind him pushing the character and the branding of Pepe,” says the documentary’s producer Giorgio Angelini. “So in that void, the collective consciousness of the internet creates that brand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as the internet has shown time and time again, if you allow its collective consciousness to fill a void, that void will get filled with Nazis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Furie wasn’t wholly wrong when he said that the link between Pepe and hatred would last forever. Pepe showing up at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/pepe-the-frog-meme-hong-kong/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pro-democracy protests\u003c/a> in Hong Kong in 2019 took the filmmakers by surprise. Elsewhere, on the popular live streaming platform Twitch, Pepes are thrown around in the chat apolitically, mostly devoid of the problematic baggage he was saddled with four years ago. But who knows how long this will last. With another presidential election in just a few months, the meme wars will only continue to heat up, and phases do tend to repeat themselves given a long enough time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking to Furie over Zoom, there was a Pepe plushie hanging on a wall over his shoulder. Furie has at times been sick, defensive and exasperated with Pepe. But as much as the internet can separate Pepe from Furie, Furie can never really separate himself from Pepe—and so clearing Pepe’s name is just as important as clearing his own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. 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"title": "Now Playing! SF DocFest’s Escapist Blast of Weird Americana",
"headTitle": "Now Playing! SF DocFest’s Escapist Blast of Weird Americana | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>To fulfill my undergraduate rhetoric requirement many years ago, I chose a course on satire. Around the fourth week our assignment was to pick up the current copy of \u003cem>National Lampoon\u003c/em>, which provoked a brouhaha over a house ad touting a contest to predict the date of 76-year-old former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A little over half the students in the class were from Chicago and its suburbs while the other half were from small towns and rural hamlets, mirroring the enrollment at this large public university in downstate Illinois. Several students from the latter demographic angrily criticized the promotion (the prize was a year’s subscription, if memory serves) for unforgivable bad taste and appalling immorality. No disputing the first charge, but I didn’t see how venturing a guess could remotely influence or hasten a random stranger’s demise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your position on this crucial existential debate will determine your enjoyment of Mike Scholtz’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f174138cf0874005370ca10\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Riplist\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, a wry, intelligent sliver of singular American weirdness. Structured around their 2017 draft of potentially dearly departed celebrities in the coming year, the film queries seven unpretentious, self-aware Minnesotans about their obsession and competition, and the stigma of participating in a death pool. I chuckled practically nonstop through \u003cem>Riplist\u003c/em>, which may be an indication of how much (or how little) I’ve matured since college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885740\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885740\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Truth or Consequences.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Welcome to \u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/welcome\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">SF DocFest\u003c/a>, the beloved annual compendium of odd, unusual nonfiction films from every nook and corner of our bizarro country and beyond. Waving off the pedigreed, high-profile docs that premiere at Sundance, get theatrical releases (or these days, national virtual releases) and chart a course for the Academy Awards, SF DocFest’s programmers opt for poignant, intimate works that miss the mainstream by dint of their iconoclasm and/or lack of a marketing hook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bumped by the pandemic from its June residency at the Roxie, SF DocFest plants its flag online from Sept. 3 through 20 with a program encompassing 25 features, nearly two-dozen short films and a plethora of streaming Q&As.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f17463088821b00695b7886\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Truth or Consequences\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, Hannah Jayanti’s introspective lost-in-America postcard that’s toasted with the festival’s centerpiece slot, epitomizes the ethos of DocFest: A unique point of view well off the beaten path, leisurely paced and quietly revelatory. Jayanti shows us a handful of scavengers and survivors stuck in the sun-blistered perma-limbo of the titular New Mexico town, luring us into a web of detritus, entropy and failure. Bill Frisell’s lovely lonesome-cowboy guitar picking fills in the melancholic open spaces, and you half expect a tumbleweed to blow by. It’s a strangely entrancing film to get lost in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producer of \u003cem>Truth or Consequences\u003c/em>, Sara Archambault, is this year’s recipient of the fest’s Non-Fiction Vanguard Award. Like most champions of independent artists, Archambault has zero name recognition among the public, but anything she works on is deserving of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885742\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885742\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘For the Love of Rutland.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The economic prospects aren’t much brighter at the other end of the continent, in old-line Vermont, where Jennifer Maytorena Taylor shot the patient and engrossing \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f173d2e6f03120059f27d22\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">For the Love of Rutland\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. (Disclosure: Taylor and I worked together on the KQED show \u003ci>Independent View\u003c/i> several years ago.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s work examines American resistance to diversity, and one deduces that what drew her to Rutland was the mayor’s unilateral 2016 decision to accept 100 Syrian refugees—and the fault lines it exposed between hardline anti-immigrants and those who imagined how motivated newcomers could help rejuvenate a waning former manufacturing town with an opioid problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turned out that just two Syrian families had resettled in Rutland when a new president squashed immigration from “Muslim countries.” So the veteran San Francisco filmmaker had to pivot, and she shifted her focus to a white mother fighting to keeping her family together in the face of chronic poverty and scant opportunity. Taylor came away with a moving, cliché-resistant portrait of the working poor that, miraculously, leaves us believing in the persistence and possibility of community. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885737\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885737\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Berkeley author Barry Gifford is best-known for his Sailor and Lula novels that inspired the films \u003cem>Wild at Heart\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Perdita Durango\u003c/em>. His voluminous writings include the Roy chronicles, a slew of autobiographical short stories detailing a boy’s coming of age in Chicago in the 1950s. It was a corrupt, racist town (what’s changed, you say?), as real as it gets, and Gifford nails it in unadorned sentences that, en masse, convey Roy’s expanding horizons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rob Christopher’s altogether wonderful \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f1741be799de80029a81930\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago\u003c/a>\u003c/em> spoke to me as an expatriate who grew up on the same streets in the same world, albeit a few years later. But any urbanite whose childhood and adolescence preceded the digital age will have the same reaction, for Gifford’s writing (flawlessly read by the perfectly cast trio of Willem Dafoe, Lili Taylor and Matt Dillon) and the plethora of archival footage connect us to tangible, physical objects: a used Buick with tattered seats, a snowstorm, a sand-filled ashtray in a hotel lobby, a newsstand, a back porch, an alley with a reflecting pool of rainwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Roy’s World\u003c/em> isn’t about the writing process so much as the stories themselves—the experiences they evoke and delineate. Maintaining the effect that we’re sharing Roy’s life and not Adult Barry’s, the filmmaker keeps Gifford off-camera until the very end. Jason Adasiewicz’s original jazz score neatly sets the mood and the place, adding another bittersweet layer of pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885741\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Unlocking the Doors of Cinema.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Syrian film director Mohammad Malas warmly expounds at length on his philosophy and working methods in \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f17475067d179008f9362e0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Unlocking the Doors of Cinema\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. Essentially unknown in the Bay Area outside of Arab film cognoscenti, Malas is the lone speaker in this one-hour doc, guiding us through a singular career that took off with the 1987 narrative debut \u003cem>Dreams of the City\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My lifelong journey with cinema,” Malas tells us, “is one of rebellion against despotism, overcoming obstacles, telling stories no one dares to tell.” That’s a pretty good mantra for SF DocFest.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>To fulfill my undergraduate rhetoric requirement many years ago, I chose a course on satire. Around the fourth week our assignment was to pick up the current copy of \u003cem>National Lampoon\u003c/em>, which provoked a brouhaha over a house ad touting a contest to predict the date of 76-year-old former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A little over half the students in the class were from Chicago and its suburbs while the other half were from small towns and rural hamlets, mirroring the enrollment at this large public university in downstate Illinois. Several students from the latter demographic angrily criticized the promotion (the prize was a year’s subscription, if memory serves) for unforgivable bad taste and appalling immorality. No disputing the first charge, but I didn’t see how venturing a guess could remotely influence or hasten a random stranger’s demise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your position on this crucial existential debate will determine your enjoyment of Mike Scholtz’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f174138cf0874005370ca10\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Riplist\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, a wry, intelligent sliver of singular American weirdness. Structured around their 2017 draft of potentially dearly departed celebrities in the coming year, the film queries seven unpretentious, self-aware Minnesotans about their obsession and competition, and the stigma of participating in a death pool. I chuckled practically nonstop through \u003cem>Riplist\u003c/em>, which may be an indication of how much (or how little) I’ve matured since college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885740\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885740\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Truth-Consequences_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Truth or Consequences.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Welcome to \u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/welcome\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">SF DocFest\u003c/a>, the beloved annual compendium of odd, unusual nonfiction films from every nook and corner of our bizarro country and beyond. Waving off the pedigreed, high-profile docs that premiere at Sundance, get theatrical releases (or these days, national virtual releases) and chart a course for the Academy Awards, SF DocFest’s programmers opt for poignant, intimate works that miss the mainstream by dint of their iconoclasm and/or lack of a marketing hook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bumped by the pandemic from its June residency at the Roxie, SF DocFest plants its flag online from Sept. 3 through 20 with a program encompassing 25 features, nearly two-dozen short films and a plethora of streaming Q&As.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f17463088821b00695b7886\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Truth or Consequences\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, Hannah Jayanti’s introspective lost-in-America postcard that’s toasted with the festival’s centerpiece slot, epitomizes the ethos of DocFest: A unique point of view well off the beaten path, leisurely paced and quietly revelatory. Jayanti shows us a handful of scavengers and survivors stuck in the sun-blistered perma-limbo of the titular New Mexico town, luring us into a web of detritus, entropy and failure. Bill Frisell’s lovely lonesome-cowboy guitar picking fills in the melancholic open spaces, and you half expect a tumbleweed to blow by. It’s a strangely entrancing film to get lost in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producer of \u003cem>Truth or Consequences\u003c/em>, Sara Archambault, is this year’s recipient of the fest’s Non-Fiction Vanguard Award. Like most champions of independent artists, Archambault has zero name recognition among the public, but anything she works on is deserving of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885742\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885742\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/Rutland-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘For the Love of Rutland.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The economic prospects aren’t much brighter at the other end of the continent, in old-line Vermont, where Jennifer Maytorena Taylor shot the patient and engrossing \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f173d2e6f03120059f27d22\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">For the Love of Rutland\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. (Disclosure: Taylor and I worked together on the KQED show \u003ci>Independent View\u003c/i> several years ago.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s work examines American resistance to diversity, and one deduces that what drew her to Rutland was the mayor’s unilateral 2016 decision to accept 100 Syrian refugees—and the fault lines it exposed between hardline anti-immigrants and those who imagined how motivated newcomers could help rejuvenate a waning former manufacturing town with an opioid problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turned out that just two Syrian families had resettled in Rutland when a new president squashed immigration from “Muslim countries.” So the veteran San Francisco filmmaker had to pivot, and she shifted her focus to a white mother fighting to keeping her family together in the face of chronic poverty and scant opportunity. Taylor came away with a moving, cliché-resistant portrait of the working poor that, miraculously, leaves us believing in the persistence and possibility of community. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885737\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885737\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/ROYS-WORLD_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Berkeley author Barry Gifford is best-known for his Sailor and Lula novels that inspired the films \u003cem>Wild at Heart\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Perdita Durango\u003c/em>. His voluminous writings include the Roy chronicles, a slew of autobiographical short stories detailing a boy’s coming of age in Chicago in the 1950s. It was a corrupt, racist town (what’s changed, you say?), as real as it gets, and Gifford nails it in unadorned sentences that, en masse, convey Roy’s expanding horizons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rob Christopher’s altogether wonderful \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f1741be799de80029a81930\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago\u003c/a>\u003c/em> spoke to me as an expatriate who grew up on the same streets in the same world, albeit a few years later. But any urbanite whose childhood and adolescence preceded the digital age will have the same reaction, for Gifford’s writing (flawlessly read by the perfectly cast trio of Willem Dafoe, Lili Taylor and Matt Dillon) and the plethora of archival footage connect us to tangible, physical objects: a used Buick with tattered seats, a snowstorm, a sand-filled ashtray in a hotel lobby, a newsstand, a back porch, an alley with a reflecting pool of rainwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Roy’s World\u003c/em> isn’t about the writing process so much as the stories themselves—the experiences they evoke and delineate. Maintaining the effect that we’re sharing Roy’s life and not Adult Barry’s, the filmmaker keeps Gifford off-camera until the very end. Jason Adasiewicz’s original jazz score neatly sets the mood and the place, adding another bittersweet layer of pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885741\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/unlocking_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Unlocking the Doors of Cinema.’ \u003ccite>(SF DocFest)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Syrian film director Mohammad Malas warmly expounds at length on his philosophy and working methods in \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://sfdocfest2020.eventive.org/films/5f17475067d179008f9362e0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Unlocking the Doors of Cinema\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. Essentially unknown in the Bay Area outside of Arab film cognoscenti, Malas is the lone speaker in this one-hour doc, guiding us through a singular career that took off with the 1987 narrative debut \u003cem>Dreams of the City\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My lifelong journey with cinema,” Malas tells us, “is one of rebellion against despotism, overcoming obstacles, telling stories no one dares to tell.” That’s a pretty good mantra for SF DocFest.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Class Action Park' Remembers the Perils of a Really Good Time",
"headTitle": "‘Class Action Park’ Remembers the Perils of a Really Good Time | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There’s a species of giddy nostalgia that involves laughing off what you barely survived. It can be even more powerful if, at the time, you didn’t know how lucky you got. It’s the nostalgia of near-miss childhood accidents and times you almost set the house on fire, and of things that fell from the ceiling a foot from your head. It’s also the nostalgia of the new documentary \u003cem>Class Action Park\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Made by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the film chronicles Action Park, the New Jersey waterslide park that opened in 1978, enjoyed great popularity in the 1980s and is now remembered in part for the injuries and deaths that gave it its nickname and contributed to knocking it out of business in 1996. Some parks have themes like the Wild West or futurism or countries of the world; Action Park’s theme was deregulation. With roots in Wall Street arrogance and an apparent ability to wiggle around any legal obstacle its leadership encountered, the park was built around one question: \u003cem>Who says we can’t?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly, it was very popular with teenagers, many of whom have a similar philosophy but not the money to translate it into physical reality. It was run by kids, too. Employees (mostly boys) who are now middle-aged men remember workers as young as 14, in flagrant violation of labor laws, being put in charge of operating rides that were unsafe to begin with. According to those who were there, the rides—built without relevant know-how or concern for safety, but with lots of drive to make everything more exciting—took out teeth, dislocated shoulders, gashed foreheads and laid down friction burns all along arms and legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More importantly, the film says, people died. Three drowned in the wave pool. One was thrown from a ride onto rocks the park had been told to remove. One was electrocuted after falling into water near submerged machinery. The park had to buy its own ambulances, so thoroughly was it monopolizing local emergency-response resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To top it all off, the liability insurance the park supposedly had was with a company park owner Gene Mulvihill set up for himself in the Cayman Islands. According to this telling, if you sued, he fought. If you won, he didn’t pay until the marshals came to the park to collect. All told, this could have been a film with the fully dark tone of an Alex Gibney exposé, but it isn’t that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the people who remember Action Park want you to know it wasn’t all bad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqg48h_uKYM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is, you see, that giddy nostalgia—even a genuine, rollicking humor—in the recollections of parkgoers and employees about what it was like to visit a water park essentially built to be out of control. They say it was wild, it was exciting, it was a place to test your courage. It was fun and weird, and kids ran it without much adult supervision. People drank too much and crashed sleds and fought and, yes, they got hurt, but in its own way, it was a really good time. That’s what they all say. That’s why Jimmy Kimmel and Johnny Knoxville are grinning in a piece of old footage where they’re chatting about how dangerous everything was. It wasn’t some secret, underground den of iniquity, either: MTV filmed an episode of \u003cem>Headbangers Ball \u003c/em>there with Alice in Chains. There were TV commercials. Its dangers got written up in the paper—which, of course, made kids want to visit even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885440\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 244px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885440\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM.png\" alt=\"Chris Gethard provides some of the smartest and funniest reflections in 'Class Action Park.'\" width=\"244\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM.png 244w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM-160x150.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Gethard provides some of the smartest and funniest reflections in ‘Class Action Park.’ \u003ccite>(HBO Max)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s why the filmmakers were so smart to turn to one of our great cultural commentators on comedy/tragedy juxtapositions: comedian Chris Gethard. Gethard has done \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/05/06/526892264/chris-gethardisnt-kidding-about-career--suicide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">comedy about his own suicide attempt\u003c/a> and, as it turns out, he was an avid attendee at Action Park (he even talked about it on his 2019 album \u003cem>Taylor Ham, Egg and Cheese\u003c/em>, which is entirely about New Jersey). His descriptions of what the rides were like are uproariously funny, but more than any of the other people interviewed, he reckons with the limitations of nostalgia for the childhood risks you took, even if you had fun. More than anyone, he’s willing to say that the fact that something was fun, that you smile and laugh when you remember it, doesn’t mean it’s good that it happened. He talks, with admirable directness, about the fundamental conflict between how things feel when they happen to you and how you look back at them later, and that applies to a lot more than just dangerous amusement parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know that anyone else could have brought the perspective to this that Gethard does. Everyone else who isn’t directly a victim of the park’s dangers comes off as perhaps a touch too glib, a little too impressed with the bad-assery of it all, a little too willing to sound convinced that it was a good thing that kids weren’t so soft back then. Because, yes, you do get some of the expected comments about how kids aren’t allowed to ride their bikes 15 miles each way to a water park anymore, and how in the 1980s, “we” as teenagers were carefree and happy (take note: “we,” as always, is not applicable to everyone). But it’s Gethard who’s the most determined to hold in his head simultaneously the appeal of nostalgia and its traps. It’s his commentary that can comfortably live beside both the reminiscences of the people whose memories of Action Park are mostly funny and the interview with the mother of one of the boys who died there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They hit the sweet spot with this movie, in that it’s a film that will work for people who knew all about Action Park (or Class Action Park, or Traction Park, or another of its nicknames), but also for people who didn’t, really. There’s plenty of retracing of the park’s rocky, slippery steps, but also a lingering, underlying quandary with broad application: “How do I put context around this experience that I enjoyed, but that I almost certainly would not have had in a better-run world?” Or perhaps, “How do I make peace with having enjoyed something that hurt people, but not because of anything I did?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a great story, well told. And while there are threads that could have been more thoroughly pursued (particularly allegations about Mulvihill’s influence on local politicians, who had known about the park’s safety record for years), what emerges is both a solid history of the park and a surprisingly thoughtful piece about how we contextualize our own childhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Class Action Park \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>comes to HBO MAX on Thursday. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Class+Action+Park%27+Remembers+The+Perils+Of+A+Really+Good+Time&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s a species of giddy nostalgia that involves laughing off what you barely survived. It can be even more powerful if, at the time, you didn’t know how lucky you got. It’s the nostalgia of near-miss childhood accidents and times you almost set the house on fire, and of things that fell from the ceiling a foot from your head. It’s also the nostalgia of the new documentary \u003cem>Class Action Park\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Made by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the film chronicles Action Park, the New Jersey waterslide park that opened in 1978, enjoyed great popularity in the 1980s and is now remembered in part for the injuries and deaths that gave it its nickname and contributed to knocking it out of business in 1996. Some parks have themes like the Wild West or futurism or countries of the world; Action Park’s theme was deregulation. With roots in Wall Street arrogance and an apparent ability to wiggle around any legal obstacle its leadership encountered, the park was built around one question: \u003cem>Who says we can’t?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly, it was very popular with teenagers, many of whom have a similar philosophy but not the money to translate it into physical reality. It was run by kids, too. Employees (mostly boys) who are now middle-aged men remember workers as young as 14, in flagrant violation of labor laws, being put in charge of operating rides that were unsafe to begin with. According to those who were there, the rides—built without relevant know-how or concern for safety, but with lots of drive to make everything more exciting—took out teeth, dislocated shoulders, gashed foreheads and laid down friction burns all along arms and legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More importantly, the film says, people died. Three drowned in the wave pool. One was thrown from a ride onto rocks the park had been told to remove. One was electrocuted after falling into water near submerged machinery. The park had to buy its own ambulances, so thoroughly was it monopolizing local emergency-response resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To top it all off, the liability insurance the park supposedly had was with a company park owner Gene Mulvihill set up for himself in the Cayman Islands. According to this telling, if you sued, he fought. If you won, he didn’t pay until the marshals came to the park to collect. All told, this could have been a film with the fully dark tone of an Alex Gibney exposé, but it isn’t that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the people who remember Action Park want you to know it wasn’t all bad.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mqg48h_uKYM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mqg48h_uKYM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>There is, you see, that giddy nostalgia—even a genuine, rollicking humor—in the recollections of parkgoers and employees about what it was like to visit a water park essentially built to be out of control. They say it was wild, it was exciting, it was a place to test your courage. It was fun and weird, and kids ran it without much adult supervision. People drank too much and crashed sleds and fought and, yes, they got hurt, but in its own way, it was a really good time. That’s what they all say. That’s why Jimmy Kimmel and Johnny Knoxville are grinning in a piece of old footage where they’re chatting about how dangerous everything was. It wasn’t some secret, underground den of iniquity, either: MTV filmed an episode of \u003cem>Headbangers Ball \u003c/em>there with Alice in Chains. There were TV commercials. Its dangers got written up in the paper—which, of course, made kids want to visit even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885440\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 244px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13885440\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM.png\" alt=\"Chris Gethard provides some of the smartest and funniest reflections in 'Class Action Park.'\" width=\"244\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM.png 244w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-27-at-2.15.31-PM-160x150.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Gethard provides some of the smartest and funniest reflections in ‘Class Action Park.’ \u003ccite>(HBO Max)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s why the filmmakers were so smart to turn to one of our great cultural commentators on comedy/tragedy juxtapositions: comedian Chris Gethard. Gethard has done \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/05/06/526892264/chris-gethardisnt-kidding-about-career--suicide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">comedy about his own suicide attempt\u003c/a> and, as it turns out, he was an avid attendee at Action Park (he even talked about it on his 2019 album \u003cem>Taylor Ham, Egg and Cheese\u003c/em>, which is entirely about New Jersey). His descriptions of what the rides were like are uproariously funny, but more than any of the other people interviewed, he reckons with the limitations of nostalgia for the childhood risks you took, even if you had fun. More than anyone, he’s willing to say that the fact that something was fun, that you smile and laugh when you remember it, doesn’t mean it’s good that it happened. He talks, with admirable directness, about the fundamental conflict between how things feel when they happen to you and how you look back at them later, and that applies to a lot more than just dangerous amusement parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know that anyone else could have brought the perspective to this that Gethard does. Everyone else who isn’t directly a victim of the park’s dangers comes off as perhaps a touch too glib, a little too impressed with the bad-assery of it all, a little too willing to sound convinced that it was a good thing that kids weren’t so soft back then. Because, yes, you do get some of the expected comments about how kids aren’t allowed to ride their bikes 15 miles each way to a water park anymore, and how in the 1980s, “we” as teenagers were carefree and happy (take note: “we,” as always, is not applicable to everyone). But it’s Gethard who’s the most determined to hold in his head simultaneously the appeal of nostalgia and its traps. It’s his commentary that can comfortably live beside both the reminiscences of the people whose memories of Action Park are mostly funny and the interview with the mother of one of the boys who died there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They hit the sweet spot with this movie, in that it’s a film that will work for people who knew all about Action Park (or Class Action Park, or Traction Park, or another of its nicknames), but also for people who didn’t, really. There’s plenty of retracing of the park’s rocky, slippery steps, but also a lingering, underlying quandary with broad application: “How do I put context around this experience that I enjoyed, but that I almost certainly would not have had in a better-run world?” Or perhaps, “How do I make peace with having enjoyed something that hurt people, but not because of anything I did?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a great story, well told. And while there are threads that could have been more thoroughly pursued (particularly allegations about Mulvihill’s influence on local politicians, who had known about the park’s safety record for years), what emerges is both a solid history of the park and a surprisingly thoughtful piece about how we contextualize our own childhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Class Action Park \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>comes to HBO MAX on Thursday. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Class+Action+Park%27+Remembers+The+Perils+Of+A+Really+Good+Time&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Evan Rachel Wood says in the new HBO documentary \u003cem>Showbiz Kids\u003c/em> that there’s an easy way to spot a child actor. Just look for anyone who’s good at juggling, or at Hacky Sack—as she puts it, “any kind of weird skill that you had to master by yourself.” Not because child actors are antisocial or friendless, but simply because actors on film sets spend so much time alone, and if you spend a lot of time alone as a kid, these are the kinds of things you teach yourself. It’s one insight among many to be found in this strong new film. (And don’t be fooled by the sort of cheesy-sounding title.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s really hard to talk about child actors in a fresh way, because there’s such lore around them. Legend typically has it that they’re all miserable, spoiled, self-destructive, exploited—and some are. What this film sets out to do is weave a number of interview subjects’ stories together to find themes within them, while respecting the fact that they’re all really different. \u003cem>Showbiz Kids \u003c/em>was made by Alex Winter, who you might know best as Bill in the \u003cem>Bill and Ted \u003c/em>movies, but who was also a child actor, mostly in theater. What he’s made here is a perceptive, sensitive film in which actors tell their own stories—some sad, many simply complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these stories start in different ways. Wil Wheaton says his mother was a little too eager for him to act, because of her own frustrated ambitions. But Mara Wilson says she was the one who told her parents she wanted to act, and that it genuinely came from her. Todd Bridges says the same thing. Milla Jovovich’s mother was a Russian movie star in the 1970s, and when the family came to California, Jovovich felt the focus shift to her. Evan Rachel Wood came from an artsy family that treated acting as a lofty profession where it was important to do only “great work.” You hear from Jada Pinkett Smith about starting young but also parenting kids who started young; you hear from Cameron Boyce, a self-described “Disney kid” (from \u003cem>Jessie\u003c/em>) who realizes he’s so well-trained that he’s still hesitant to swear, years after Disney. (One of the sad footnotes of the film is that Boyce, who had been in HBO’s \u003cem>Mrs. Fletcher \u003c/em>and is one of Winter’s most appealing subjects, died in his sleep in mid-2019 following a seizure.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You will certainly get some discussions of things that might seem familiar. There is financial exploitation, there are parents who fail to supervise enough, there are abusive directors. There is the experience of being recognized (Wilson compares it to when the staff sings “Happy Birthday” to you in a restaurant), there are the difficulties in knowing whose treatment of you is genuine and whose is opportunistic, and there are tensions between what parents want and what kids want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UnjrCOH-Mw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What stays with you after the documentary is over may be the details. There’s a clip of Wood and Michelle Trachtenberg at an awards ceremony for young performers in 2000. They are on a red carpet, both of them young adolescents. A TV producer stands between them, and a photographer cajoles them to get closer, and ultimately to both pose with their arms wrapped around his elbows, until they’re sort of hanging on him. (Which, by the way, he also seems to find awkward.) Did this event, individually, harm them? There’s no indication that it did. But does getting girls that age to cuddle up to adult men for pictures potentially teach them things it’s dangerous to learn, about how they should interact with powerful people and about whether they’re supposed to obey when they’re told to feign familiarity? Of course. Would it have been easy to find this all very benign? Of course. Winter structures a section of the film about sexualized roles for girls—and the potential for abuse of both girls and boys—with both frankness and restraint, allowing Wood in particular to explain the complexity of wanting film and television to explore the natural sexuality of teenagers without placing inappropriate demands on actors who may be utterly inexperienced in real life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a real thicket of personal and professional challenges, and none of it is past; it’s all ongoing. So Winter also follows two kids who are working on being actors right now (or at least were when he filmed). One, Marc, is an affable young ham who mugs with delight whenever you point a camera at him. His mother has brought him to L.A. for pilot season, and he’s also taking acting classes. Mom and Dad both say all the right things about how it’s entirely up to him whether he wants to do it, and they undoubtedly do ask him, just like they say they do. But through a revealing visit to one of his acting lessons, the question slowly arises: Does this kid want anything to do with \u003cem>acting\u003c/em>, or is that just the most famous way to channel his actual passion, which is \u003cem>clowning\u003c/em>? (I kept wondering whether there’s childhood improv. His energy is extreme improv-guy energy.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other is Demi Singleton, who’s already had some success. She’s been in \u003cem>School Of Rock \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Lion King \u003c/em>on Broadway, and in \u003cem>Godfather of Harlem \u003c/em>on television. These two are good choices, because they represent different inflection points happening in real time: the moment when you have to decide how much you want to give up to try to get \u003cem>anything\u003c/em> much to happen, which is where Marc’s parents are, and the moment when you have to decide how much you want to give up to push modest success into major success, which is where Demi and her mother are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the more well-known of his subjects, the most powerful choice Winter makes is to simply let them speak for themselves. There are no other talking heads here—no journalists, no psychologists, nobody. People who have often been directed and pushed and molded to varying degrees get a rare opportunity to put their stories in their own words, with the help of a filmmaker who knows how to combine these disparate experiences into something coherent. The result is a chance to get a more rounded sense of people who rarely get this kind of nuanced treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Showbiz+Kids%27+Gives+Child+Actors+The+Chance+To+Tell+Their+Own+Stories&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What stays with you after the documentary is over may be the details. There’s a clip of Wood and Michelle Trachtenberg at an awards ceremony for young performers in 2000. They are on a red carpet, both of them young adolescents. A TV producer stands between them, and a photographer cajoles them to get closer, and ultimately to both pose with their arms wrapped around his elbows, until they’re sort of hanging on him. (Which, by the way, he also seems to find awkward.) Did this event, individually, harm them? There’s no indication that it did. But does getting girls that age to cuddle up to adult men for pictures potentially teach them things it’s dangerous to learn, about how they should interact with powerful people and about whether they’re supposed to obey when they’re told to feign familiarity? Of course. Would it have been easy to find this all very benign? Of course. Winter structures a section of the film about sexualized roles for girls—and the potential for abuse of both girls and boys—with both frankness and restraint, allowing Wood in particular to explain the complexity of wanting film and television to explore the natural sexuality of teenagers without placing inappropriate demands on actors who may be utterly inexperienced in real life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a real thicket of personal and professional challenges, and none of it is past; it’s all ongoing. So Winter also follows two kids who are working on being actors right now (or at least were when he filmed). One, Marc, is an affable young ham who mugs with delight whenever you point a camera at him. His mother has brought him to L.A. for pilot season, and he’s also taking acting classes. Mom and Dad both say all the right things about how it’s entirely up to him whether he wants to do it, and they undoubtedly do ask him, just like they say they do. But through a revealing visit to one of his acting lessons, the question slowly arises: Does this kid want anything to do with \u003cem>acting\u003c/em>, or is that just the most famous way to channel his actual passion, which is \u003cem>clowning\u003c/em>? (I kept wondering whether there’s childhood improv. His energy is extreme improv-guy energy.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other is Demi Singleton, who’s already had some success. She’s been in \u003cem>School Of Rock \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Lion King \u003c/em>on Broadway, and in \u003cem>Godfather of Harlem \u003c/em>on television. These two are good choices, because they represent different inflection points happening in real time: the moment when you have to decide how much you want to give up to try to get \u003cem>anything\u003c/em> much to happen, which is where Marc’s parents are, and the moment when you have to decide how much you want to give up to push modest success into major success, which is where Demi and her mother are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the more well-known of his subjects, the most powerful choice Winter makes is to simply let them speak for themselves. There are no other talking heads here—no journalists, no psychologists, nobody. People who have often been directed and pushed and molded to varying degrees get a rare opportunity to put their stories in their own words, with the help of a filmmaker who knows how to combine these disparate experiences into something coherent. The result is a chance to get a more rounded sense of people who rarely get this kind of nuanced treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Showbiz+Kids%27+Gives+Child+Actors+The+Chance+To+Tell+Their+Own+Stories&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Now Playing! A Barbara Lee Doc at the Drive-In and Other Inspiring Tales",
"headTitle": "Now Playing! A Barbara Lee Doc at the Drive-In and Other Inspiring Tales | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>These days it feels like we’re in the middle of a Hitchcock movie. Hitch’s great innovation was to shock us with evil in broad daylight, then surround and compound the horror with mass complacency. Think of the predatory Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) chatting casually in a Santa Rosa sitting room in \u003cem>Shadow of a Doubt\u003c/em>, or the equally charming serial killer Robert Rusk (Barry Foster) circling a travel agent in her office while London traffic bustles obliviously one floor below in \u003cem>Frenzy\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As they say in Whitechapel, if the metaphor fits, wear it. On the other hand, if your inclination is toward optimism, or better yet resistance, this week brings films to buoy your spirits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003ca href=\"https://jfi.org/summer-days\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Cinegogue Summer Days\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nJuly 16–19\u003cbr>\nWest Wind Drive-Ins, online\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in mid-April, the Jewish Film Institute announced the postponement of the annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival from late July to November. While the country steadily devolved day after idiotic day, the festival world sorted out a serviceable alternative to in-person screenings consisting of drive-ins, online viewing and live and prerecorded Q&As. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinegogue Summer Days opens July 16 with side-by-side screenings at Concord’s West Wind Solano Drive-In of Abby Ginzberg’s eagerly awaited \u003cem>Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me\u003c/em> and Oren Jacoby’s \u003cem>On Broadway\u003c/em>, a behind-the-curtain salute to the Great White Way and, implicitly, New York City’s resilience, (\u003cem>On Broadway\u003c/em> also plays the San Jose’s West Wind Capitol Drive-In.) Remarkably, these films and the new restoration of the 1919 Sholem Aleichem adaptation \u003cem>Broken Barriers\u003c/em> on July 18 are the only events requiring a paid ticket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13883340\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13883340\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me.’ \u003ccite>(Jewish Film Insitute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a woozy opening, \u003cem>Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me\u003c/em> snaps into focus with an in-depth recap of the East Bay Congresswoman’s gutsy dissenting vote in the post-9/11 rush to give President George W. Bush broad war powers. Every year thereafter, Lee introduced a resolution to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force and in 2019—in both a validation of the rightness of her vote and a reflection of her ability to win support across the ideological spectrum—the House passed her bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years earlier, though, Lee enlisted the NAACP to help change the process at San Fernando High in Southern California so the entire student body chose the cheerleaders instead of a cozy committee. (Lee tried out and made the squad, if you had any doubt.) Nonetheless, Lee comes across in the irresistible \u003cem>Truth to Power\u003c/em> neither as a firebrand nor a charismatic leader but as an Everywoman connected to her constituents and committed to achieving funding and results for the poor, the paroled and so many other Americans who don’t have Congress’ ear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13883339\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"802\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13883339\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-768x513.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘The Painted Bird.’ \u003ccite>(IFC Films)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nOpens July 17\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-painted-bird\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">VOD\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its first hour, Václav Marhoul’s stark black-and-white adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s novel unfolds in the unpopulated rural backwaters of an unnamed Eastern European country at some unspecified time between the Middle Ages and today. The filmmaker’s cryptic approach allows the saga of a sensitive, vulnerable boy on the road, who encounters all manner of prejudice, casual cruelty (to animals and people) and exploitation, to suggest the plight of present-day refugees. Or, for those in a COVID-19 depression or Cormac McCarthy loop, the collapse of civilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In due time soldiers from the Second World War turn up, and we gain our bearings. But the boy does not, and we experience the events as he perceives them, in fragments and snapshots like clues—or better yet, a jigsaw puzzle without the cover picture. The puzzle’s meaning doesn’t become clear until enough pieces are put together. In this regard, and in its artfulness and power, \u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em> belongs with the great poetic works of children at war like \u003cem>Diamonds in the Night\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Come and See\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Run, Boy, Run\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em>, which premiered last fall at Venice and was the Czech Republic’s official submission for the Academy Award for International Feature Film (it was shortlisted for the Oscar, but wasn’t nominated), presents a bleak but far from nihilistic view of human nature. To those who might find my description (and the film itself) depressing, is it not inspiring that Marhoul could raise the money, first of all, and that he was compelled to create a work of art from such darkness? That is also the boy’s challenge too, ultimately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://vimeo.com/322378827\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nJuly 20\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/video/trailer-radical-monarchs/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">\u003ci>POV\u003c/i> on KQED\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it’s inspiration you crave, the Oakland girls of color we meet in Linda Goldstein Knowlton’s vibrant documentary will feed your fire. These tweens have developed a strong sense of self not via the typical troop’s old-school accomplishments of knot-tying and fire building but through social-justice activities and grassroots activism. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em> follows co-founders and working moms Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest over three years as they develop and practice strategies to empower their group members. They are so successful, and there’s so much demand for a program to engage youth of color, that the duo is inundated with requests to start chapters around the country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the key takeaways from the doc is that a great way for young people to build confidence and skills is to guide them to think beyond themselves. Allying and collaborating with others and being part of a movement is powerful stuff. If you had any concerns about the next generation taking up the torch from Barbara Lee one day, \u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em> will make you rest easy.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>These days it feels like we’re in the middle of a Hitchcock movie. Hitch’s great innovation was to shock us with evil in broad daylight, then surround and compound the horror with mass complacency. Think of the predatory Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) chatting casually in a Santa Rosa sitting room in \u003cem>Shadow of a Doubt\u003c/em>, or the equally charming serial killer Robert Rusk (Barry Foster) circling a travel agent in her office while London traffic bustles obliviously one floor below in \u003cem>Frenzy\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As they say in Whitechapel, if the metaphor fits, wear it. On the other hand, if your inclination is toward optimism, or better yet resistance, this week brings films to buoy your spirits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003ca href=\"https://jfi.org/summer-days\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Cinegogue Summer Days\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nJuly 16–19\u003cbr>\nWest Wind Drive-Ins, online\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in mid-April, the Jewish Film Institute announced the postponement of the annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival from late July to November. While the country steadily devolved day after idiotic day, the festival world sorted out a serviceable alternative to in-person screenings consisting of drive-ins, online viewing and live and prerecorded Q&As. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinegogue Summer Days opens July 16 with side-by-side screenings at Concord’s West Wind Solano Drive-In of Abby Ginzberg’s eagerly awaited \u003cem>Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me\u003c/em> and Oren Jacoby’s \u003cem>On Broadway\u003c/em>, a behind-the-curtain salute to the Great White Way and, implicitly, New York City’s resilience, (\u003cem>On Broadway\u003c/em> also plays the San Jose’s West Wind Capitol Drive-In.) Remarkably, these films and the new restoration of the 1919 Sholem Aleichem adaptation \u003cem>Broken Barriers\u003c/em> on July 18 are the only events requiring a paid ticket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13883340\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13883340\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/TRUTH-TO-POWER-courtesy-Social-Action-Media_1200-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me.’ \u003ccite>(Jewish Film Insitute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a woozy opening, \u003cem>Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me\u003c/em> snaps into focus with an in-depth recap of the East Bay Congresswoman’s gutsy dissenting vote in the post-9/11 rush to give President George W. Bush broad war powers. Every year thereafter, Lee introduced a resolution to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force and in 2019—in both a validation of the rightness of her vote and a reflection of her ability to win support across the ideological spectrum—the House passed her bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years earlier, though, Lee enlisted the NAACP to help change the process at San Fernando High in Southern California so the entire student body chose the cheerleaders instead of a cozy committee. (Lee tried out and made the squad, if you had any doubt.) Nonetheless, Lee comes across in the irresistible \u003cem>Truth to Power\u003c/em> neither as a firebrand nor a charismatic leader but as an Everywoman connected to her constituents and committed to achieving funding and results for the poor, the paroled and so many other Americans who don’t have Congress’ ear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13883339\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"802\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13883339\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/THEPAINTEDBIRDStill2_1200-768x513.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from ‘The Painted Bird.’ \u003ccite>(IFC Films)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nOpens July 17\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-painted-bird\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">VOD\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its first hour, Václav Marhoul’s stark black-and-white adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s novel unfolds in the unpopulated rural backwaters of an unnamed Eastern European country at some unspecified time between the Middle Ages and today. The filmmaker’s cryptic approach allows the saga of a sensitive, vulnerable boy on the road, who encounters all manner of prejudice, casual cruelty (to animals and people) and exploitation, to suggest the plight of present-day refugees. Or, for those in a COVID-19 depression or Cormac McCarthy loop, the collapse of civilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In due time soldiers from the Second World War turn up, and we gain our bearings. But the boy does not, and we experience the events as he perceives them, in fragments and snapshots like clues—or better yet, a jigsaw puzzle without the cover picture. The puzzle’s meaning doesn’t become clear until enough pieces are put together. In this regard, and in its artfulness and power, \u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em> belongs with the great poetic works of children at war like \u003cem>Diamonds in the Night\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Come and See\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Run, Boy, Run\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Painted Bird\u003c/em>, which premiered last fall at Venice and was the Czech Republic’s official submission for the Academy Award for International Feature Film (it was shortlisted for the Oscar, but wasn’t nominated), presents a bleak but far from nihilistic view of human nature. To those who might find my description (and the film itself) depressing, is it not inspiring that Marhoul could raise the money, first of all, and that he was compelled to create a work of art from such darkness? That is also the boy’s challenge too, ultimately.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em>\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\nJuly 20\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/video/trailer-radical-monarchs/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">\u003ci>POV\u003c/i> on KQED\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it’s inspiration you crave, the Oakland girls of color we meet in Linda Goldstein Knowlton’s vibrant documentary will feed your fire. These tweens have developed a strong sense of self not via the typical troop’s old-school accomplishments of knot-tying and fire building but through social-justice activities and grassroots activism. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em> follows co-founders and working moms Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest over three years as they develop and practice strategies to empower their group members. They are so successful, and there’s so much demand for a program to engage youth of color, that the duo is inundated with requests to start chapters around the country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the key takeaways from the doc is that a great way for young people to build confidence and skills is to guide them to think beyond themselves. Allying and collaborating with others and being part of a movement is powerful stuff. If you had any concerns about the next generation taking up the torch from Barbara Lee one day, \u003cem>We Are the Radical Monarchs\u003c/em> will make you rest easy.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"code-switch-life-kit": {
"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-Our-Watch-p1436229/",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
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