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"title": "Four Women Struggle with a Complex Family History in 'The Year She Left Us'",
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"title": "Four Women Struggle with a Complex Family History in 'The Year She Left Us' | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/yearsheleft1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/yearsheleft1.jpg\" alt=\"Year She Left Us book cover\" width=\"400\" height=\"607\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10136901\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/yearsheleft1.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/yearsheleft1-197x300.jpg 197w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco has long been a hub of Chinese-American history, but, in her first novel, local author Kathryn Ma takes a fresh look at the ties that still stretch across the Pacific. \u003cem>The Year She Left Us\u003c/em> tells the story of three generations of Chinese-American women living in San Francisco. The matriarch, Gran, leaves Mao’s China to study at Bryn Mawr, start a family, and run a successful restaurant. Her two daughters inherit all of her ambition – Charlie becomes a lawyer and Les a judge – but never marry. Instead, the younger daughter, Charlie, decides to adopt a baby girl from China. And so the scene is set for Ma’s exploration of family, cultural identity, and the inextricability of the present and the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The four women take turns narrating what happens when Ari, the adopted daughter, returns to China to visit her orphanage and suffers a nervous breakdown. Somewhat unsettlingly, Ma allows Ari and Gran to speak in the first person but uses the third person for Charlie’s and Les’ points of view. The frame of the story also never fully develops. Ma hints that Gran and Ari are collaborating to write a therapeutic account of this traumatic year in the family’s life, but Charlie’s and Les’ contributions are never explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, the alternating voices reveal a rewardingly complex story. This is more than a tale of family dysfunction, or even of an adopted child coming to terms with her identity. Ari is not the only one wrestling with the past. Each of the women is sheltering a secret, and each is affected by truths she can never know: Ari wonders about her birth parents; Charlie tries to forget the man who left her soon after the adoption; Les refuses to consider the possibility of marrying her long-time lover; and Gran is haunted by what, and whom, she left behind in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ma skillfully links the family’s personal troubles to wider social and historical forces, from the Cultural Revolution to the racial and gender prejudice Charlie and Les face at work. Her satirical tone never obscures the pathos she brings to this tale of cultural and personal confusion. As the four women’s secrets are revealed one by one, their individual vulnerabilities and unexpected strengths emerge as well. By portraying four characters struggling with the same twisted family history in very different ways, Ma makes her protagonists vivid and unpredictable. With sympathy for each of these characters and their unique troubles, Ma breaks down the label ‘Chinese-American’ into a complex, human story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kathryn Ma will be reading from \u003cem>The Year She Left Us\u003c/em> at bookstores around the Bay Area through June 29\u003csup>th\u003c/sup>. For a complete \u003ca href=\"http://www.kathrynma.com/events.html\">list of events\u003c/a>, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.kathrynma.com/events.html\">kathrynma.com\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"aligncenter\">\n\u003ch4>Listen to KQED \u003ci>Forum’s\u003c/i> May 19, 2014 interview with Kathryn Ma.\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2014/05/20140519bbforum.mp3\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/aside>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Friday at Enrico's: Don Carpenter's Posthumous Farewell",
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"content": "\u003cp>You can probably imagine everything about Don Carpenter and his writing if I told you that he kept a gun in the drawer of his desk — just an inch below where he writes — and that he did this not for dramatic but for practical reasons. Carpenter’s writing is bleak, his irony delicious, and his stories are imbued with a kind of admirable cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time when the San Francisco native was working on what would become his last novel, \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em>, Carpenter was plagued by complications from tuberculosis and diabetes. It was 1995, he was 64, and he was losing his sight completely. In the summer of that year, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/30/obituaries/don-carpenter-64-a-novelist-who-wrote-about-bleak-lives.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">he took his own life\u003c/a> inside his “tiny, cluttered apartment in Mill Valley,” according to the NY Times, and it had been six years since his last novel was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the time Carpenter took his own life, there were rumors of a last, unfinished manuscript, but slowly days became years and the rumors subsumed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Flash forward to the current day and we find a resurgence of interest in Carpenter. The New York Times Review of Books re-released Carpenter’s first novel, \u003cem>Hard Rain Falling, \u003c/em>as part of their Classics series. And then Jack Shoemaker, editor at Counterpoint Press, begins wondering “whatever happened to Carpenter’s last manuscript?” What he remembered was that it was almost ready, but was missing some crucial transitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man to finish the job? Jonathan Lethem, best-selling author of \u003cem>Motherless Brooklyn.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lethem wrote in the afterword of \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>about what it was like to enter the world of a writer he had long professed his admiration for, stating “The chance to flatter myself by coming in like Mariano Rivero in the ninth was irresistible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the same afterword, Lethem notes that the tidying up he did adds up to about five or eight pages, which is to say \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> is 1.5 percent Lethem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136431\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10136431 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg\" alt=\"Author Jonathan Lethem. Credit: John Lucas\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Jonathan Lethem. Credit: John Lucas\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>is a book about California’s literary scene in the ’50s and ’60s, the high times of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Beat Generation.\u003c/a> It’s a book that expounds on the dire conditions of being a perpetually-emerging artist, the boiling schadenfreude, the petty intrigues, failed marriages, and the pulling ahead of the few. We can speculate on whom the characters of \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>are based on, but it feels unnecessary. It’s enough to say that this is a group portrait of the writers who frequented the North Beach café Enrico’s (now Naked Lunch), and that among them was Richard Brautigan, author of the cult novel \u003cem>Trout Fishing in America.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> is a compulsive read; the writing is sure of itself, and it reminds me of Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, \u003cem>Savage Detectives, \u003c/em>except instead of exploring the youth of an emerging literary scene, \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> graduates into the adult realities of choosing a bohemian life. There is Dick Dubonet, a writer plagued by the too-early success of selling a story to \u003cem>Playboy\u003c/em> who never writes again; there is Charlie Monel, who has oodles of potential but lets it squander in time; and then there is Jaime (Charlie’s wife), who quietly and unexpectedly turns out a bestseller. There is the feeling of being inside a small pond, filled with growing Siamese fighting fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like Stan Winger the most, a jewel thief who arrives at writing by chance, seeking something to do while wiling his time away at prison. Someone tries to introduce him to Dick Dubonet when he is still the toast of the literary scene in Portland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Stan stood up to shake hands with the writer. He was a good-looking little guy, about an inch shorter than Stan, who was only five seven himself. He had a good handshake, though. Stan was ashamed of his own, his palm wet most of the time, so that he was unwilling to really squeeze a guy’s hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sorry, my hand’s wet,” he said, and wished he hadn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-10136432 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover-178x300.jpg\" alt=\"Fridays at Enricos cover\" width=\"178\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover-178x300.jpg 178w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover.jpg 477w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px\">“All of Oregon is wet tonight,” Dick Dubonet said rather loudly… Obviously, the local kingpin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were just talking about love,” Marty said, loudly himself. “Stan’s a writer too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dick’s eyebrow went up. “Really? What’s your name again?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I haven’t published anything.” Stan grinned down at the tablecloth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ah,” Dick said, “Would-be writer.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>There is a pleasure in reading about the role reversals in the literary community that Carpenter so painstakingly depicts in \u003cem>Friday’s at Enrico’s\u003c/em>, but the real joy of this book is in the depiction of real aspects of such an important time for Californian literature that doesn’t get too glassy-eyed and nostalgic. As Lethem writes in the afterword, “Carpenter writes as someone who knows the West as a real geography, with a culture of its own, a place to live the usual quandaries of existence, rather than a petri dish for American Destiny.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781619023017\">out\u003c/a> now. For \u003ca href=\"http://counterpointpress.com/products/fridays-at-enricos/\">more information,\u003c/a> visit counterpointpress.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You can probably imagine everything about Don Carpenter and his writing if I told you that he kept a gun in the drawer of his desk — just an inch below where he writes — and that he did this not for dramatic but for practical reasons. Carpenter’s writing is bleak, his irony delicious, and his stories are imbued with a kind of admirable cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time when the San Francisco native was working on what would become his last novel, \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em>, Carpenter was plagued by complications from tuberculosis and diabetes. It was 1995, he was 64, and he was losing his sight completely. In the summer of that year, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/30/obituaries/don-carpenter-64-a-novelist-who-wrote-about-bleak-lives.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">he took his own life\u003c/a> inside his “tiny, cluttered apartment in Mill Valley,” according to the NY Times, and it had been six years since his last novel was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the time Carpenter took his own life, there were rumors of a last, unfinished manuscript, but slowly days became years and the rumors subsumed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Flash forward to the current day and we find a resurgence of interest in Carpenter. The New York Times Review of Books re-released Carpenter’s first novel, \u003cem>Hard Rain Falling, \u003c/em>as part of their Classics series. And then Jack Shoemaker, editor at Counterpoint Press, begins wondering “whatever happened to Carpenter’s last manuscript?” What he remembered was that it was almost ready, but was missing some crucial transitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man to finish the job? Jonathan Lethem, best-selling author of \u003cem>Motherless Brooklyn.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lethem wrote in the afterword of \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>about what it was like to enter the world of a writer he had long professed his admiration for, stating “The chance to flatter myself by coming in like Mariano Rivero in the ninth was irresistible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the same afterword, Lethem notes that the tidying up he did adds up to about five or eight pages, which is to say \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> is 1.5 percent Lethem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136431\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10136431 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg\" alt=\"Author Jonathan Lethem. Credit: John Lucas\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/lethem_authorphoto-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Jonathan Lethem. Credit: John Lucas\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>is a book about California’s literary scene in the ’50s and ’60s, the high times of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Beat Generation.\u003c/a> It’s a book that expounds on the dire conditions of being a perpetually-emerging artist, the boiling schadenfreude, the petty intrigues, failed marriages, and the pulling ahead of the few. We can speculate on whom the characters of \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>are based on, but it feels unnecessary. It’s enough to say that this is a group portrait of the writers who frequented the North Beach café Enrico’s (now Naked Lunch), and that among them was Richard Brautigan, author of the cult novel \u003cem>Trout Fishing in America.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> is a compulsive read; the writing is sure of itself, and it reminds me of Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, \u003cem>Savage Detectives, \u003c/em>except instead of exploring the youth of an emerging literary scene, \u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s\u003c/em> graduates into the adult realities of choosing a bohemian life. There is Dick Dubonet, a writer plagued by the too-early success of selling a story to \u003cem>Playboy\u003c/em> who never writes again; there is Charlie Monel, who has oodles of potential but lets it squander in time; and then there is Jaime (Charlie’s wife), who quietly and unexpectedly turns out a bestseller. There is the feeling of being inside a small pond, filled with growing Siamese fighting fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like Stan Winger the most, a jewel thief who arrives at writing by chance, seeking something to do while wiling his time away at prison. Someone tries to introduce him to Dick Dubonet when he is still the toast of the literary scene in Portland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Stan stood up to shake hands with the writer. He was a good-looking little guy, about an inch shorter than Stan, who was only five seven himself. He had a good handshake, though. Stan was ashamed of his own, his palm wet most of the time, so that he was unwilling to really squeeze a guy’s hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sorry, my hand’s wet,” he said, and wished he hadn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-10136432 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover-178x300.jpg\" alt=\"Fridays at Enricos cover\" width=\"178\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover-178x300.jpg 178w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Fridays-at-Enricos-cover.jpg 477w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px\">“All of Oregon is wet tonight,” Dick Dubonet said rather loudly… Obviously, the local kingpin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were just talking about love,” Marty said, loudly himself. “Stan’s a writer too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dick’s eyebrow went up. “Really? What’s your name again?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I haven’t published anything.” Stan grinned down at the tablecloth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ah,” Dick said, “Would-be writer.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>There is a pleasure in reading about the role reversals in the literary community that Carpenter so painstakingly depicts in \u003cem>Friday’s at Enrico’s\u003c/em>, but the real joy of this book is in the depiction of real aspects of such an important time for Californian literature that doesn’t get too glassy-eyed and nostalgic. As Lethem writes in the afterword, “Carpenter writes as someone who knows the West as a real geography, with a culture of its own, a place to live the usual quandaries of existence, rather than a petri dish for American Destiny.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friday at Enrico’s \u003c/em>is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781619023017\">out\u003c/a> now. For \u003ca href=\"http://counterpointpress.com/products/fridays-at-enricos/\">more information,\u003c/a> visit counterpointpress.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Finding the Funniest People in Some of the Saddest Places",
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"content": "\u003cp>Serious issues demand to be taken seriously. That’s what I was taught from an early age, despite the best efforts of Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, and it’s the unquestioned aphorism that drives newscasts, newspapers and documentaries. But \u003cem>The Daily Show\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Colbert Report\u003c/em> proved that it’s possible to inform and inspire a swath of the population through witty, barbed dissections of current events. The latter will never replace the former, of course, but it’s an invaluable compliment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building on the idea that comedy opens people’s ears—to ugly realities and uncomfortable truths, Bay Area producers David Munro and Xandra Castleton made \u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i>, a one-hour documentary following an Indian-American comic as he searches for comedic talent in some of the poorest areas in the world. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On one level, \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> is an enlightened travelogue in which charismatic comic and host Hasan Minhaj ventures to India and South Africa in search of local comedians with the guts to take on social issues and the talent to get laughs. An important secondary goal is bringing a couple of those comedians to Los Angeles to perform at the Laugh Factory. In addition to offering a personal and career boon for the two aspiring talents, the gig could demonstrate that a given culture’s problems and humor can be deeply understood by another. Suffering may be universal, but so is empathy; is comedy?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10135789\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Stand Up Planet co-creators, Xandra Castleton & David Munro\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10135789\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stand Up Planet co-creators, Xandra Castleton & David Munro \u003ccite>(Tommy Lau )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Traditional social issue documentaries leave out the ‘life goes on’ part, where people laugh and love, and just focus to an extreme on the problem,” Munro explains. “I think they not only leave out a big part of the story, but make people tune out when it’s presented that way. You can’t keep living if all there is is poverty and hopelessness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producers looked at a lot of comics before settling on the likable, intelligent Minhaj (from MTV’s \u003cem>Failosophy\u003c/em>) as Stand Up Planet’s host, guide and ringleader. It happened to be pilot season in L.A., and Minhaj had various options. He chose \u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i>, in part, because he recognized that he was increasingly drawing on his own life for his stand-up act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was in a time of discovery for his own work, and [the program] was an experience that would broaden his scope,” Munro says. “And also connect some dots, to go back to India and go through this Ralph Ellison experience. ‘What if my family hadn’t left? Would I have been a comedian? A computer engineer?’ It closed a circle, in a way, and opened one up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minhaj’s trip to Mumbai uncovers a handful of courageous, outspoken English-language comics who primarily perform in small venues such as restaurants. Their audience largely consists of young, educated elites, but that’s an influential segment of the population. On the street, bulky comic Tanmay Bhat takes Minhat on a neighborhood tour to illustrate the reality behind one of his most trenchant bits: 54 percent of Indians defecate outdoors. Every day, 1,600 children die of sanitation-related illnesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Johannesburg, Minhaj and the filmmakers encounter black stars who launched their careers with daring sketch-comedy shows that made fun of the tendency to blame now-banned apartheid for every ill. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone was walking on eggshells, no one wanted to touch the third rail of flat-out truth,” Munro says. “The comics were willing to. Some of the stuff they did on the TV show caught a lot of flak from the government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> goes to great pains to avoid condescending to the native comics and populations, which should be commended. At the same time, Munro says he sees the progression and history of American comedy mirrored in India and South Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Before stand-up, just like in this country, mass-appeal mainstream comedy tends to be broad, almost like vaudeville,” he explains. “So what we saw in these countries was an accelerated evolution of what happened here. The performers start out as filler (on a long bill) and slowly become the main draw.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the surprising thing about \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> is when the scouted talent that were invited to L.A. at Minhaj’s invitation are treated to a private visit with Bill Cosby, which rocks their world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way it works for me is as the passing of the torch, that dangerous comedy is not a new invention,” Munro says. “It’s going to the mountain,” Castleton concurs. “All these comics grew up watching \u003cem>The Cosby Show\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show also had a huge impact in South Africa, simply by depicting that a black man and his wife could be professionals and live in a nice house. According to Munro, the inmates on Robben Island used to write in sand, recounting what happened the night before on \u003cem>The Cosby Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, never discount the power of comedy. \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> carries on the fight with a contemporary voice and ample laughs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i> has its broadcast premiere Wednesday, May 14 on Link TV, Pivot and KCET.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more information, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.standupplanet.org/\" target=\"”_blank”\" rel=\"noopener\"> www.standupplanet.org.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Serious issues demand to be taken seriously. That’s what I was taught from an early age, despite the best efforts of Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, and it’s the unquestioned aphorism that drives newscasts, newspapers and documentaries. But \u003cem>The Daily Show\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Colbert Report\u003c/em> proved that it’s possible to inform and inspire a swath of the population through witty, barbed dissections of current events. The latter will never replace the former, of course, but it’s an invaluable compliment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building on the idea that comedy opens people’s ears—to ugly realities and uncomfortable truths, Bay Area producers David Munro and Xandra Castleton made \u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i>, a one-hour documentary following an Indian-American comic as he searches for comedic talent in some of the poorest areas in the world. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On one level, \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> is an enlightened travelogue in which charismatic comic and host Hasan Minhaj ventures to India and South Africa in search of local comedians with the guts to take on social issues and the talent to get laughs. An important secondary goal is bringing a couple of those comedians to Los Angeles to perform at the Laugh Factory. In addition to offering a personal and career boon for the two aspiring talents, the gig could demonstrate that a given culture’s problems and humor can be deeply understood by another. Suffering may be universal, but so is empathy; is comedy?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10135789\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Stand Up Planet co-creators, Xandra Castleton & David Munro\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10135789\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Castleton_Munro_byTommyLau_02-1-1024x682-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stand Up Planet co-creators, Xandra Castleton & David Munro \u003ccite>(Tommy Lau )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Traditional social issue documentaries leave out the ‘life goes on’ part, where people laugh and love, and just focus to an extreme on the problem,” Munro explains. “I think they not only leave out a big part of the story, but make people tune out when it’s presented that way. You can’t keep living if all there is is poverty and hopelessness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producers looked at a lot of comics before settling on the likable, intelligent Minhaj (from MTV’s \u003cem>Failosophy\u003c/em>) as Stand Up Planet’s host, guide and ringleader. It happened to be pilot season in L.A., and Minhaj had various options. He chose \u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i>, in part, because he recognized that he was increasingly drawing on his own life for his stand-up act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was in a time of discovery for his own work, and [the program] was an experience that would broaden his scope,” Munro says. “And also connect some dots, to go back to India and go through this Ralph Ellison experience. ‘What if my family hadn’t left? Would I have been a comedian? A computer engineer?’ It closed a circle, in a way, and opened one up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minhaj’s trip to Mumbai uncovers a handful of courageous, outspoken English-language comics who primarily perform in small venues such as restaurants. Their audience largely consists of young, educated elites, but that’s an influential segment of the population. On the street, bulky comic Tanmay Bhat takes Minhat on a neighborhood tour to illustrate the reality behind one of his most trenchant bits: 54 percent of Indians defecate outdoors. Every day, 1,600 children die of sanitation-related illnesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Johannesburg, Minhaj and the filmmakers encounter black stars who launched their careers with daring sketch-comedy shows that made fun of the tendency to blame now-banned apartheid for every ill. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone was walking on eggshells, no one wanted to touch the third rail of flat-out truth,” Munro says. “The comics were willing to. Some of the stuff they did on the TV show caught a lot of flak from the government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> goes to great pains to avoid condescending to the native comics and populations, which should be commended. At the same time, Munro says he sees the progression and history of American comedy mirrored in India and South Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Before stand-up, just like in this country, mass-appeal mainstream comedy tends to be broad, almost like vaudeville,” he explains. “So what we saw in these countries was an accelerated evolution of what happened here. The performers start out as filler (on a long bill) and slowly become the main draw.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the surprising thing about \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> is when the scouted talent that were invited to L.A. at Minhaj’s invitation are treated to a private visit with Bill Cosby, which rocks their world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way it works for me is as the passing of the torch, that dangerous comedy is not a new invention,” Munro says. “It’s going to the mountain,” Castleton concurs. “All these comics grew up watching \u003cem>The Cosby Show\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show also had a huge impact in South Africa, simply by depicting that a black man and his wife could be professionals and live in a nice house. According to Munro, the inmates on Robben Island used to write in sand, recounting what happened the night before on \u003cem>The Cosby Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, never discount the power of comedy. \u003cem>Stand Up Planet\u003c/em> carries on the fight with a contemporary voice and ample laughs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Stand Up Planet\u003c/i> has its broadcast premiere Wednesday, May 14 on Link TV, Pivot and KCET.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more information, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.standupplanet.org/\" target=\"”_blank”\" rel=\"noopener\"> www.standupplanet.org.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Winter Read: The Robber of Memories by Michael Jacobs",
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"content": "\u003cp>As the end of the year ruthlessly approaches, I have found solace in a book about a river journey into the jungles of my homeland, Colombia. There is nothing like a travel book to cure winter and holiday woes. Michael Jacobs is a British writer of Irish and Spanish descent who has written numerous travel guides, but \u003ci>The Robber of Memories: a River Journey through Colombia\u003c/i> is something more. It is half travel book, but also half fancy, spurred by the author’s ability to turn his life into metaphor. The metaphor is this: with his father passed, taken by Alzheimer’s, and his mother at the onset of dementia, Jacobs began to see the tumultuous river Magdalena (once the only thoroughfare through a wild, inhospitable jungle during colonization) as that of Lethe, \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=e24YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=true\">the river of the Greek underworld\u003c/a> that if drunk from would erase all your memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Latino studies scholars might already cringe at such a premise (in the tradition of our otherness represented in media and literature, a South American river equated with one in the underworld, is, well, a bit questionable) but the metaphor feels genuine. The book opens when, by chance, at a bar after the Cartagena Literary Festival, Jacobs spots Gabriel Garcia Marquez enjoying a beer with his family. Jacobs has a mutual friend introduce him — his friend does so by exaggerating (or foretelling) that he is an Englishman obsessed with the river Magdalena. Garcia Marquez enthuses he would love to chat with Jacobs, but as the band serenading Garcia Marquez renews their efforts, Garcia Marquez — then rumored (\u003ca href=\"http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/brother-says-garcia-marquez-has-dementia/?_r=0\">now confirmed\u003c/a>) to be suffering from dementia — grows distant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His eyes were half-open and staring quizzically towards me,” Jacobs writes, “wondering perhaps who I was. I felt for a few moments that… he had become a caiman watching me from the banks of a tropical river, somnolent and near invisible, but with eyes that peered above the murky waters, taking in everything… offering their blessing to a journey I had already begun that night in my mind, up a river that was also a metaphor of memory, into a luxuriant world of marvels and dangers, to areas of the past both brilliant and dark, on to the Magdalena’s high and distant source, in Andean moorland, by the shores of oblivion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you decide to read this book, don’t expect a forward building journey down a river. Jacobs’ journey is more one of waiting: waiting for his passage to be secured on a boat, waiting for said boat to get unstuck and pick him up, waiting for a different boat, then waiting as \u003ci>that\u003c/i> boat is also stranded on the river. It seems fitting that a sideways and upwards inquiry into remembering and forgetting is halted by an obstacle course of floods and droughts and fear of encountering paramilitaries and guerrillas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/03/magdalenariver.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px; /><br />A boat by the shores of the Magdalena, Colombia. Image: Luis Perez, <a href=\" http:> Wikimedia Commons \u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>With a Colombian companion, Julio, and under the dominion of a captain who is jovial and loud, they finally get going. But the start of the jouney is comically disappointing; the boat travels at jogging speed and is prone to getting stuck on the riverbed. The captain tells Jacobs that navigating the river Magdalena is not an exact science, and that his sailors have not undergone official training. In the tedium of hours, Jacobs watches the sailors poke at the river with a long stick to guess the depth and thereby navigate the boat, and meanwhile he daydreams about Colombia’s troubled history and the fleeting memory of his mother. The ringing of his telephone, which explodes, surprisingly, at remote parts of the river, often interrupts his thinking. It is usually the nurse calling at the behest of his mother, who in the depths of her dementia has come to believe that Jacobs is her late husband, alive and in the process of abandoning her. At night Julio and Jacobs entertain themselves by hiding from the controlling captain and stealing some of his sailors to drink rum in the hull of the boat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the villages thin out, and there are only settlements here and there, the tensions rise. There are constant forebodings about being in guerrilla or paramilitary territory, and the floating corpses of animals are always mistaken for human bodies. As the boat’s passage becomes more difficult, Jacobs is intensely obsessed with reaching the source of the river, a place he equates with the waters of Mnemosyne (the underworld waters in Hades that will preserve your memories). Getting to the source, he believes, will be a magical experience. But it is nearing the end of his journey, when the inevitable happens: Jacobs encounters guerrillas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a different type of blundering that caught me up as a reader. As Jacobs tries to continuously connect his river journey to Garcia Marquez, the metaphor comes out forced, and it leaves one with the taste of a place not entirely seen but exoticized. Real people are compared to literary characters, as are places, situations, and vistas. It is as if at times Jacobs himself were experiencing Colombia third hand. I was also uncomfortable with some passages, as Jacobs uses questionable terms, like \u003ci>zambo\u003c/i> and \u003ci>mulatto\u003c/i>, terms that were given to the natives by Spaniards in order to fit them into a hierarchy based on race, and are incredibly charged and not altogether okay out of the mouth of a foreigner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a fascinating, meandering book nonetheless and Jacobs can write about the landscape in an effusive, inspired way: “A few tiny huts on stilts had precariously survived in a landscape fringed by banks of water lilies, palms and exotic trees in bloom, a landscape in which even the translucent yellows of the dying mangoes had a seductive sensuality. We bathed in waters once ruled by caimans, then stopped off at an enchanted island whose few inhabitants were stewing turtle for lunch. A parakeet landed on my shoulder, while up above shrieking monkeys jumped from tree to tree.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Robber of Memories\u003c/i> is out now.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the end of the year ruthlessly approaches, I have found solace in a book about a river journey into the jungles of my homeland, Colombia. There is nothing like a travel book to cure winter and holiday woes. Michael Jacobs is a British writer of Irish and Spanish descent who has written numerous travel guides, but \u003ci>The Robber of Memories: a River Journey through Colombia\u003c/i> is something more. It is half travel book, but also half fancy, spurred by the author’s ability to turn his life into metaphor. The metaphor is this: with his father passed, taken by Alzheimer’s, and his mother at the onset of dementia, Jacobs began to see the tumultuous river Magdalena (once the only thoroughfare through a wild, inhospitable jungle during colonization) as that of Lethe, \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=e24YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=true\">the river of the Greek underworld\u003c/a> that if drunk from would erase all your memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Latino studies scholars might already cringe at such a premise (in the tradition of our otherness represented in media and literature, a South American river equated with one in the underworld, is, well, a bit questionable) but the metaphor feels genuine. The book opens when, by chance, at a bar after the Cartagena Literary Festival, Jacobs spots Gabriel Garcia Marquez enjoying a beer with his family. Jacobs has a mutual friend introduce him — his friend does so by exaggerating (or foretelling) that he is an Englishman obsessed with the river Magdalena. Garcia Marquez enthuses he would love to chat with Jacobs, but as the band serenading Garcia Marquez renews their efforts, Garcia Marquez — then rumored (\u003ca href=\"http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/brother-says-garcia-marquez-has-dementia/?_r=0\">now confirmed\u003c/a>) to be suffering from dementia — grows distant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His eyes were half-open and staring quizzically towards me,” Jacobs writes, “wondering perhaps who I was. I felt for a few moments that… he had become a caiman watching me from the banks of a tropical river, somnolent and near invisible, but with eyes that peered above the murky waters, taking in everything… offering their blessing to a journey I had already begun that night in my mind, up a river that was also a metaphor of memory, into a luxuriant world of marvels and dangers, to areas of the past both brilliant and dark, on to the Magdalena’s high and distant source, in Andean moorland, by the shores of oblivion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you decide to read this book, don’t expect a forward building journey down a river. Jacobs’ journey is more one of waiting: waiting for his passage to be secured on a boat, waiting for said boat to get unstuck and pick him up, waiting for a different boat, then waiting as \u003ci>that\u003c/i> boat is also stranded on the river. It seems fitting that a sideways and upwards inquiry into remembering and forgetting is halted by an obstacle course of floods and droughts and fear of encountering paramilitaries and guerrillas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/03/magdalenariver.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px; /><br />A boat by the shores of the Magdalena, Colombia. Image: Luis Perez, <a href=\" http:> Wikimedia Commons \u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>With a Colombian companion, Julio, and under the dominion of a captain who is jovial and loud, they finally get going. But the start of the jouney is comically disappointing; the boat travels at jogging speed and is prone to getting stuck on the riverbed. The captain tells Jacobs that navigating the river Magdalena is not an exact science, and that his sailors have not undergone official training. In the tedium of hours, Jacobs watches the sailors poke at the river with a long stick to guess the depth and thereby navigate the boat, and meanwhile he daydreams about Colombia’s troubled history and the fleeting memory of his mother. The ringing of his telephone, which explodes, surprisingly, at remote parts of the river, often interrupts his thinking. It is usually the nurse calling at the behest of his mother, who in the depths of her dementia has come to believe that Jacobs is her late husband, alive and in the process of abandoning her. At night Julio and Jacobs entertain themselves by hiding from the controlling captain and stealing some of his sailors to drink rum in the hull of the boat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the villages thin out, and there are only settlements here and there, the tensions rise. There are constant forebodings about being in guerrilla or paramilitary territory, and the floating corpses of animals are always mistaken for human bodies. As the boat’s passage becomes more difficult, Jacobs is intensely obsessed with reaching the source of the river, a place he equates with the waters of Mnemosyne (the underworld waters in Hades that will preserve your memories). Getting to the source, he believes, will be a magical experience. But it is nearing the end of his journey, when the inevitable happens: Jacobs encounters guerrillas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a different type of blundering that caught me up as a reader. As Jacobs tries to continuously connect his river journey to Garcia Marquez, the metaphor comes out forced, and it leaves one with the taste of a place not entirely seen but exoticized. Real people are compared to literary characters, as are places, situations, and vistas. It is as if at times Jacobs himself were experiencing Colombia third hand. I was also uncomfortable with some passages, as Jacobs uses questionable terms, like \u003ci>zambo\u003c/i> and \u003ci>mulatto\u003c/i>, terms that were given to the natives by Spaniards in order to fit them into a hierarchy based on race, and are incredibly charged and not altogether okay out of the mouth of a foreigner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a fascinating, meandering book nonetheless and Jacobs can write about the landscape in an effusive, inspired way: “A few tiny huts on stilts had precariously survived in a landscape fringed by banks of water lilies, palms and exotic trees in bloom, a landscape in which even the translucent yellows of the dying mangoes had a seductive sensuality. We bathed in waters once ruled by caimans, then stopped off at an enchanted island whose few inhabitants were stewing turtle for lunch. A parakeet landed on my shoulder, while up above shrieking monkeys jumped from tree to tree.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Robber of Memories\u003c/i> is out now.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sci-fi comes to Silicon Valley in Dave Egger’s fifth novel, \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i>, but it is not an army of robots who threaten apocalypse this time but the CEOs of an Internet company. Set in the not-too-distant future, the Internet catchall company the Circle has subsumed not only the giants of our generation (Facebook, Google, Twitter), but those of future generations (Alacrity, Zoopa, Jefe, Quan). Eggers is (as always) confident and capable, and the characters and places of this book are so memorable and easy to read, you will rush through all 491 pages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book begins with Mae Holland, a 24-year-old recent graduate, hired at the Circle thanks to her friend Annie, who has already risen to a position in the Gang of 40, as in, the forty most crucial minds of the company. Let me treat you to the opening lines: “My God, Mae thought. It’s heaven. The campus was vast and rambling, wild with Pacific color, and yet the smallest detail had been carefully considered, shaped by the most eloquent hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Circle is the company behind TruYou, a service that doles out to users one and \u003ci>only one\u003c/i> Internet identity for the rest of their lives. But like so many current giants, the Circle is also a company that can allow itself philanthropist airs and develop whatever whimsical or practical gadgets it chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like in all Sci-fi, architecture is important. For the first few pages, Eggers treats us to a gliding, sunny description of the Circle campus, complete with Calder mobiles, fountains, volleyball and tennis courts, organic farms, bowling alleys, grocery stores, picnic areas, undulating grass, and buildings made of glass. However, something sinister lurks behind, and it isn’t until Mae sits down at her office station, that the chill becomes clear. Superiors in offices with glass walls surround Mae at her station, and down below there are more workers, seen through glass floors. Everything and everyone is seen and tracked at all times at the Circle, so that it is always known where they are, a series of red dots pulsing on a screen. It is like this, dropping hints here and there, that Eggers contextualizes an old idea — that of the Panopticon — into the landscape of social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/applecampus2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Is it life imitating art that Apple’s proposed new campus is a glass circle? The \u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/apple-campus2-project/Renderings-Submittal2.pdf\">renderings were submitted\u003c/a> to the City of Cupertino in 2011.\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Mae, for one, never wants to leave the Circle. “Outside the walls of the Circle,” Eggers writes, “all was noise and struggle, failure and filth. But here, all had been perfected. The best people had made the best systems and the best systems had reaped funds, unlimited funds, that made possible this, the best place to work. And it was natural that it was so, Mae thought. Who else but Utopians could make Utopia?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an increasingly comical piling of gadgets and screens Mae has to watch as part of her job, she is transformed, without her knowing, into a Circler — that is, one who shares everything, measures everything, wants to know everything, and has an increasingly sickening duty to transparency and a decreasing worry for a dissipating personal privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mae wears a bracelet on her left wrist to track her vitals, a bracelet on her right to track comments from her followers, and on her desk there are four screens: one to do work in, one to stay in touch with her team, one to supervise new members, and another to stay in touch with her company peers and everyone who follows her. Not to mention the headset Mae wears when she is at her desk, which pours a series of innocuous questions into her ear — \u003ci>How do you feel about shoes? What do you think about organic hair products? Would you be willing to pay 1200 dollars for a weeklong trip down the Grand Canyon?\u003c/i> — to which Mae can answer by saying smile, frown, or meh. If Mae fails to answer a question, she hears her own voice calling her attention, not a sound byte she recorded, but a digital rendering of her voice producing the sound of her name. Mae becomes increasingly obsessed with this digital rendition of her voice. It “sent a strange swirling wind through her [….] It was odd, just a few inches from normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon enough there is a call from two of the three Wise Men directing the Circle for politicians to go \u003ci>transparent\u003c/i>, that is to wear a live-feed camera around their neck at all times in order for constituents to know their every move and conversation. The language coming from the Wise Men is of the utopian sort we are already used to hearing — \u003ci>All that happens must be known\u003c/i>, for example, — but in Egger’s dystopian future, when everything is traceable, stored on the cloud, and undeletable, these goals carry grave consequences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through the ups and downs of corporate life, Mae’s personal existence falls apart. She isolates her parents and an ex-boyfriend as she shares everything they do and places cameras (the size of lollipops) on their lawns. There is also a mysterious, enigmatic man Mae gets romantically entangled with, but she only knows his first name and can’t seem to locate him anywhere on campus. The terror of uncertainty in the face of so many certainties makes Mae deeply unstable. She finds succor in the voice calling her through her headset, familiar yet strange, and it becomes a kind of life-line, a resounding echo by which she can calm herself as she increasingly loses contact with her own person in favor of her digital presence, which is each time more calculated and performative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some of Eggers’ criticisms of the Internet seem trite, the central question is quite clever and will send a chill down your spine — what happens to free will when being watched becomes ubiquitous? If we adjust our behavior when we know we are being watched, who do we become? The word Panopticon never enters the novel, but the intimations are everywhere: glass buildings, the name of the company itself, and the Wise Men’s vague urging that the Circle must be complete. The question this book seems to ask is, are we getting used to the idea of a Panopticon?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?_r=0\">Read an excerpt of \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i>\u003c/a> over at \u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>. \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385351393\">in stores\u003c/a> now. Read \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2013/10/25/dave-eggers-the-circle-and-why-im-leaving-the-bay-area/\">another review\u003c/a> of \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i> at KQED Pop.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sci-fi comes to Silicon Valley in Dave Egger’s fifth novel, \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i>, but it is not an army of robots who threaten apocalypse this time but the CEOs of an Internet company. Set in the not-too-distant future, the Internet catchall company the Circle has subsumed not only the giants of our generation (Facebook, Google, Twitter), but those of future generations (Alacrity, Zoopa, Jefe, Quan). Eggers is (as always) confident and capable, and the characters and places of this book are so memorable and easy to read, you will rush through all 491 pages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book begins with Mae Holland, a 24-year-old recent graduate, hired at the Circle thanks to her friend Annie, who has already risen to a position in the Gang of 40, as in, the forty most crucial minds of the company. Let me treat you to the opening lines: “My God, Mae thought. It’s heaven. The campus was vast and rambling, wild with Pacific color, and yet the smallest detail had been carefully considered, shaped by the most eloquent hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Circle is the company behind TruYou, a service that doles out to users one and \u003ci>only one\u003c/i> Internet identity for the rest of their lives. But like so many current giants, the Circle is also a company that can allow itself philanthropist airs and develop whatever whimsical or practical gadgets it chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like in all Sci-fi, architecture is important. For the first few pages, Eggers treats us to a gliding, sunny description of the Circle campus, complete with Calder mobiles, fountains, volleyball and tennis courts, organic farms, bowling alleys, grocery stores, picnic areas, undulating grass, and buildings made of glass. However, something sinister lurks behind, and it isn’t until Mae sits down at her office station, that the chill becomes clear. Superiors in offices with glass walls surround Mae at her station, and down below there are more workers, seen through glass floors. Everything and everyone is seen and tracked at all times at the Circle, so that it is always known where they are, a series of red dots pulsing on a screen. It is like this, dropping hints here and there, that Eggers contextualizes an old idea — that of the Panopticon — into the landscape of social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/applecampus2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Is it life imitating art that Apple’s proposed new campus is a glass circle? The \u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/apple-campus2-project/Renderings-Submittal2.pdf\">renderings were submitted\u003c/a> to the City of Cupertino in 2011.\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Mae, for one, never wants to leave the Circle. “Outside the walls of the Circle,” Eggers writes, “all was noise and struggle, failure and filth. But here, all had been perfected. The best people had made the best systems and the best systems had reaped funds, unlimited funds, that made possible this, the best place to work. And it was natural that it was so, Mae thought. Who else but Utopians could make Utopia?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an increasingly comical piling of gadgets and screens Mae has to watch as part of her job, she is transformed, without her knowing, into a Circler — that is, one who shares everything, measures everything, wants to know everything, and has an increasingly sickening duty to transparency and a decreasing worry for a dissipating personal privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mae wears a bracelet on her left wrist to track her vitals, a bracelet on her right to track comments from her followers, and on her desk there are four screens: one to do work in, one to stay in touch with her team, one to supervise new members, and another to stay in touch with her company peers and everyone who follows her. Not to mention the headset Mae wears when she is at her desk, which pours a series of innocuous questions into her ear — \u003ci>How do you feel about shoes? What do you think about organic hair products? Would you be willing to pay 1200 dollars for a weeklong trip down the Grand Canyon?\u003c/i> — to which Mae can answer by saying smile, frown, or meh. If Mae fails to answer a question, she hears her own voice calling her attention, not a sound byte she recorded, but a digital rendering of her voice producing the sound of her name. Mae becomes increasingly obsessed with this digital rendition of her voice. It “sent a strange swirling wind through her [….] It was odd, just a few inches from normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon enough there is a call from two of the three Wise Men directing the Circle for politicians to go \u003ci>transparent\u003c/i>, that is to wear a live-feed camera around their neck at all times in order for constituents to know their every move and conversation. The language coming from the Wise Men is of the utopian sort we are already used to hearing — \u003ci>All that happens must be known\u003c/i>, for example, — but in Egger’s dystopian future, when everything is traceable, stored on the cloud, and undeletable, these goals carry grave consequences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through the ups and downs of corporate life, Mae’s personal existence falls apart. She isolates her parents and an ex-boyfriend as she shares everything they do and places cameras (the size of lollipops) on their lawns. There is also a mysterious, enigmatic man Mae gets romantically entangled with, but she only knows his first name and can’t seem to locate him anywhere on campus. The terror of uncertainty in the face of so many certainties makes Mae deeply unstable. She finds succor in the voice calling her through her headset, familiar yet strange, and it becomes a kind of life-line, a resounding echo by which she can calm herself as she increasingly loses contact with her own person in favor of her digital presence, which is each time more calculated and performative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some of Eggers’ criticisms of the Internet seem trite, the central question is quite clever and will send a chill down your spine — what happens to free will when being watched becomes ubiquitous? If we adjust our behavior when we know we are being watched, who do we become? The word Panopticon never enters the novel, but the intimations are everywhere: glass buildings, the name of the company itself, and the Wise Men’s vague urging that the Circle must be complete. The question this book seems to ask is, are we getting used to the idea of a Panopticon?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?_r=0\">Read an excerpt of \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i>\u003c/a> over at \u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>. \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385351393\">in stores\u003c/a> now. Read \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2013/10/25/dave-eggers-the-circle-and-why-im-leaving-the-bay-area/\">another review\u003c/a> of \u003ci>The Circle\u003c/i> at KQED Pop.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "San Francisco and Zurich Prove Unlikely Siblings in 'Sister Cities'",
"headTitle": "San Francisco and Zurich Prove Unlikely Siblings in ‘Sister Cities’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Very rarely does the 10th anniversary of a sister city relationship — San Francisco’s sibling is Zurich, if you didn’t already know — garner any fanfare, not to mention an entire film festival. But so it is with the San Francisco Film Society’s latest, \u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b>, which is an ode to not only a municipal meeting of the minds, but also to cinema, cities, and the city life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning this Friday at the New People Cinema in San Francisco, the weekend event — run both by the SFFS and Cultural Affairs City of Zurich — has a diverse line-up of films, and the larger sister city celebration includes a photo exhibition, upcoming educational programs, and public events. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfartscommission.org/gallery/2013/2013-sister-city-exchange-san-francisco-zurich/\">\u003cb>Twisted Sisters: Reimaging Urban Portraiture\u003c/b>\u003c/a> began its run at City Hall and 40 downtown kiosks on Wednesday, and features the work of local and Swiss artists in a traveling exhibition that will run in San Francisco until January of next year. The more than 80 images are the work of conceptual photographers, both emerging and established, and take on the urban portrait with quirky, provocative, and imaginative bents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From dry documentaries to experimental films and light comedies, the film festival spans four decades of work and explores different aspects of life in the city. Through curated double features, what emerges are thematic parallels between Zurich and San Francisco films, and a view of Switzerland that highlights an increasingly multifaceted society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"315\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/ptMpcNkh7Xo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Andrea Staka’s \u003ci>Das Fraulein\u003c/i>, winner of the Best Film and Best Actress awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is a contemplative piece beautifully wrought in muted tones. It follows Ana, a young, vibrant, seemingly carefree woman who’s fled the war in Sarajevo and come to Zurich. She’s homeless, and her nightly regimen of clubbing and finding someone to sleep with belies the fact that she’s just looking for a bed to lie in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ana finds work in a cafeteria with two older, tedious women with little imagination, who also hail from nearby her home country: Ruza, the cafeteria owner and a native of Belgrade, and Mila, an older Croatian who plans to return home after retiring. The story isn’t new: Ana, a graver, quieter take on the manic pixie trope, breathes life into the stale air surrounding the two women. In the process, she inspires them to reconsider and drastically alter their life plans, before disappearing from their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-conversation.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Also showing is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 classic, \u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>, featuring Gene Hackman. Here, San Francisco’s Union Square is backdrop to the psychological thriller’s critical scene — when Hackman’s surveillance expert records a couple having a private conversation amidst a busy city stage. San Francisco’s architecture, public space, and energy function as setting for the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-downtown.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It’s a different approach than that of \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>, a documentary where the city itself is the subject of the film. Shot by 4 filmmakers around Zurich, the largest city and financial heart of the country, \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i> exposes a city struggling to come to terms with its entry into a new era. Here, the film illustrates a politically isolated country that envisions itself as a model to be emulated. A myriad of sometimes banal topics get ample treatment: transportation, city politics, women’s rights, development plans, sports teams — all revealing the ways in which the Swiss are coping with the increasing diversity and complexity of the modern age. In a particularly telling scene, a member of the country’s conservative party explains to two young teenagers his party’s policies — as they laugh in his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-swissmakers.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But the films aren’t just about paranoia and city politics: Rolf Lyssy’s \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> and Richard Rush’s \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> delve into more light-hearted material, both with a penchant for humor that plays both goofy and deadpan. \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> feature a buddy-cop duo, played by James Caan and Alan Arkin, who crash cars and botch jobs around the city, with the Transamerica Pyramid looming large in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> is made in much the same vein as \u003ci>Freebie\u003c/i>, featuring two Swiss agents whose job is to apply the same rigor and intensity of a full blown FBI investigation towards incredibly typical applicants for Swiss citizenship: an Italian family man with leftist leanings, a German doctor, and a Yugoslavian dancer who’s dancing partner \u003ci>may\u003c/i> be a suspicious Turk. It’s a film that revels in absurdity, twisting the most minute and mundane into cause for thorough inspection, with the usual straight man/funny man duo. \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> reveals a droll, dry and ridiculous Swiss satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-punk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Punk Cocktail\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Other notable films in the line-up include \u003ci>The Fall\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Punk Cocktail: Zurich Scene 1976-80\u003c/i>, both adding to a line-up that illustrates a lesser-seen Zurich through the life of a private eye and the underground punk scene. Zurich, in these films and the others included in the festival, gets a treatment that both entertains and informs its viewers on the changing landscape and demographics of the city. (It’s worth noting that there’s possibly more to learn from the Swiss films, which are likely ones the audience has never seen, as opposed to the popular and long-released San Francisco films). Those featuring San Francisco, instead, are more romantic in their handling of the city, which largely serves as a backdrop for the film’s narrative tension. Sisters they may be — but the films of Zurich and San Francisco might be more similar thematically than the cities are themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b> runs October 18-20, 2013 at New People Cinema in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season/Sister-Cities-Cinema-ZurichSF\"> tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Very rarely does the 10th anniversary of a sister city relationship — San Francisco’s sibling is Zurich, if you didn’t already know — garner any fanfare, not to mention an entire film festival. But so it is with the San Francisco Film Society’s latest, \u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b>, which is an ode to not only a municipal meeting of the minds, but also to cinema, cities, and the city life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning this Friday at the New People Cinema in San Francisco, the weekend event — run both by the SFFS and Cultural Affairs City of Zurich — has a diverse line-up of films, and the larger sister city celebration includes a photo exhibition, upcoming educational programs, and public events. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfartscommission.org/gallery/2013/2013-sister-city-exchange-san-francisco-zurich/\">\u003cb>Twisted Sisters: Reimaging Urban Portraiture\u003c/b>\u003c/a> began its run at City Hall and 40 downtown kiosks on Wednesday, and features the work of local and Swiss artists in a traveling exhibition that will run in San Francisco until January of next year. The more than 80 images are the work of conceptual photographers, both emerging and established, and take on the urban portrait with quirky, provocative, and imaginative bents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From dry documentaries to experimental films and light comedies, the film festival spans four decades of work and explores different aspects of life in the city. Through curated double features, what emerges are thematic parallels between Zurich and San Francisco films, and a view of Switzerland that highlights an increasingly multifaceted society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"315\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/ptMpcNkh7Xo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Andrea Staka’s \u003ci>Das Fraulein\u003c/i>, winner of the Best Film and Best Actress awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is a contemplative piece beautifully wrought in muted tones. It follows Ana, a young, vibrant, seemingly carefree woman who’s fled the war in Sarajevo and come to Zurich. She’s homeless, and her nightly regimen of clubbing and finding someone to sleep with belies the fact that she’s just looking for a bed to lie in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ana finds work in a cafeteria with two older, tedious women with little imagination, who also hail from nearby her home country: Ruza, the cafeteria owner and a native of Belgrade, and Mila, an older Croatian who plans to return home after retiring. The story isn’t new: Ana, a graver, quieter take on the manic pixie trope, breathes life into the stale air surrounding the two women. In the process, she inspires them to reconsider and drastically alter their life plans, before disappearing from their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-conversation.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Also showing is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 classic, \u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>, featuring Gene Hackman. Here, San Francisco’s Union Square is backdrop to the psychological thriller’s critical scene — when Hackman’s surveillance expert records a couple having a private conversation amidst a busy city stage. San Francisco’s architecture, public space, and energy function as setting for the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-downtown.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It’s a different approach than that of \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>, a documentary where the city itself is the subject of the film. Shot by 4 filmmakers around Zurich, the largest city and financial heart of the country, \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i> exposes a city struggling to come to terms with its entry into a new era. Here, the film illustrates a politically isolated country that envisions itself as a model to be emulated. A myriad of sometimes banal topics get ample treatment: transportation, city politics, women’s rights, development plans, sports teams — all revealing the ways in which the Swiss are coping with the increasing diversity and complexity of the modern age. In a particularly telling scene, a member of the country’s conservative party explains to two young teenagers his party’s policies — as they laugh in his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-swissmakers.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But the films aren’t just about paranoia and city politics: Rolf Lyssy’s \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> and Richard Rush’s \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> delve into more light-hearted material, both with a penchant for humor that plays both goofy and deadpan. \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> feature a buddy-cop duo, played by James Caan and Alan Arkin, who crash cars and botch jobs around the city, with the Transamerica Pyramid looming large in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> is made in much the same vein as \u003ci>Freebie\u003c/i>, featuring two Swiss agents whose job is to apply the same rigor and intensity of a full blown FBI investigation towards incredibly typical applicants for Swiss citizenship: an Italian family man with leftist leanings, a German doctor, and a Yugoslavian dancer who’s dancing partner \u003ci>may\u003c/i> be a suspicious Turk. It’s a film that revels in absurdity, twisting the most minute and mundane into cause for thorough inspection, with the usual straight man/funny man duo. \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> reveals a droll, dry and ridiculous Swiss satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-punk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Punk Cocktail\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Other notable films in the line-up include \u003ci>The Fall\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Punk Cocktail: Zurich Scene 1976-80\u003c/i>, both adding to a line-up that illustrates a lesser-seen Zurich through the life of a private eye and the underground punk scene. Zurich, in these films and the others included in the festival, gets a treatment that both entertains and informs its viewers on the changing landscape and demographics of the city. (It’s worth noting that there’s possibly more to learn from the Swiss films, which are likely ones the audience has never seen, as opposed to the popular and long-released San Francisco films). Those featuring San Francisco, instead, are more romantic in their handling of the city, which largely serves as a backdrop for the film’s narrative tension. Sisters they may be — but the films of Zurich and San Francisco might be more similar thematically than the cities are themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b> runs October 18-20, 2013 at New People Cinema in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season/Sister-Cities-Cinema-ZurichSF\"> tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Film from Egypt Dissects the Scourge of Sexual Harassment",
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"content": "\u003cp>In Mohamed Diab’s film \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, a woman who rides crowded Egyptian buses is sexually harassed in the buses’ aisles — not just once but repeatedly, on different days, by different men who think they can grope her with impunity. Eventually, the woman (portrayed by Egyptian actress Bushra Rozza) reaches her limit and begins stabbing harassers in the groin. “You expect me to be sane?” her character asks another woman. “They deserve what they get.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab’s 2010 drama, which centers on three female characters who are attacked, was a box-office hit in Egypt and started a national dialogue there about sexual harassment. The film also delved into issues of oppression that were at the heart of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, presaging the revolution with its dramatization of a society on the edge of chaos. \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> screens Thursday, Oct. 10 at New People Cinema (1746 Post Street) as part of Diab’s Artist in Residency with the San Francisco Film Society. Diab will also talk about \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> and his career at FilmHouse (1426 Fillmore Street) on Monday, Oct. 14. Each year, the society picks a filmmaker of note for its Artist in Residence program, and Diab was an ideal choice given his experience at shepherding a movie that is still having an impact in Egypt and is still reaching new audiences around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab based one of \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>‘s three major characters, a woman named Nelly, on the real life of Noha Roushdy, who in 2008 sued a man who sexually attacked her — the first such suit in Egypt. Roushdy won her case, which led to her attacker’s imprisonment, and new laws that criminalize sexual aggression. Before making \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, which is his directorial debut, Diab, 35, was the screenwriter for four big Egyptian films: \u003ci>Real Dreams\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Island\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Replacement\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>Congratulations\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/COesFcvkXaE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“All four films were blockbusters that had the biggest stars in Egypt,” says Diab in an interview in San Francisco. “When I started making films, I wanted to make big blockbusters with the biggest stars. And then I discovered that’s not what I really needed. I needed to make something that was close to my heart, something that had a big message. I’d heard about harassment, and as a man in Egypt, you cannot know about those things, because women didn’t speak about it. I’d heard of it, and then came the trial of Noha Roushdy. I went to the trial, and one of the cameramen covering the trial was making fun of her. I was sitting next to him. And an attorney walked by who also made fun of her, saying, ‘Oh, women, they just exaggerate.’ I never try to see black and white, so even those people, I didn’t see them as bad people. I just saw them people who were not well-informed, who needed to see the world through Noha’s eyes. So I decided to make a film about her story.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> has scenes that are highly political. One of the characters is a soccer fan who paints her face in the colors of Egypt’s flag. After she’s attacked at a crowded celebration, she removes the paint in disgust. The film also has scenes that are darkly farcical (even humorous), as when the victim’s family worries more about its own reputation than the health and reputation of its attacked family member. The film has cinematic twists and turns that intertwine the lives of the different characters. And the film has thriller elements of vigilantism and mystery. Will Egyptian authorities figure out who’s responsible for the sudden increase in attacks on Cairo’s harassers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Director Mohamed Diab\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I learned English from Hollywood films, and I learned that Hollywood formula,” Diab says. “I want to make good films that people see. I don’t want to make those European films — I respect them — that are boring.” The fact that Diab is male gave \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> more credibility in Egypt, he says. His wife, Sarah Goher, with whom he has a 2-year-old daughter, produced the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought it needed a man to make the film,” he says. “If it was a woman, then people are going to her lightly because it would be considered a feminist film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My wife was with me from the beginning,” he adds. “Me and my wife did every single thing. After the film was finished, I got a small camera, and we made the credits in our own bathroom — she shot it. We were partners in this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was controversial from the beginning, which helped draw even more Egyptian movie-goers. An official with an Egypt organization called the Association for Human Rights and Social Justice urged Egypt’s attorney general to ban \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> on the grounds that it encouraged women to hit men in the genitals. And Tamer Hosny, a major Egyptian pop star, complained that Diab used one of his songs to highlight one of the film’s crucial scenes. In the scene, a man listens to Hosny’s lyrics (which can be interpreted as misogynistic) before attacking Rozza’s character, whose name is Fayza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> is Egypt’s most successful film by international sales, Diab says. “It made 2 million dollars in France alone,” he says. “It’s played in Brazil and Spain and India and many other countries. The only place it didn’t have big distribution was here in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During his San Francisco residency, Diab is speaking to college and high school students about his career in film. Diab studied at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He moved to L.A. when he was 26, quitting a job at an international bank in Cairo. By Egyptian standards, that bank job was lucrative and prestigious, a stable position in an unstable country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a big deal to leave everything,” he says. “I come from a small city, Ismaïlia, and it’s very hard to make it in Cairo. It was hard for me to leave that bank. My fiancée left me. It was crazy. I did every crazy job you can imagine. I couldn’t find myself. It’s very hard in the Egyptian educational system to find your artistic self. The first time that I knew I could draw was when I was in college. So I never dreamt as a kid of being a screenwriter or a director. I discovered that when I was 25. But I jump in when I’m sure of it.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More and more women are speaking about harassment” in Egypt, Diab adds. “The film affected society, definitely, but I think the Revolution had more of an effect. The number of harassers is small, but they keep doing it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> will screen Thursday, Oct. 10, 7pm, at New People Cinema in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with the director. Diab will talk about his career on Monday, Oct. 14, 5pm at FilmHouse in San Francisco. To reserve a seat to that free event, email filmmaker360@sffs.org. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.aspx\">more information\u003c/a>, visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All images courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In Mohamed Diab’s film \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, a woman who rides crowded Egyptian buses is sexually harassed in the buses’ aisles — not just once but repeatedly, on different days, by different men who think they can grope her with impunity. Eventually, the woman (portrayed by Egyptian actress Bushra Rozza) reaches her limit and begins stabbing harassers in the groin. “You expect me to be sane?” her character asks another woman. “They deserve what they get.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab’s 2010 drama, which centers on three female characters who are attacked, was a box-office hit in Egypt and started a national dialogue there about sexual harassment. The film also delved into issues of oppression that were at the heart of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, presaging the revolution with its dramatization of a society on the edge of chaos. \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> screens Thursday, Oct. 10 at New People Cinema (1746 Post Street) as part of Diab’s Artist in Residency with the San Francisco Film Society. Diab will also talk about \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> and his career at FilmHouse (1426 Fillmore Street) on Monday, Oct. 14. Each year, the society picks a filmmaker of note for its Artist in Residence program, and Diab was an ideal choice given his experience at shepherding a movie that is still having an impact in Egypt and is still reaching new audiences around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab based one of \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>‘s three major characters, a woman named Nelly, on the real life of Noha Roushdy, who in 2008 sued a man who sexually attacked her — the first such suit in Egypt. Roushdy won her case, which led to her attacker’s imprisonment, and new laws that criminalize sexual aggression. Before making \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, which is his directorial debut, Diab, 35, was the screenwriter for four big Egyptian films: \u003ci>Real Dreams\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Island\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Replacement\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>Congratulations\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/COesFcvkXaE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“All four films were blockbusters that had the biggest stars in Egypt,” says Diab in an interview in San Francisco. “When I started making films, I wanted to make big blockbusters with the biggest stars. And then I discovered that’s not what I really needed. I needed to make something that was close to my heart, something that had a big message. I’d heard about harassment, and as a man in Egypt, you cannot know about those things, because women didn’t speak about it. I’d heard of it, and then came the trial of Noha Roushdy. I went to the trial, and one of the cameramen covering the trial was making fun of her. I was sitting next to him. And an attorney walked by who also made fun of her, saying, ‘Oh, women, they just exaggerate.’ I never try to see black and white, so even those people, I didn’t see them as bad people. I just saw them people who were not well-informed, who needed to see the world through Noha’s eyes. So I decided to make a film about her story.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> has scenes that are highly political. One of the characters is a soccer fan who paints her face in the colors of Egypt’s flag. After she’s attacked at a crowded celebration, she removes the paint in disgust. The film also has scenes that are darkly farcical (even humorous), as when the victim’s family worries more about its own reputation than the health and reputation of its attacked family member. The film has cinematic twists and turns that intertwine the lives of the different characters. And the film has thriller elements of vigilantism and mystery. Will Egyptian authorities figure out who’s responsible for the sudden increase in attacks on Cairo’s harassers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Director Mohamed Diab\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I learned English from Hollywood films, and I learned that Hollywood formula,” Diab says. “I want to make good films that people see. I don’t want to make those European films — I respect them — that are boring.” The fact that Diab is male gave \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> more credibility in Egypt, he says. His wife, Sarah Goher, with whom he has a 2-year-old daughter, produced the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought it needed a man to make the film,” he says. “If it was a woman, then people are going to her lightly because it would be considered a feminist film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My wife was with me from the beginning,” he adds. “Me and my wife did every single thing. After the film was finished, I got a small camera, and we made the credits in our own bathroom — she shot it. We were partners in this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was controversial from the beginning, which helped draw even more Egyptian movie-goers. An official with an Egypt organization called the Association for Human Rights and Social Justice urged Egypt’s attorney general to ban \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> on the grounds that it encouraged women to hit men in the genitals. And Tamer Hosny, a major Egyptian pop star, complained that Diab used one of his songs to highlight one of the film’s crucial scenes. In the scene, a man listens to Hosny’s lyrics (which can be interpreted as misogynistic) before attacking Rozza’s character, whose name is Fayza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> is Egypt’s most successful film by international sales, Diab says. “It made 2 million dollars in France alone,” he says. “It’s played in Brazil and Spain and India and many other countries. The only place it didn’t have big distribution was here in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During his San Francisco residency, Diab is speaking to college and high school students about his career in film. Diab studied at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He moved to L.A. when he was 26, quitting a job at an international bank in Cairo. By Egyptian standards, that bank job was lucrative and prestigious, a stable position in an unstable country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a big deal to leave everything,” he says. “I come from a small city, Ismaïlia, and it’s very hard to make it in Cairo. It was hard for me to leave that bank. My fiancée left me. It was crazy. I did every crazy job you can imagine. I couldn’t find myself. It’s very hard in the Egyptian educational system to find your artistic self. The first time that I knew I could draw was when I was in college. So I never dreamt as a kid of being a screenwriter or a director. I discovered that when I was 25. But I jump in when I’m sure of it.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More and more women are speaking about harassment” in Egypt, Diab adds. “The film affected society, definitely, but I think the Revolution had more of an effect. The number of harassers is small, but they keep doing it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> will screen Thursday, Oct. 10, 7pm, at New People Cinema in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with the director. Diab will talk about his career on Monday, Oct. 14, 5pm at FilmHouse in San Francisco. To reserve a seat to that free event, email filmmaker360@sffs.org. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.aspx\">more information\u003c/a>, visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Kate Christensen's Pursuit of Happiness: A Review of 'Blue Plate Special'",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Food is important,” says Kate Christensen. It ushers us through all the events of our lives. It is also what comes back, as this PEN Award recipient trains her eye on her past in her latest book, \u003ci>Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites\u003c/i>. Food colors all manners of being in this memoir: as a child, Christensen remembers enjoying “chicken pot pies, those magical things that […] were put into the oven in their individual little aluminum pie pans to turn golden brown on top and bubbling and savory inside, with chunks of peas, carrots, and chicken suspended in hot, salty, ambrosial glue.” As an adult, reeling from a divorce, she remembers cooking, “one broiled chicken thigh, or even two, with a baked sweet potato and side of garlicky red chard.” At the end of her search for contentment, somewhat older but definitely happy, she remembers the food her lover cooked: “roast leg of lamb with green pepper-apple-onion curry, arborio rice, and mango chutney.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Falling somewhere between M.F.K Fisher and Joan Didion, Christensen’s memoir covers a span of forty years — from childhood, to college, marriage, divorce, to true love. And threading it all together is Christensen’s nearly religious fervor for food (with actual recipes!).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/31/kate500.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The storytelling style is all her own. Christensen tends to back into her stories, and things are often revealed backwards, without fanfare — to an alarming effect. Christensen writes: “When I was a kid, on what passed for chilly mornings in Berkeley, my mother used to make my sisters and me soft-boiled eggs with pieces of buttered toast broken into them.” She goes on to describe the tablescape of one such morning, the littler of plates and eggshells and toast crumbs, but also the sun coming through the windows. Next, as Christensen’s father is about to go out the door, her mother calls him back, asking for a bit of help. Maybe it’s the normalcy of what she says — “Please stay and help me, Ralph. I just need some help. Don’t leave yet,” — that makes the following absolutely chilling:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My father paused in the kitchen doorway, looking back at us all at the table. Something seemed to snap in his head. Instead of either walking out or staying to help my mother, he leaped at her and began punching her in a silent knot of rage. It went on for a while.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Christensen’s father was lawyer to the Black Panthers, draft-dodgers, and “rabble-rousing politicos,” and while an upstanding member of his community, behind doors he was prone to violent tantrums. So began Christensen’s hunger, for a caring father but also for food and literature and belonging. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read this book with a good glass of wine, and prepare for a journey between questioning anxiety and sensual satiety as Christensen takes you back and forth between the throes and woes of her swashbuckling life and the satisfaction and wholeness of food. And when you are done with it, I promise you will keep reaching for it, to re-read here and there Christensen’s haunting voice, but also to curate your cooking around your personal failures and victories, because if there is anything that is extraordinary about Christensen, it is her ability to treat ailments and joy with food. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tried one of the recipes, and must say I rarely get excited about soup, but this amazingly accurate title caught my eye:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/31/soup.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px;\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Dark Night of the Soul Soup\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Recipe:\u003cbr>Peel, core, and chop a small butternut squash and 3 apples into bite-size pieces.\u003cbr>Peel and cut up a red onion.\u003cbr>Coarsely chop a knob of ginger and peel 8 cloves of garlic.\u003cbr>Coat everything in peanut oil and roast on a cookie sheet for 40 minutes or so at 375 degrees, or until everything softens and caramelizes.\u003cbr>Puree with enough chicken broth to make a thick soup, adding half-and-half as desired.\u003cbr>Salt and pepper to taste.\u003cbr>Heat in a saucepan.\u003cbr>Serve in large shallow soup bowls with goat cheese and toasted pine nuts on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/07/10/198047489/blue-plate-special-a-generous-helping-of-life\">hear an interview with Kate Christensen\u003c/a> about \u003ci>Blue Plate Special\u003c/i> at NPR. \u003ca href=\"http://katechristensen.wordpress.com\">Her blog\u003c/a> is an internet gem; read it katechristensen.wordpress.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Blue Plate Special\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385536264\">on sale\u003c/a> now. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Food is important,” says Kate Christensen. It ushers us through all the events of our lives. It is also what comes back, as this PEN Award recipient trains her eye on her past in her latest book, \u003ci>Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites\u003c/i>. Food colors all manners of being in this memoir: as a child, Christensen remembers enjoying “chicken pot pies, those magical things that […] were put into the oven in their individual little aluminum pie pans to turn golden brown on top and bubbling and savory inside, with chunks of peas, carrots, and chicken suspended in hot, salty, ambrosial glue.” As an adult, reeling from a divorce, she remembers cooking, “one broiled chicken thigh, or even two, with a baked sweet potato and side of garlicky red chard.” At the end of her search for contentment, somewhat older but definitely happy, she remembers the food her lover cooked: “roast leg of lamb with green pepper-apple-onion curry, arborio rice, and mango chutney.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Falling somewhere between M.F.K Fisher and Joan Didion, Christensen’s memoir covers a span of forty years — from childhood, to college, marriage, divorce, to true love. And threading it all together is Christensen’s nearly religious fervor for food (with actual recipes!).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/31/kate500.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The storytelling style is all her own. Christensen tends to back into her stories, and things are often revealed backwards, without fanfare — to an alarming effect. Christensen writes: “When I was a kid, on what passed for chilly mornings in Berkeley, my mother used to make my sisters and me soft-boiled eggs with pieces of buttered toast broken into them.” She goes on to describe the tablescape of one such morning, the littler of plates and eggshells and toast crumbs, but also the sun coming through the windows. Next, as Christensen’s father is about to go out the door, her mother calls him back, asking for a bit of help. Maybe it’s the normalcy of what she says — “Please stay and help me, Ralph. I just need some help. Don’t leave yet,” — that makes the following absolutely chilling:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My father paused in the kitchen doorway, looking back at us all at the table. Something seemed to snap in his head. Instead of either walking out or staying to help my mother, he leaped at her and began punching her in a silent knot of rage. It went on for a while.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Christensen’s father was lawyer to the Black Panthers, draft-dodgers, and “rabble-rousing politicos,” and while an upstanding member of his community, behind doors he was prone to violent tantrums. So began Christensen’s hunger, for a caring father but also for food and literature and belonging. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read this book with a good glass of wine, and prepare for a journey between questioning anxiety and sensual satiety as Christensen takes you back and forth between the throes and woes of her swashbuckling life and the satisfaction and wholeness of food. And when you are done with it, I promise you will keep reaching for it, to re-read here and there Christensen’s haunting voice, but also to curate your cooking around your personal failures and victories, because if there is anything that is extraordinary about Christensen, it is her ability to treat ailments and joy with food. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tried one of the recipes, and must say I rarely get excited about soup, but this amazingly accurate title caught my eye:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/31/soup.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px;\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Dark Night of the Soul Soup\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Recipe:\u003cbr>Peel, core, and chop a small butternut squash and 3 apples into bite-size pieces.\u003cbr>Peel and cut up a red onion.\u003cbr>Coarsely chop a knob of ginger and peel 8 cloves of garlic.\u003cbr>Coat everything in peanut oil and roast on a cookie sheet for 40 minutes or so at 375 degrees, or until everything softens and caramelizes.\u003cbr>Puree with enough chicken broth to make a thick soup, adding half-and-half as desired.\u003cbr>Salt and pepper to taste.\u003cbr>Heat in a saucepan.\u003cbr>Serve in large shallow soup bowls with goat cheese and toasted pine nuts on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/07/10/198047489/blue-plate-special-a-generous-helping-of-life\">hear an interview with Kate Christensen\u003c/a> about \u003ci>Blue Plate Special\u003c/i> at NPR. \u003ca href=\"http://katechristensen.wordpress.com\">Her blog\u003c/a> is an internet gem; read it katechristensen.wordpress.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Blue Plate Special\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385536264\">on sale\u003c/a> now. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Looking Forward to the End Times: 'One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses'",
"headTitle": "Looking Forward to the End Times: ‘One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>“Like anything else, the thing about an apocalypse is it can’t go on forever, and this is what saves it and saves us in the end.” Lucy Corin’s apocalypses are not the final and complete destruction of the world, but — as she relates in the above quote from the one-page story “Wanting” — moments of change and realization. In her newest book, \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i>, Corin creates a series of dreamscapes in which the apocalypse becomes a set piece for melancholy, humorous, beautiful, and lonely ruminations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i> is a collection of three short stories and 100 very short stories. The first, “Eyes of Dogs” is Corin’s take on a Hans Christian Andersen tale of a soldier returning from war. The language is fable-like, but the story delivers no happy ending, just the stark realization of a one-night stand completely devoid of any magical elements. In a sidebar to the main text, Corin offers up Andersen’s more traditional version with some narrative commentary, deciding the story is “all very plausible enough, except perhaps for the part about the flour.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corin’s dry wit builds in the collection’s second story, “Madmen,” set in an alternative world of institutionalized madness. In this reality, young men and women undergo a right of passage into adulthood by visiting a facility and selecting their very own madman to bring home and care for. Told in the young woman’s voice, the story leads the reader into the asylum of Dancing Fools and Cretins as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, delicately balancing the narrator’s understanding of this acceptable social process with the discordant psychoses of her own nuclear family. “My parents are such a classic couple,” she states matter-of-factly. “They’ll either get divorced or he’ll get smaller and smaller and she’ll get bigger and bigger until they die.” The apocalypse in “Madmen” is a personal one, as the narrator’s childhood ends in more than one way. In this and the following story, “Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster,” Corin perfectly captures the inner monologues of her young narrators as they reflect on insular family dynamics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster” the state of California is burning, but this is just background for the kinds of teenage dramas that exist separate from all natural or unnatural disasters. The world in this story is familiar, relatable, and the most realistic of the three longer sections in \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses\u003c/i>, making it all the more jarring when the second half of the story collection begins “After so many people were washed away by the disasters‚”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hundred stories that follow range from two sentences to three pages in length. Each captures a different tone, a different narrator, funny apocalypses, terribly sad apocalypses, and poetic ones. One is even an Amazon-like series of reviews of the made-up 2012 film \u003ci>Baby Alive\u003c/i>, starring Sissy Spacek and a pack of reality TV stars from \u003ci>Teen Mom\u003c/i> and \u003ci>16 and Pregnant\u003c/i>. If you want horror that blurs the line between fact and fiction (and John Stamos), this is the film for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the longer stories in the collection have time to build characters’ voices, relationships, and a sense of drama, these ultra-short blurbs rely entirely on Corin’s impeccable word choice and her deft ability to convey much with little. My favorite apocalypses within the hundred struck a familiar chord. “Thief” is reminiscent of the story told about painter Francis Bacon’s first encounter with his eventual lover George Dyer — they apparently first met when Dyer was attempting to break into Bacon’s flat. “Nice Day” seems to point to \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses\u003c/i> itself, in a wonderfully eerie meta moment: “You feel like you’re learning something for a while but then as soon as you catch on, you think, \u003ci>If I keep reading this book is it just going to be more examples?\u003c/i>” Unlike the book in “Nice Day” \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i> doesn’t grow old, repetitive, or boring in any respect. The stories are such that I can imagine revisiting them again and again, reading them in different orders, and enjoying them more each time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The apocalypse can’t go on forever, but for a short while, you can get lost in its pages completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses is available from McSweeney’s. For \u003ca href=\"https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/one-hundred-apocalypses-and-other-apocalypses\">more information\u003c/a>, visit mcsweeneys.com/books.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Like anything else, the thing about an apocalypse is it can’t go on forever, and this is what saves it and saves us in the end.” Lucy Corin’s apocalypses are not the final and complete destruction of the world, but — as she relates in the above quote from the one-page story “Wanting” — moments of change and realization. In her newest book, \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i>, Corin creates a series of dreamscapes in which the apocalypse becomes a set piece for melancholy, humorous, beautiful, and lonely ruminations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i> is a collection of three short stories and 100 very short stories. The first, “Eyes of Dogs” is Corin’s take on a Hans Christian Andersen tale of a soldier returning from war. The language is fable-like, but the story delivers no happy ending, just the stark realization of a one-night stand completely devoid of any magical elements. In a sidebar to the main text, Corin offers up Andersen’s more traditional version with some narrative commentary, deciding the story is “all very plausible enough, except perhaps for the part about the flour.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corin’s dry wit builds in the collection’s second story, “Madmen,” set in an alternative world of institutionalized madness. In this reality, young men and women undergo a right of passage into adulthood by visiting a facility and selecting their very own madman to bring home and care for. Told in the young woman’s voice, the story leads the reader into the asylum of Dancing Fools and Cretins as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, delicately balancing the narrator’s understanding of this acceptable social process with the discordant psychoses of her own nuclear family. “My parents are such a classic couple,” she states matter-of-factly. “They’ll either get divorced or he’ll get smaller and smaller and she’ll get bigger and bigger until they die.” The apocalypse in “Madmen” is a personal one, as the narrator’s childhood ends in more than one way. In this and the following story, “Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster,” Corin perfectly captures the inner monologues of her young narrators as they reflect on insular family dynamics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster” the state of California is burning, but this is just background for the kinds of teenage dramas that exist separate from all natural or unnatural disasters. The world in this story is familiar, relatable, and the most realistic of the three longer sections in \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses\u003c/i>, making it all the more jarring when the second half of the story collection begins “After so many people were washed away by the disasters‚”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hundred stories that follow range from two sentences to three pages in length. Each captures a different tone, a different narrator, funny apocalypses, terribly sad apocalypses, and poetic ones. One is even an Amazon-like series of reviews of the made-up 2012 film \u003ci>Baby Alive\u003c/i>, starring Sissy Spacek and a pack of reality TV stars from \u003ci>Teen Mom\u003c/i> and \u003ci>16 and Pregnant\u003c/i>. If you want horror that blurs the line between fact and fiction (and John Stamos), this is the film for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the longer stories in the collection have time to build characters’ voices, relationships, and a sense of drama, these ultra-short blurbs rely entirely on Corin’s impeccable word choice and her deft ability to convey much with little. My favorite apocalypses within the hundred struck a familiar chord. “Thief” is reminiscent of the story told about painter Francis Bacon’s first encounter with his eventual lover George Dyer — they apparently first met when Dyer was attempting to break into Bacon’s flat. “Nice Day” seems to point to \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses\u003c/i> itself, in a wonderfully eerie meta moment: “You feel like you’re learning something for a while but then as soon as you catch on, you think, \u003ci>If I keep reading this book is it just going to be more examples?\u003c/i>” Unlike the book in “Nice Day” \u003ci>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses\u003c/i> doesn’t grow old, repetitive, or boring in any respect. The stories are such that I can imagine revisiting them again and again, reading them in different orders, and enjoying them more each time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The apocalypse can’t go on forever, but for a short while, you can get lost in its pages completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses is available from McSweeney’s. For \u003ca href=\"https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/one-hundred-apocalypses-and-other-apocalypses\">more information\u003c/a>, visit mcsweeneys.com/books.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Rubber Soul' Imagines The Beatles' Early Love of Vinyl",
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"content": "\u003cp>You’ve probably heard Greg Kihn on your morning commute. He was on KFOX every morning for sixteen years. You may also know him from MTV, in the ’80s his song \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tCEQwww65g\">“Jeopardy”\u003c/a> was in heavy rotation for awhile. Greg Kihn is to another generation our James Franco — you know the type: the actor slash producer slash author slash etcetera. Except instead of actor turned author, Kihn is a songwriter slash musician slash radio host slash author. As a people, we seem to have formed a consensus on this: too many slashes mean one or a couple of categories get undercooked. Indeed, \u003ca href=\"http://jezebel.com/5668840/critics-divided-on-james-francos-raw-unsettling-short-stories\">criticism of Franco’s books\u003c/a> all tend to boil down to the same thing: the writing is promising, but the performance on the page doesn’t reach the heights of Franco’s performance in front of a camera. Ditto Kihn. His literary efforts don’t reach his sharpness as a pop star or radio host.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is Kihn’s fifth book, and the idea behind it is a catchy one. In his incarnation as a radio host, Kihn had the opportunity to interview three Beatles: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Pete Best. He asked about the early days, when the Beatles were just another local cover band in Liverpool with an American rock n’ roll repertoire. What Kihn wanted to know was — how did the Beatles get a hold of vinyl records that were only being released in America? The answer is the band had contacts within the marines. Marines, traveling back and forth between Liverpool and the United States, fed the Beatles the newest releases from America. It’s a good premise for a book: sailors with vinyl contraband frequenting ports and dark alleys and the Beatles. From there, Greg Kihn crafted his novel. It wasn’t many marines who supplied the Beatles with the new vinyl releases from America, but just one: Dust Bin Bob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is meticulously researched, using real events and situations, but making up everything else. Kihn’s lines can be nuanced, explosive, and vividly seen. In describing a faded, older woman, Kihn writes, “She might have been pretty once, and the ghost of it still haunted her face.” But more often than not, the book feels like musical scholarship in the excuse of a novel. The prose is often subverted by expository knowledge. This passage, for example, begins expertly well, but soon loses momentum: “Bobby pulled the stack of thick 45rpm records out of the box. The paper sleeves rustled through his fingers like bills in stacks of currency. Bobby knew American 45s better than most U.S. teenagers did. He knew they’d begun as disks for American jukeboxes, playing music in bars and roadhouses Bobby could only imagine. He knew that their huge spindle holes were a carryover from that original jukebox function which made it easier for a machine to handle them.” Hardly the stuff I thirst to know on page four.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/23/fabs.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px\">\u003cbr> The Fab Four by United Press International. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Beatles%2C_Kennedy_Airport%2C_February_1964.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons \u003c/a> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At other times, Kihn’s delight in music is palpable. In one early occasion, Dust Bin Bob lets his teenage peers (John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney) listen to his records. Barret Strong’s “Money” spellbinds the three and immediately they busy themselves with reproducing it. “Bobby felt goose bumps rise on his arms and neck. The others came in one by one, layering each enthusiastic vocal on top of the next, building to a crazy crescendo. Musical energy crackled in the air like electricity. Bobby’s fingers and toes twitched. The harmonies were dead on, sung with exuberance. But it was more than that. The intangible quality he listened for between the grooves was there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The driving force behind this book is in the imagining of the Beatles’ private lives, but Kihn makes the mistake of following too closely the oscillating angst of Dust Bin Bob — whose inner turmoil is ironically never truly explored but only told from a distance. A book that could be splitting at the hems with excitement due to its explosive ingredients (the Beatles! the Beatles using drugs! the Beatles in fistfights! Beatlemania! the Beatles barely escaping the Phillipines!), is instead a muted tale told chronologically, not because Kihn is not a capable writer but because he doesn’t seem to know how to exploit his characters and material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMNPPwq8I2Y&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some good reading featuring the Beatles you may \u003ca href=\"http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Philip-Norman/18228509/\">turn to\u003c/a> Philip Norman’s \u003ci>Shout!\u003c/i>, which the \u003ci>New York Times\u003c/i> calls “Nothing less than thrilling,” and the Guardian calls “a glorious example of how to write about music, while also writing about much more.” And if you are longing for an inside look, \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=qGMvsIavUmIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false\">try\u003c/a> \u003ci>The Longest Cocktail Party\u003c/i>, the memoir of Richard DiLello, who worked for the Beatles’ Apple company as “house hippy,” rolling joints and making tea and at times helping with the PR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781624670947\">on sale\u003c/a> now. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You’ve probably heard Greg Kihn on your morning commute. He was on KFOX every morning for sixteen years. You may also know him from MTV, in the ’80s his song \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tCEQwww65g\">“Jeopardy”\u003c/a> was in heavy rotation for awhile. Greg Kihn is to another generation our James Franco — you know the type: the actor slash producer slash author slash etcetera. Except instead of actor turned author, Kihn is a songwriter slash musician slash radio host slash author. As a people, we seem to have formed a consensus on this: too many slashes mean one or a couple of categories get undercooked. Indeed, \u003ca href=\"http://jezebel.com/5668840/critics-divided-on-james-francos-raw-unsettling-short-stories\">criticism of Franco’s books\u003c/a> all tend to boil down to the same thing: the writing is promising, but the performance on the page doesn’t reach the heights of Franco’s performance in front of a camera. Ditto Kihn. His literary efforts don’t reach his sharpness as a pop star or radio host.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is Kihn’s fifth book, and the idea behind it is a catchy one. In his incarnation as a radio host, Kihn had the opportunity to interview three Beatles: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Pete Best. He asked about the early days, when the Beatles were just another local cover band in Liverpool with an American rock n’ roll repertoire. What Kihn wanted to know was — how did the Beatles get a hold of vinyl records that were only being released in America? The answer is the band had contacts within the marines. Marines, traveling back and forth between Liverpool and the United States, fed the Beatles the newest releases from America. It’s a good premise for a book: sailors with vinyl contraband frequenting ports and dark alleys and the Beatles. From there, Greg Kihn crafted his novel. It wasn’t many marines who supplied the Beatles with the new vinyl releases from America, but just one: Dust Bin Bob.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is meticulously researched, using real events and situations, but making up everything else. Kihn’s lines can be nuanced, explosive, and vividly seen. In describing a faded, older woman, Kihn writes, “She might have been pretty once, and the ghost of it still haunted her face.” But more often than not, the book feels like musical scholarship in the excuse of a novel. The prose is often subverted by expository knowledge. This passage, for example, begins expertly well, but soon loses momentum: “Bobby pulled the stack of thick 45rpm records out of the box. The paper sleeves rustled through his fingers like bills in stacks of currency. Bobby knew American 45s better than most U.S. teenagers did. He knew they’d begun as disks for American jukeboxes, playing music in bars and roadhouses Bobby could only imagine. He knew that their huge spindle holes were a carryover from that original jukebox function which made it easier for a machine to handle them.” Hardly the stuff I thirst to know on page four.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/08/23/fabs.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10 px\">\u003cbr> The Fab Four by United Press International. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Beatles%2C_Kennedy_Airport%2C_February_1964.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons \u003c/a> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At other times, Kihn’s delight in music is palpable. In one early occasion, Dust Bin Bob lets his teenage peers (John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney) listen to his records. Barret Strong’s “Money” spellbinds the three and immediately they busy themselves with reproducing it. “Bobby felt goose bumps rise on his arms and neck. The others came in one by one, layering each enthusiastic vocal on top of the next, building to a crazy crescendo. Musical energy crackled in the air like electricity. Bobby’s fingers and toes twitched. The harmonies were dead on, sung with exuberance. But it was more than that. The intangible quality he listened for between the grooves was there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The driving force behind this book is in the imagining of the Beatles’ private lives, but Kihn makes the mistake of following too closely the oscillating angst of Dust Bin Bob — whose inner turmoil is ironically never truly explored but only told from a distance. A book that could be splitting at the hems with excitement due to its explosive ingredients (the Beatles! the Beatles using drugs! the Beatles in fistfights! Beatlemania! the Beatles barely escaping the Phillipines!), is instead a muted tale told chronologically, not because Kihn is not a capable writer but because he doesn’t seem to know how to exploit his characters and material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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/OMNPPwq8I2Y'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OMNPPwq8I2Y'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some good reading featuring the Beatles you may \u003ca href=\"http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Philip-Norman/18228509/\">turn to\u003c/a> Philip Norman’s \u003ci>Shout!\u003c/i>, which the \u003ci>New York Times\u003c/i> calls “Nothing less than thrilling,” and the Guardian calls “a glorious example of how to write about music, while also writing about much more.” And if you are longing for an inside look, \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=qGMvsIavUmIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false\">try\u003c/a> \u003ci>The Longest Cocktail Party\u003c/i>, the memoir of Richard DiLello, who worked for the Beatles’ Apple company as “house hippy,” rolling joints and making tea and at times helping with the PR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Rubber Soul\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781624670947\">on sale\u003c/a> now. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Summer Reading Pick: James Reich's Bombshell",
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"content": "\u003cp>When hunting for a summer read, the obvious thing to look for is explosions. Explosions and something a little sexy, a little decadent, a little radical. Moving cars, motels, an impossible goal, down-and-out characters. James Reich’s \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is all of these except inside out. Imagine an unhinged heroine, a criminal road trip, a dark race to jumpstart America’s first total nuclear meltdown. \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is an entirely creative recasting of the summer read, peppered with historical tidbits that will inspire both your fascination and repulsion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book opens twenty-five years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, with radical feminist Varyushka Cash sneaking across the New Mexico desert armed with explosives and dressed in fatigues making her way to the Trinity Obelisk, which commemorates the first detonation of a nuclear device on U.S. soil. She wires it with plastic explosives and begins the countdown of her own bomb, rushing to make it to the same spot from which J. Robert Oppenheimer (aka the Father of the Atomic Bomb) watched his own detonation. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/07/29/trinity.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:\">\u003cbr>The Trinity Explosion, 16 milliseconds after detonation. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trinity_Test_Fireball_16ms.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the destruction of the obelisk is only the first in Cash’s carefully planned terrorist itinerary — the real target is the Indian Point Nuclear Plant thirty-eight miles north of New York City. Told in thrilling spurts, between Cash’s stealth mission and the CIA’s effort to discover the terrorist’s identity before another attack, \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is the perfect excuse to take a tour though American nuclear history. I promise you will be surprised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a character, Cash is everything you would want from a rabble-rouser — raised in a women-only shelter, intimately familiar with San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and possessor of a magical, miracle birth: Reich writes, “At the exact moment that Cash’s scalp crowned out of her mother and the first blood of her placenta touched the rubber sheets of the hospital bed, the meltdown [of Chernobyl] had begun.” She’s also fanatic about Valerie Solanas (infamous for shooting Andy Warhol and writing the S.C.U.M. manifesto).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/07/29/scumback.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bombshell is an interesting take on the immigrant story. Cash, born in the Zone of Alienation, is an exile who can never return home. In dreams, Cash reimagines the Pripyat abandoned hospital. She sees peeling paint, cobwebs, intravenous drips standing “with their collapsed sacs and tubes dangling where the evacuees had been hastily connected,” an albino swallow’s nest in the padding of a wheelchair, X-ray prints “hang black against dead light boxes,” and charts and files lie scattered on the floor. (If this peaks your interest\u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2067393_2268610,00.html\">, take a look at these unreal photos\u003c/a> taken at the Zone of Alienation by \u003ci>Time Magazine\u003c/i> twenty-five years after the Chernobyl incident.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich tends to adopt a mellifluous tone, but he is at his best when evoking the visual language of comic books. In one scene Cash jumps into the Rio Grande to escape the authorities. Her clothes and bag become dead weight and she struggles to stay afloat. Reich writes, “Water flecked and then poured into her windpipe as the current hauled her down. Cash began to drown, kicking weakly and reaching blindly into the nothingness that swallowed her. She coughed water into water. Silver bulbs exploded.” Very \u003ci>Tank Girl\u003c/i>. Explosions, heroines, terrorists. It’s what summer is all about. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uv-9mJCTkk&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When hunting for a summer read, the obvious thing to look for is explosions. Explosions and something a little sexy, a little decadent, a little radical. Moving cars, motels, an impossible goal, down-and-out characters. James Reich’s \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is all of these except inside out. Imagine an unhinged heroine, a criminal road trip, a dark race to jumpstart America’s first total nuclear meltdown. \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is an entirely creative recasting of the summer read, peppered with historical tidbits that will inspire both your fascination and repulsion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book opens twenty-five years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, with radical feminist Varyushka Cash sneaking across the New Mexico desert armed with explosives and dressed in fatigues making her way to the Trinity Obelisk, which commemorates the first detonation of a nuclear device on U.S. soil. She wires it with plastic explosives and begins the countdown of her own bomb, rushing to make it to the same spot from which J. Robert Oppenheimer (aka the Father of the Atomic Bomb) watched his own detonation. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/07/29/trinity.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:\">\u003cbr>The Trinity Explosion, 16 milliseconds after detonation. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trinity_Test_Fireball_16ms.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the destruction of the obelisk is only the first in Cash’s carefully planned terrorist itinerary — the real target is the Indian Point Nuclear Plant thirty-eight miles north of New York City. Told in thrilling spurts, between Cash’s stealth mission and the CIA’s effort to discover the terrorist’s identity before another attack, \u003ci>Bombshell\u003c/i> is the perfect excuse to take a tour though American nuclear history. I promise you will be surprised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a character, Cash is everything you would want from a rabble-rouser — raised in a women-only shelter, intimately familiar with San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and possessor of a magical, miracle birth: Reich writes, “At the exact moment that Cash’s scalp crowned out of her mother and the first blood of her placenta touched the rubber sheets of the hospital bed, the meltdown [of Chernobyl] had begun.” She’s also fanatic about Valerie Solanas (infamous for shooting Andy Warhol and writing the S.C.U.M. manifesto).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/07/29/scumback.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bombshell is an interesting take on the immigrant story. Cash, born in the Zone of Alienation, is an exile who can never return home. In dreams, Cash reimagines the Pripyat abandoned hospital. She sees peeling paint, cobwebs, intravenous drips standing “with their collapsed sacs and tubes dangling where the evacuees had been hastily connected,” an albino swallow’s nest in the padding of a wheelchair, X-ray prints “hang black against dead light boxes,” and charts and files lie scattered on the floor. (If this peaks your interest\u003ca href=\"http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2067393_2268610,00.html\">, take a look at these unreal photos\u003c/a> taken at the Zone of Alienation by \u003ci>Time Magazine\u003c/i> twenty-five years after the Chernobyl incident.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reich tends to adopt a mellifluous tone, but he is at his best when evoking the visual language of comic books. In one scene Cash jumps into the Rio Grande to escape the authorities. Her clothes and bag become dead weight and she struggles to stay afloat. Reich writes, “Water flecked and then poured into her windpipe as the current hauled her down. Cash began to drown, kicking weakly and reaching blindly into the nothingness that swallowed her. She coughed water into water. Silver bulbs exploded.” Very \u003ci>Tank Girl\u003c/i>. Explosions, heroines, terrorists. It’s what summer is all about. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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/6Uv-9mJCTkk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6Uv-9mJCTkk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Rebecca Solnit Explores the Fairy Tale Nature of Real Life in 'The Faraway Nearby'",
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"content": "\u003cp>There’s a story about the Tang dynasty painter Wu Daozi that Rebecca Solnit remembers well. It is said that once, when Daozi presented a finished mural to the emperor, he pointed out a cave in the painted landscape and then set forth and disappeared into it. “All readers are Wu Daozi,” Solnit writes in her latest, \u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i>. It’s a book as much about the stories we tell, empathy, and the nature of storytelling, as it is about Solnit’s ailing mother, Alzheimer’s, and one hundred pounds of apricots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were an impressive sight,” Solnit writes. “A mountain of apricots […] upholstered in a fine velvet […]” The apricots are the last harvest from her mother’s tree, picked by her brother before he goes about selling their childhood house and installing their mother in a home for the elderly. At first, Solnit thinks of the apricots as a bountiful inheritance, but as the apricots begin to rot they remind her of something else: “[Fairy tales] are full of overwhelming piles and heaps that need to be contended with, the roomful of straw the poor girl in “Rumpelstiltskin” needs to spin into gold overnight, the thousand pearls scattered into the forest moss the youngest son needs to gather in order to win the princess, the mountain of sand to be moved by teaspoon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/apricot.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>An engraving after a drawing by Augusta Innes Withers. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turkey_apricot_RHS.jpeg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>A task, a tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i> is easily described as a fairy tale. Solnit’s mother is like “a book coming apart, pages drifting away, phrases blurring, letters falling off, the paper returning to white, a book disappearing from the back because the newest memories faded first, and nothing was being added.” Solnit as the hero of the tale needs breast surgery and goes under (in fairy tale terms takes a journey to the underworld) and emerges a different person. She is then beckoned to Iceland, where “everyone walks on water, which is solid. Ice is blue. Snow insulates. Water crystallizes into floating mountains that destroy whatever collides with them […] Nothing decays, and so time stops for the dead, if not for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Solnit’s reasoning is one of the delights in this book. Her style is dizzying, a kind of shout-out to Scheherazade’s unraveling tales in \u003ci>Arabian Nights\u003c/i>. Solnit jumps from metaphor to history, emerging with new metaphors, continuing forth, looping across time and disciplines, touching on themes as unlikely as cannibalism, leper colonies, vanitas paintings, and Frankenstein. To Solnit, all stories take the form of a labyrinth, “but fairy tales are often particularly labyrinth-like. Something happens […] you twist and turn, turn away from the center, journey to the farthest reaches before you can reach your destination […]” Solnit could easily be describing her own book. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in this book, fairy tales continuously serve that purpose, vehicles through which Solnit banks at a shore and travels to another. As Solnit’s mother’s health declines, she seeks in stories the path to healing their tense relationship. At first, she lands unexpectedly on the story of Snow White, surprising herself by quoting that well-known “Mirror, mirror, on the wall.” Solnit describes a jealous mother who is self-involved and unsupportive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/mirrormirror.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>An illustration from an Icelandic translation of Snow White. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_White_Mirror_1.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While fairy tales provide Solnit with useful thought-experiments, they fall short of providing life lessons. Fairy tales embody important questions about who we are, what we desire, and how to lead our lives, but in their resolution, Solnit writes, they “break with their own principles and unleash an avalanche of conventional stuff: palaces, riches, and revenge.” Instead Solnit turns to “anti-fairy tales.” These are the stories that begin in reverse, with protagonists who have riches and leave their riches for a more altruistic path. Siddhartha, for example, or Ché Guevara, whose lives were both transformed by empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most useful of all is Ché Guevara’s story. Born into an aristocratic family, the young Guevara takes leave of medical school to travel South America by motorcycle. “The long road trip on the motorcycle that kept breaking down and was eventually abandoned is how and when Guevara woke up to a particular kind of pain himself and then to his sense of purpose on earth.” Guevara saw the destitute, dispossessed, and outcast, but it was on his visits to leper colonies that he was moved by his patients’ tears. No other doctor had dared to touch them. Guevara made up his mind to become a revolutionary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/cheonraft.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>Ché Guevara, right, aboard a raft given to his group by lepers from a leper colony. Image from: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CheOnRaft1952.jpg#file\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The common understanding of leprosy is that it eats away at a patient’s limbs, but Solnit discovers that the disease kills off the nerves that signal pain and infection. “You begin nicking, burning, bruising, abrading, and otherwise wearing out your fingers, toes, feet, hands, and then losing them.” Here Solnit finds a metaphor — one in which the organism of humanity is undone by emotional numbness, and expanded by empathy. In empathy, Solnit goes from Snow White to Guevara and is able to find forgiveness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is also a line of text that runs at the footer throughout the whole book, one I chose to get to once I reached the end. It is as magical as anything in the text. “Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds,” it begins. “This is the title of a short scientific report from 2006, and the moths are a species on the island of Magadascar named \u003ci>Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica\u003c/i>, but the title is a sentence, and the sentence reads like a ballad of one line or a history compressed down to its barest essentials. There are two protagonists in it, a sleeper and a drinker, a giver and a taker, and what are tears to the former is food to the latter. The story tells us everything we ever wanted a story to tell. There is difference. There is contact. You can feed on sorrow. Your tears are delicious.” A meditation on what it means for us to get vitality and experience from stories, “to live on other’s sorrow,” this last story for me is the big one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-faraway-nearby/\">read an excerpt of \u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i>\u003c/a> in \u003ci>Guernica Magazine\u003c/i> at guernicamag.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i> is \u003ca href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780670025961\">on sale\u003c/a> now at indiebound.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s a story about the Tang dynasty painter Wu Daozi that Rebecca Solnit remembers well. It is said that once, when Daozi presented a finished mural to the emperor, he pointed out a cave in the painted landscape and then set forth and disappeared into it. “All readers are Wu Daozi,” Solnit writes in her latest, \u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i>. It’s a book as much about the stories we tell, empathy, and the nature of storytelling, as it is about Solnit’s ailing mother, Alzheimer’s, and one hundred pounds of apricots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were an impressive sight,” Solnit writes. “A mountain of apricots […] upholstered in a fine velvet […]” The apricots are the last harvest from her mother’s tree, picked by her brother before he goes about selling their childhood house and installing their mother in a home for the elderly. At first, Solnit thinks of the apricots as a bountiful inheritance, but as the apricots begin to rot they remind her of something else: “[Fairy tales] are full of overwhelming piles and heaps that need to be contended with, the roomful of straw the poor girl in “Rumpelstiltskin” needs to spin into gold overnight, the thousand pearls scattered into the forest moss the youngest son needs to gather in order to win the princess, the mountain of sand to be moved by teaspoon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/apricot.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>An engraving after a drawing by Augusta Innes Withers. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turkey_apricot_RHS.jpeg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>A task, a tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i> is easily described as a fairy tale. Solnit’s mother is like “a book coming apart, pages drifting away, phrases blurring, letters falling off, the paper returning to white, a book disappearing from the back because the newest memories faded first, and nothing was being added.” Solnit as the hero of the tale needs breast surgery and goes under (in fairy tale terms takes a journey to the underworld) and emerges a different person. She is then beckoned to Iceland, where “everyone walks on water, which is solid. Ice is blue. Snow insulates. Water crystallizes into floating mountains that destroy whatever collides with them […] Nothing decays, and so time stops for the dead, if not for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Solnit’s reasoning is one of the delights in this book. Her style is dizzying, a kind of shout-out to Scheherazade’s unraveling tales in \u003ci>Arabian Nights\u003c/i>. Solnit jumps from metaphor to history, emerging with new metaphors, continuing forth, looping across time and disciplines, touching on themes as unlikely as cannibalism, leper colonies, vanitas paintings, and Frankenstein. To Solnit, all stories take the form of a labyrinth, “but fairy tales are often particularly labyrinth-like. Something happens […] you twist and turn, turn away from the center, journey to the farthest reaches before you can reach your destination […]” Solnit could easily be describing her own book. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in this book, fairy tales continuously serve that purpose, vehicles through which Solnit banks at a shore and travels to another. As Solnit’s mother’s health declines, she seeks in stories the path to healing their tense relationship. At first, she lands unexpectedly on the story of Snow White, surprising herself by quoting that well-known “Mirror, mirror, on the wall.” Solnit describes a jealous mother who is self-involved and unsupportive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/mirrormirror.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>An illustration from an Icelandic translation of Snow White. Image: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_White_Mirror_1.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While fairy tales provide Solnit with useful thought-experiments, they fall short of providing life lessons. Fairy tales embody important questions about who we are, what we desire, and how to lead our lives, but in their resolution, Solnit writes, they “break with their own principles and unleash an avalanche of conventional stuff: palaces, riches, and revenge.” Instead Solnit turns to “anti-fairy tales.” These are the stories that begin in reverse, with protagonists who have riches and leave their riches for a more altruistic path. Siddhartha, for example, or Ché Guevara, whose lives were both transformed by empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most useful of all is Ché Guevara’s story. Born into an aristocratic family, the young Guevara takes leave of medical school to travel South America by motorcycle. “The long road trip on the motorcycle that kept breaking down and was eventually abandoned is how and when Guevara woke up to a particular kind of pain himself and then to his sense of purpose on earth.” Guevara saw the destitute, dispossessed, and outcast, but it was on his visits to leper colonies that he was moved by his patients’ tears. No other doctor had dared to touch them. Guevara made up his mind to become a revolutionary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/cheonraft.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom:10px;\">\u003cbr>Ché Guevara, right, aboard a raft given to his group by lepers from a leper colony. Image from: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CheOnRaft1952.jpg#file\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The common understanding of leprosy is that it eats away at a patient’s limbs, but Solnit discovers that the disease kills off the nerves that signal pain and infection. “You begin nicking, burning, bruising, abrading, and otherwise wearing out your fingers, toes, feet, hands, and then losing them.” Here Solnit finds a metaphor — one in which the organism of humanity is undone by emotional numbness, and expanded by empathy. In empathy, Solnit goes from Snow White to Guevara and is able to find forgiveness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is also a line of text that runs at the footer throughout the whole book, one I chose to get to once I reached the end. 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Your tears are delicious.” A meditation on what it means for us to get vitality and experience from stories, “to live on other’s sorrow,” this last story for me is the big one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-faraway-nearby/\">read an excerpt of \u003ci>The Faraway Nearby\u003c/i>\u003c/a> in \u003ci>Guernica Magazine\u003c/i> at guernicamag.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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},
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"id": "baycurious",
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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},
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
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"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.",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
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"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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"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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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"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",
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"order": 9
},
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"meta": {
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"source": "WNYC"
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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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"hidden-brain": {
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"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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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"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.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"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. ",
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"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. ",
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"order": 18
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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/",
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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": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"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
},
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