Episodes
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Episode 285: The Garden Album from Musica Sierra
Emerging from the soil of Sierra County is the new album, Garden, ostensibly for children as part of an early education program about science, but its blend of folk, Celtic, bluegrass, and a bit of gospel will appeal to many adults as well. Project manager and Musica Sierra director, Lindsay...
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Episode 284: The Knuckleball with Chris Nowlin
Enter the world of the knuckleball and its specialized lingo: drag crisis, loop de loop, and dreaded forward roll. The knuckleball pitch is dying out in baseball, but Chris Nowlin still teaches it and, importantly, still throws it with the lowest rotation on earth today. He discusses here how to...
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Episode 283: David LeBrun and His Memoir, Delirium Vitae
Available today! Meet Canadian author, David LeBrun, whose first book, a travel memoir, is being published today by Tortoise Books. Delirium Vitae is a recounting of David's adventures in Central America when he fled the cold Canadian winter to party with an old friend, promptly ran out of money,...
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Episode 282: South of the Yangtze with Flora Qian
Welcome Flora Qian with her first novel "South of the Yangtze," a coming-of-age story of a thoughtful and curious Chinese girl, born and raised in Shanghai during the one-child years.* Flora discusses the origins of the novel which maps some of her own experiences as a young woman educated in…
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Episode 281: Melinda Blau and Her Wisdom Whisperers
Relationship expert Melinda Blau is back with her new book, "The Wisdom Whisperers: Golden Guides to a Long Life of Grit, Grace, and Laughter." Melinda began collecting her "old ladies," as she calls them, in mid-life and shares here the tremendous wisdom and benefit she has received over the…
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Episode 280: Oilfield Mysteries with Malvina Lerma
Join petroleum engineer Malvina Lerma as she talks about her cozy mystery series, Oilfield Mysteries, and her amateur sleuth, Charlie, a woman working in a man's world. Malvina and Jennifer talk about the oil industry, Bakersfield, the BP catastrophe, well drilling, as well as a bunch of...
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Episode 279: Talking Music with The Tattletale Saints
The two parts of the Americana duo Tattletale Saints, Simon Stanley and Vanessa McGowen, join us today to talk about tons of music stuff: their formation and evolution, Simon's foray into kids music, Vanessa's bass playing, their move to Nashville, what makes a good cover, and why music from New...
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Episode 278: Two Novels with Christina Hoag
Join us to talk about "Law of the Jungle" and "Skin of Tattoos," two of Christina's novels, both replete with interesting characters and quite absorbing . One is about a biochemist deep in the Amazonian jungle who falls in love with the perfect guy only to discover—well, you can imagine. What you...
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Episode 277: Sarah Langan and her Novel "A Better World"
Sarah Langan, author of "A Better World" and "Good Neighbors," talks about her new dystopian novel and its frightening similarities to our current real life. In Sarah's novel, our hero, Linda, doctor and mom, is initially thrilled to be accepted into Plymouth Valley, a safe refuge for her family...
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Episode 276: Campus Protests and Free Speech
Joining us to talk about the recent campus protests and their ramifications for free speech is Kristen Shahverdian of PEN America. Kristen discusses the various balls that campuses must keep in the air, considering the participants' right to free speech, safety on campus, and viewpoint-neutral...
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Episode 275: Sam Hinton, Folk Singer, Scientist, and Amazing Person
The Sam Hinton Folk Heritage Festival at Old Poway Park in San Diego will be held June 1! We're delighted in this episode to share Sam's history through the eyes of his granddaughter Katrina Hinton-Cooper. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss Sam's music, his tremendous work for the...
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Episode 274: How To Write Better About Drugs
Join us as pharmacist Miffie Seideman talks about her new book from Indiana University Press, "The Grim Reader: A Pharmacist's Guide to Putting Your Characters in Peril," a great resource for fiction writers who would like to bring a bit more accuracy to their drug-related scenes. Jennifer and...
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Episode 273: An Appraisal of "Splinters"
Okay, so the new memoir "Splinters" wasn't our favorite book ever, and sometimes it downright irritated us, but our investigation into what worked (and what didn't!) makes for a fascinating conversation about the nature of memoir and new trends in the genre, from "woe is me" themes to shameless...
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Episode 272: The Use of AI in Screenwriting
Join Craig Erpelding, Director of the BFA in Cinematic Arts at Indiana University, to discuss the ways AI can be used effectively and ethically in the development of screenplays and the teaching of screenwriting. Craig bravely jumps into this fraught topic and clearly and logically explains his…
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Episode 271: April 27 Is Indie Bookstore Day!
Join us as we talk with Teri Den Herder, longtime bookseller at the UCSD Bookstore, about Independent Bookstore Day, the annual celebration of indie bookstores, and the San Diego Book Crawl, the weekend when booklovers swarm the 13 participating bookstores in search of books, passport stamps,...
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Episode 270: The Magic of Debi Derryberry
Join the charming Debi Derryberry as we explore her long career as a voice-over artist, including voicing Jimmy Neutron, as well as her various projects, such as the recent release of her fourth CD of children's music, Gotta Go Green. Here she generously shares her experiences, growing up with a...
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Episode 269: Plea Bargains with Prof. Dripps
University of San Diego law professor Donald Dripps joins us to educate us on the plea bargain system which has essentially replaced what we think of as our criminal justice system. Prof. Dripps explains why defendants waive their right to a jury trial by pleading guilty, why defense attorneys...
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Episode 268: Billy Galewood FKA Bushwalla
San Diego's own wild & crazy guy, Billy Galewood, recounts his quest for fun from Cleveland to Bushwalla and beyond. An original showman from the Java Joe days, he entertains through improv, song, rap, storytelling, and making people laugh. Here he tells the tales of musical theatre, the…
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Episode 267: Talking Trash with Rafi Kohan
Rafi Kohan's new book, "Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn't Total Garbage," covers sh*t talking and its relatives: bench jockeying, the dozens, and sledging; as well as its variants from ancient times (think Odysseus and hubris). Rafi discusses the complexity of…
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Episode 266: Having a Ball with Hullabaloo
Join Steve Denyes, of Hullabaloo, the best kids' music band in these parts (and maybe the universe!), as he chats about songwriting, kids and parents, and what has changed in the twenty years that Hullabaloo has been performing. Hullabaloo's first live album, their 15th album overall, came out…
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Episode 265: The Story of Botox with Dr. Eugene Helveston
Dr. Helveston's new book tells the history of the Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that was discovered and researched as a poison and how it came to be Botox, with multiple medical applications and a household word in the beauty industry. As an ophthalmologist, Dr. Helveston worked with Alan...
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Episode 264: The Guest Book with Sarah Blake
Please join us for a wonderful conversation with author Sarah Blake about her latest novel, The Guest Book, a book described by the Washington Post as "monumental," a sweeping family drama of secrets and silence that crosses three generations but is anchored by a private island off the coast of...
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Episode 263: Book Bans and the PEN America Lawsuit
Nearly 6,000 instances of book banning have been recorded since 2021, and the book censorship movement is growing, accelerated by new laws in some states. PEN America has joined Penguin Random House, authors, and students in a lawsuit against Escambia County school district, challenging unlawful...
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Episode 262: Siskel and Ebert: Opposable Thumbs
Matt Singer, author of Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever, joins us to discuss two TV guys who argued passionately about movies for over twenty years, during a period when American Cinema was in its heyday, and film criticism rose to the challenge. Matt's book covers…
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Episode 261: Our Deadly Streets with Jeff Speck
American streets killed more than 7500 pedestrians in 2023, a 40-year high and climbing every year. Why? City planner and walkable cities advocate Jeff Speck joins us to explain that street design is largely to blame and how modest changes could be made to increase safety, as has been done in...
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Episode 260: Jennifer Jenkins Takes Us Into the Public Domain
Duke copyright law professor Jennifer Jenkins joins us to celebrate and explain Public Domain Day. After a twenty-year hiatus, copyrighted works began moving into the public domain in 2019. Now each year, we can re-discover works that are available to be re-purposed by creators without the legal...
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Episode 259: Censorship and Obscenities with Michael Adams
Indiana University English professor Michael Adams returns to talk about taboo language and historical attempts to document it and suppress it. He bravely takes on the fraught issues around the f-word, bathroom graffiti, obscene literature, Shakespeare, and even hate speech. Along the way, he...
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Episode 258: News of Tom Lehrer with Jeff Morris
The great Tom Lehrer has a new album! Put out by Needlejuice records and mixed by our guest, Jeff Morris, from the original reel-to-reel tapes, it's a compilation of all of Tom's songs recorded with an orchestra, now available in stereo for the first time. This gives us a wonderful excuse to...
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Episode 257: Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
Join bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal to discuss his third novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, a celebration of food and drink across four generations in Minnesota. J. Ryan contrasts four female voices, four decades, and two restaurants, one a traditional supper club, and the...
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Episode 256: The Mean Reds with Dale Bridges
Author Dale Bridges joins us to discuss his first novel, The Mean Reds, a fun mystery novel featuring Sam, the self-deluded, weed-addled, but utterly relatable film buff protagonist, who encounters a hilarious cast of characters as he attempts to investigate the death of a stripper. Dale talks...
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Episode 255: Shipwrecks! with Charles Beeker
Join Charles Beeker, Indiana University professor and director of the IU Center for Underwater Science, to talk about shipwrecks, underwater treasures and resources, and the surrounding web of related ethical and legal issues. From Indiana shipwrecks (yes! Indiana has shipwrecks and an…
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Episode 254: Brendan Ballou and "Plunder," His Book about Private Equity
DOJ Attorney Brendan Ballou discusses his new book, "Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America." Ever wonder why we seem to have fewer airlines, fewer retail stores, fewer drugstores, and the same names keep showing up on businesses from rental agencies to nursing homes to mobile home...
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Episode 253: "Carefully Taught" by Cary Ginell
Musicologist Cary Ginell joins us to talk about his new book, "Carefully Taught: American History through Broadway Musicals." Cary is a wealth of information about music in general (and lots of other topics too!), but especially about musicals. Here he talks about musicals that were fairly…
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Episode 252: John Julius Reel with My Half Orange
John Julius Reel's new memoir, My Half Orange, is a sweet story of John moving to Seville, Spain and meeting his better half and starting a family. Join us for this intimate conversation about John's maturation into a family man, to his surprise and joy, along with his revelations about learning...
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Episode 251: Scary Songs
Bill and Jennifer cover over 40 songs in this fun fast-moving discussion of scary songs, ranging from creepy-sounding songs to songs that are especially horrifying because they don't sound scary at all. From old murder ballads to kicky pop tunes, lyrics about serial killers, theme songs, earworm...
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Episode 250: The Mix Tape with Ben Vaughn
Join us for a fun episode as we chat with Ben Vaughn about the art and pitfalls of the Mix Tape, a passion of Bill's and mine. We talk about why we do it, the selection process, transitions, the dreaded fadeout, and the outrage of some devices jumbling the song order thereby ruining—ruining, I…
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Episode 249: Family Circus and Jeff Keane
Join us as we welcome Jeff Keane, the current cartoonist of Family Circus, the incredibly successful one-panel cartoon, now over 60 years old and featured in 1500 newspapers worldwide. Jeff talks about the real-life family behind the cartoon; his dad, Bil, the originator of the cartoon; the...
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Episode 248: Animation Resources with Stephen Worth
Animation Resources is a non-profit with a terrific website where a wealth of creative material awaits you! Members also receive a monthly packet of interesting surprises, both old and new. Director Stephen Worth joins us today to talk about what animation is (very intriguing answers), his...
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Episode 247: Books Shows Tunes & Mad Acts with Steve Boyle & Webb Wilder, Last of the Full Grown Men
Steve Boyle and Webb Wilder join us to present a project that has been in the works for decades and will emerge this year, we hope, on a radio near you! In the 1980s, Steve and Webb began working on a neo-noir detective series, riffing on the anti-commercial commercials that they produced for…
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Episode 246: Going Analog with David Sax
Join us as author David Sax returns to talk about two books, "The Revenge of Analog" and "The Future Is Analog," one written in 2016 and the recent one written during the pandemic. Jennifer and David talk about the analog / digital aspects of education, work, and housing, as well as delving into...
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Episode 245: Education in Prison with Peter Fulks
Join Peter Fulks, a Cerro Coso Community College professor and a leading faculty in the development of the College's Incarcerated Students Education Program, a national leader in face-to-face higher education in prison. Here he takes us through the goals and results of the program, including the...
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Episode 244: Rockin' with Jerry Williams, Jr., aka Swamp Dogg
Join us for a rollicking conversation with Swamp Dogg, hard-working soul and R&B singer, who has been performing since the 50s and is still going strong. We chat about his long career, his friendship with John Prine, ambitious projects in the works, including yet another album (!) and an…
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Episode 243: Getting Educated with IU Dean Van Kooten
Join Indiana University College of Arts & Sciences Executive Dean Rick Van Kooten for a terrific conversation, ranging from capitalism to fruit flies. In between we talk about what's included in the College and why, Rick's history at the school (being Canadian and all), experimental physics,...
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Episode 242: Lauren Leigh Martin, San Diego Songbird
Join San Diego native Lauren Leigh Martin, as she talks about her singing career and upcoming second album. She talks about her musical influences: her aunt, Eve Selis; her dad, Claudio Martin; her album co-producer, Jeff Berkeley; and her musical partner, Sam Hunt. The past few years have been a...
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Episode 241: Thinking Together with Alex Chambers
Podcaster, poet, and educator Alex Chambers and Jennifer talk about—well, a lot of stuff. We start with "Inner States," Alex's radio show on WFIU from Bloomington, Indiana and chat about people's misconceptions about the Midwest and the Fly-Over states. We talk about how people and sounds form…
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Episode 240: On the Trail of the Jackalope with Michael Branch
Author and humorist Michael Branch joins us to talk about his new book, "On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer." He delves into the storied history of the mythological creature, often memorialized as a tongue-in-cheek hunting…
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Episode 239: How Exercise Helps Your Brain with Dr. Christiane Wrann
Dr. Christiane Wrann, researcher at MGH and associate professor at Harvard, has published some exciting new discoveries about the effect of exercise on the brain, potentially slowing cognitive decline and in some cases even reversing brain deterioration. She takes us through her work in mouse...
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Episode 238: Trina Robbins, Cartoonist, Fashion Designer, and Author
Trina Robbins was memorialized as the first of Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon with her sketches and second-hand clothes, but, don't be fooled, Trina is a serious archivist of feminist art history. She drew for underground newspapers during the Women's Lib movement of the sixties and has...
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Episode 237: The Walking Dead with Oleg Livits
Join The Walking Dead co-producer and entrepreneur Oleg Livits to talk about this phenomenal show whose eleventh and final season is airing now. The Walking Dead poses as a zombie show, but it is about so much more: survival, lawlessness, community, morality and death. Based on a comic book…
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Episode 236: People from Bloomington with Tiffany Tsao
Translator Tiffany Tsao joins us to discuss her recent project, the first publication in English of Indonesian writer Budi Darma's collection of short stories, "People from Bloomington." So much to talk about with this book! Darma's usual absurdist but very human eye crosses over here into more...