Books Shows Tunes & Mad Acts

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 McIntosh joins us today to discuss the album, which is the fifth of a seven-part series. Each album targets...

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 throw it, why it's effective, and why it's so darn hard to throw consistently. He also offers guidance...

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, and began the slow journey of discovering what he was running from while returning home. In this episo...

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 China who then moved to Hong Kong. The intriguing novel, written in English, explores the themes of langua...

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 past twenty years or so from these relationships with women much older than she is. Not so much a book on...

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 writing-related topics: how to convey technical expertise in a novel, what makes a cozy, Malvina's influences (...

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 Zealand might be especially innovative. Simon also talks about songwriting, and Vanessa gives advice to...

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 might not imagine is what she does next. Drawn from Christina's experience working with LA gangs, "Ski...

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 from an outside crazy world, but too soon she discovers that there are disturbing dark elements to this...

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 policy decisions. She discusses the advice that PEN America offers to campus administrators about how to...

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 Aquarium Museum of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and his outlook on the world, as shown through hi...

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 Miffie talk about the most egregious errors that show up in books and movies (provoking eye rolls from ex...

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 self-exposure which apparently appeals to voyeuristic readers. John Julius Reel and Jennifer discuss the...

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 own research with the tool and what limitations and concerns he has uncovered. Knowing that students are...

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, prizes, and surprises. We discuss the national day, how it got started, what's new this year (shuttle bus...

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 "little voice," her foray to Nashville, and returning to California to settle into a successful acting...

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 recommend taking a plea, why prosecutors offer up "deals" for alleged criminals, and the ramifications of...

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 Cleveland Opera, early days with Jason Mraz, how meditation led to the demise of Bushwalla, his LA/SD split...

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 trash talk in its levels of teasing, threat, trust, and going "too far," but delves further into its effect...

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 this month. It was recorded live in Sun Studio, and Steve talks about what it was like to be in Memphis,...

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 Scott who is credited with developing and manufacturing Botox although, as you'll hear in the episode, h...

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 Maine. With periods set in the thirties, just before World War II; in the late fifties, just before the...

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 censorship. PEN America program director, Kasey Meehan, joins us to talk about the numbers, what is bei...

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 the history of S&E's successful collaboration, somewhat surprising since they were first longform mov...

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 European cities with dramatic results. Jeff uses traffic studies to show how urban planning can affect dri...