In Deep with Angie Coiro: Interviews

Show #210 | Guest: Ken Jennings | Show Summary: Angie’s guest is Ken Jennings – he parlayed his long run as a Jeopardy champion into success as an author, podcaster, and online wise guy. He sees humor everywhere – so much so that he says it’s nudging serious issues and real human interaction aside. Ken Jennings joins Angie with his book, Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture.     From John Stewart to Donald Trump, Chaucer to Sumerian Tablets, fart jokes to Cable TV “zingers,” Ken Jennings lends his signature wit and whizzing, encyclopedic perspective to the history of humor and how it came to dominate our modern world. Today, an unprecedented number of people get their news from comedy shows. Newspapers race to find the catchiest headline with an avidity that forgets the need to inform. In our democracy, showmanship has replaced good-nature debate. Jennings looks at the foundations of these current manifestations, and what that says for our future.

Show #209 | Guest: James Hatch | Show Summary: James Hatch served with the Navy SEALs, where he rose to the rank of special ops Senior Chief. He fought in 150 missions, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan. He earned four Bronze Stars with Valor. But it was when he broke into tears over the death of a service dog by enemy fire that he came to national attention.     Hatch was testifying in the trial of Bowe Bergdahl, who abandoned his post in Afghanistan, then was captured by the Taliban. As he joined the dragnet to find the missing soldier, Hatch said later, he knew Americans would be killed or hurt. He turned out to be one of them. Sprayed with the same AK-47 fire that took down the service dog at his side, Hatch swirled into a maelstrom of pain, surgeries, amputation, and alcoholism. He found his way back with hard work, love of friends and family, and – fittingly enough – by founding a charity to care for retired service dogs. James Hatch tells his story of his struggle and recovery in Touching the Dragon, And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars. Anderson Cooper says it “reveals with such honesty and openness, the ‘second war’ that Jimmy and other special operators must fight when they come back to a society that seems so alien to them, a society completely divorced from the purity of combat.”

Show #208 | Guest: Ken Auletta | Show Summary: We’re soaking in advertising. Online, on billboards, flashing on sidewalks – iSpace in Japan plans to project ads on the moon by 2020.     But advertising is no longer a robust industry. Consumer distrust and ad-killing technology have frayed it into hostile camps with uncertain futures. Still: if you’re not in the business, why should you care?     Because, Ken Auletta says: no advertising means no media.Auletta adds to his long career as a savvy observer of American business and communication with Frenemies: The Epic Destruction of the Advertising Industry (And Why This Matters). Auletta is uniquely positioned to probe this latest turn in a key industry. He’s penned the “Annals of Communications” column for The New Yorker since 1992; he’s profiled the greatest influencers of media both traditional and digital, including Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Ted Turner.

Show #207 | Guest: John Carreyou | Show Summary: When does a dream factory dream too big? And when everyone wakes up, what’s the damage?     The acclaim for Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes went well beyond the borders of tech. Theranos, she said, would revolutionize blood testing, making it simpler, faster, and cheaper. Those claims boosted her onto the covers of Forbes and Fortune magazine; Inc.dubbed her “The Next Steve Jobs”.     In 2015, John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal pointed out the gulf between the company’s promises and its actual results. Scrutiny by the SEC, FDA, and other federal and state agencies led to fraud allegations; lab work was suspended and lawsuits filed. When the dust settled, the big question remained: how did a framework of fantasy with so little substance hoodwink investors and the public? How does what we want to believe play out in the world of real money and real science? And if this is all a cautionary tale, what cautions does it leave us with?     Carreyrou’s reporting on Theranos netted him a George Polk award. The book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is being filmed with Jennifer Lawrence in the starring role.

Show #206 | Guest: Jeff Chang | Show Summary: A rebroadcast of our October 8, 2016 interview with Jeff Chang. | We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation – Jeff Chang in conversation with Angie Coiro. In these provocative, powerful essays, acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon’ Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. Throughout these essays, Chang includes the voices of many leading activists from around the country as he charts how popular voices on the ground and in social media have been the main catalyst for protest and change.     Jeff Chang is Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, at Stanford University. He is the author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation.

Show #205 | Guest: Cleve Jones | Show Summary: A rebroadcast of our December 17, 2016 show | From longtime activist Cleve Jones comes a sweeping, beautifully written memoir about a full and remarkable American life. Jones brings to life the magnetic spell cast by 1970’s San Francisco, the drama and heartbreak of the AIDS crisis and the vibrant generation of gay men lost to it, and his activist work on labor, immigration, and gay rights, which continues today.     Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. As did thousands of young gay people, Jones moved to San Francisco in the early ’70s, nearly penniless, finding a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual liberation. Jones met lovers, developed intense friendships, and found his calling in “the movement.” Jones dove into politics and activism, taking an internship in the office of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, who became Jones’ mentor before his murder in 1978. With the advent of the AIDS crisis in the early ’80s, Jones emerged as one of the gay community’s most outspoken leaders. He co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and, later, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the largest public art projects in history.

Show #204 | Guest: Jewelle Gomez | Show Summary: A rebroadcast of our November 19, 2016 show | Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez’s sexy vampire novel. This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who “shares the blood” by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story. The winner of two Lambda Literary Awards (fiction and science fiction) THE GILDA STORIES is a very American odyssey. The 2016 anniversary edition has a new forward by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, one of UTNE Reader’s 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee, and winner of one of the first-ever “Too Sexy for 501c3” trophies.      Jewelle Gomez is a writer, activist, and the author of many books including Forty-Three Septembers, Don’t Explain, The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. The Gilda Stories was the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen United States cities.

Show #203 | Guest: Robert Sapolsky | Show Summary: Robert Sapolsky – a professor of biology, and professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, at Stanford. He’s the author of several books including Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

Show #202 | Guest: Brian Dear | Show Summary: Before Facebook, before Apple – before even the Web itself – a small group of researchers and students created a digital community that’s all but forgotten. Created as an educational tool, the PLATO system – like the internet decades later – broke out of its prescribed limits and took on its own life. Messaging communities, computer games, even online social protest have their roots in this handful of monitors casting their “friendly orange glow” on the faces of this select few. Brian Dear interviewed dozens of them to get this special chapter of modern history in writing before it blinked out of memory.

Show #201 | Guest: Sally Kohn | Show Summary: Admit it: in this new world of bilious political warfare, you’ve said at least one thing you regret. Incivility is catching.     Long-time political commentator Sally Kohn found herself doing the same thing. She stopped to wonder: where does civic ugliness come from – and what does it cost? When we’re all emotionally invested in our points of view, can it be stemmed?     She took on a worldwide trek to find out. She’s talked to scientists and researches, terrorists, trolls, and hate groups. She has success stories of people who walked away from hate. From all those avenues, she derives workable steps to getting ahead of the damage incivility can wreak.     Sally Kohn is a familiar face from Fox and CNN. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, New York Magazine, USA Today, and Time. She also works as a communications consultant and was previously a campaign strategist for the Center for Community Change, a fellow at the Ford Foundation, and a strategic advisor to the Social Justice Infrastructure Funders, as well as a fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian task Force Policy Institute.

Show #200 | Guest: Megan Devine | Show Summary: This discussion with grief expert Megan Devine is just a revelation. She has both a professional and deeply personal take on the topic. She was a counseling therapist, and some of her clients were dealing with grief. She worked with them as she was taught in her formal education. Then she was hit with her own earthshaking loss. Her healthy, athletic partner was swept away by a flooded river and drowned. Megan was dropped into a world where nothing she’d learned about coping and recovery had any bearing at all.     Her book It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay taps not just her own life but the experiences and lessons shared by her clients and website visitors. Don’t expect a somber hour, though. Megan’s got a contagious sense of humor, a key element to her life as it continues to evolve.

Show #199 | Guest: Morgan Jerkins | Show Summary: Blogger and essayist Morgan Jerkins takes on the stew of racism, misogyny, and white-dominated feminism that sidelines American black women. Her book This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America details her own coming of age in a series of sharp and fearless essays. With Angie, she discusses the exciting but treacherous world of writing; the gift of having a mom who encouraged her sexual autonomy; and the bizarre tale of Rachel Dolezal.     Morgan Jerkins is a writer and contributing editor at Catapult.co, where she writes the essay series To Be Seen and Unseen. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Elle, Rolling Stone, and BuzzFeed. This Will Be My Undoing is her first book.

Show #198 | Guests: Deborah Rohde, Nina Keebler, Michael Santoro | Show Summary: When you strip away the extremes, what is America’s relationship with honesty? We’re past believing that anyone is purely honest. And a quick vacation from reading the news can allay the despair that everyone is lying all the time. So what’s the reality?     Ethics and justice icon Deborah Rhode of Stanford University tackled this huge topic in her book Cheating: Ethics in Everyday Life. We’ve expanded on that to create an hour’s conversation from multiple perspectives: Deborah’s deep knowledge plus: the view from the education world, with counselor and therapist Nina Keebler; and from the business world, with noted scholar and ethics consultant Michael Santoro.     Deborah Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, the director of the Center on the Legal Profession, and the director of the Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford University. Among her dozens of accolades for her legal work, scholarship, and books is the White House’s Champion of Change Award, for her life’s work in increasing access to justice. Her books include Cheating; Adultery; The Trouble With Lawyers, and The Beauty Bias.     Nina Keebler is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and the founder of Centered Wisdom, a group psychotherapy practice in Menlo Park. She specializes in working with Silicon Valley professionals, young adults and teens. In addition to her private practice she also offers expertise as a School Counselor at Menlo School and trauma specialist and the Camden Center, an Intensive Outpatient Program.     Michael Santoro is a faculty member in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Among his areas of expertise are business ethics and conscious consumerism. Prof. Santoro’s expert testimony in the Vioxx litigation became the basis for court-ordered corporate governance reforms adopted by Merck. He speaks frequently on pharmaceutical industry ethics, human rights, and financial industry ethics.

Show #197 | Guest: Clayton Nall | Show Summary: The 1956 National Interstate and Defense Highways Act inaugurated the greatest public works project in American history. It’s for the most part highly acclaimed, creating unprecedented mobility for the average American. Clayton Nall, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford, has a different take. He’s pored over databases and archives to discover the deeper effects of the modern highway system – its creation, he says, increased the urban-suburban political divide and aggravated uneven access to basic services and resources. The effects are still surfacing today partisan battles over transportation and infrastructure. How do we fix – or at least compensate for – a system that’s literally cemented in?

Show #196 | Guest: Jennifer Berger | Show Summary: Naomi Wolff’s The Beauty Myth made waves in 1990. Since then the push for realistic depictions of girls and women – and the work to help them disengage from media messaging – has been nonstop. How far have we come? About-Face in San Francisco has bolstered the knowledge and confidence of young women for over twenty years. Listen to Angie’s discussion with About-Face Executive Director Jennifer Berger, and learn the incisive, insightful workings of this critical campaign.

Show #195 | Guest: Jane Mayer | Show Summary: A month ago almost no one had heard of Cambridge Analytica. But when the Facebook data story blew open, one of the names involved was mighty familiar: Mercer. Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah – he an investor, she on the board – moved into prominence with the publication of investigative reporter Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money. The book and our original interview with her – recorded last fall – provides key background to this new story. This week we air it again, to share that context.

Show #194 | Guest: Dawn Mikkelson | Show Summary: Emmy-winning journalist and documentarian Dawn Mikkelson brings us her moving, passionate new film, Risking Light.     Risking Light profiles three people overcoming damaging pasts: Mary Johnson of Minneapolis, grieving a murdered son; Debra Hocking, a victim of government-sanctioned genocide in Australia; and Kilong Ung, who survived the terror of the Khmer Rouge, in the killing fields of Cambodia.     The film explores resilience, and the painful process of moving from grief to compassion and forgiveness. Her earlier films reflect the same passion for humanity and social justice: The Red Tail, Green Green Water, THIS obedience, and Treading Water.     A former television news reporter at an ABC affiliate, Mikkelson often speaks and writes on issues around documentary filmmaking and social justice for Minnesota Public Radio and at festival panels, colleges, and universities. Mikkelson has taught Documentary Film as Adjunct Faculty at Ottawa University in Kansas, as well as at IFP Minnesota. In 2006 Mikkelson’s film, Hope for Recovery: Understanding Mental Illness (produced in collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television and NAMI-MN) won the Eric Sevareid Award by the Northwest Broadcast News Association.

Show #193 | Guest: Julie Lythcott-Haims | Show Summary: One of In Deep’s favorite guests returns with her new book, Real American: A Memoir. She pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a biracial black woman in America. With the same frank style that’s endeared her to readers, students and Ted Talk audiences,

Show #192 | Guest: Dave Neiwert | Show Summary: Just as Donald Trump’s victorious campaign for the US presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious “alt-right” figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. In Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, investigative reporter David Neiwert looks into the phenomenon and its ringmasters.     Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black US president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the far right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground. Figures such as Stephen Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones, once rightly dismissed as cranks, now haunt the reports of mainstream journalism.     Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades. In Alt-America, he provides a deeply researched and authoritative report on the growth of fascism and far-right terrorism, the violence of which in the last decade has surpassed anything inspired by Islamist or other ideologies in the United States.

Show #191 | Guest: Dan Knapp | Show Summary: You sort your trash, you rescue recyclables, you obediently scrape your plates into the compost bin. Good for you, and keep doing that! But lend an ear to Dan Knapp, a deeply-informed critic of corporate recycling messaging.     Dan Knapp is known in Northern California for co-founding Urban Ore, a Berkeley shrine to recycling and reuse. But his grand vision goes well beyond one quirky thrift store/salvage yard hybrid, what one scribe dubbed an “eternal, anonymous garage sale”. Knapp sees the potential for a world where almost every product can be somehow reinvigorated, reimagined, or reprocessed into something new and useful. But first, he says, we have to invest in the most efficient, proven repurposing of all our materials, prioritizing real results over profit. Dan is one of today’s most informed out-of-the-box thinkers about how to soften the impact of consumer culture.