Mike Meadows
In October 2009, I had a chance to chat with Mike Meadows from the group porterdavis. Mike has a varied background:  he studied music at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston where he fell in love with hand percussion and the rhythms from India, Africa and also Arabic grooves. He’s been to Ghana twice to absorb the music and wider culture and, partly because of his travels and the desire to produce a versatile drum that can be used in a variety of settings, he created his own unique drum called “The Black Swan.” Because I’m a drummer, I wanted to interview Mike about “The Black Swan,” drumming in general, and the way in which his influences (from rock to world beats) have woven their way into the music he makes with his band, porterdavis — and his own solo work.  The conversation was wide ranging and it touched on a number of topics that include his early childhood, drumming influences, the glories of street performing, the use and misuse of more exotic beats in Americana music, and the ongoing education of an accomplished musician. So, load up your iPod, Zune, laptop or whatever the hell you use to play audio, and get ready for a Popdose interview with Mike Meadows.

10/15/2009 Popdose.com
Download the interview: mp3

Jessica Harp

One half of the successful country duo the Wreckers, Jessica Harp is now flying solo with the release of her album, A Woman Needs. The album blends a lot of juicy hooks with heartfelt lyrics that are, at times, autobiographical, and other times are just about having a good old time.  I had chance to interview her about her life, her career, some of the songs on the new CD, and why she and Michelle Branch decided to put the Wreckers on hold … for now. The podcast runs about 20 minutes and you’ll get a taste of the new songs and the back story on how some of these tunes came about.

6/8/2009 Popdose.com

Download the interview: mp3

Jason Teramoto and Lauren Reichart
Now that the Internet is more than just a place to get information, politicians have begun to use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to get their message out, court potential voters, and have a place where like-minded supporters can meet and interact with a candidate's campaign.  Direct democracy has existed in a various forms throughout history, but now with the advent of social networking sites, politicians can keep their finger on the pulse of their supporters without spending a lot of money to do so.  Jason Teramoto is a candidate running for the 18th Assembly District in California, and Lauren Reichart is a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama  -- where she is studying the use of social networking sites in the presidential campaign of 2008.

Air Date: 3/30/2008 on KKIQ and Diablo Valley 92.1 (KKDV) Radio
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Gregory Hartl, Sabina Imrie, and Nicole Gehmlich
Seasonal flare ups of influenza aren't very surprising.  However, in the past we've had very virulent outbreaks of influenza that have been quite lethal to a large part of the human population. With the recent concerns about avian flu crossing over to the human population, international and local agencies have developed plans to both address the crisis of a pandemic and ways to minimize catching the flu virus.  Gregory Hartl from the World Health Organization in Switzerland spoke to me in the first half of the program about the flu virus, and then in the second half Sabina Imrie and Nicole Gehmlich from the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department spoke about a local campaign they are heading up to inform residents on reducing the chances of spreading not only the flu virus but also a possible avian flu pandemic

Air Date: 2/03/2008 on KKIQ and Diablo Valley 92.1 (KKDV) Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Dan Newman
The connection between money and politics now has a big, bright light shining on it thanks to the folks who created a new database called Maplight.  I spoke with Dan Newman, the executive director of Maplight, and we had a spirited discussion on money in politics, the need for transparency in our government, and how you can find out which interest groups are giving money to your state representative to influence their votes on certain issues. Currently, Maplight's database only covers California politics, but don't worry, these folks are teaming up with Open Secrets and are going national.  You can give this free service a try by going HERE. And you can listen to the interview by just clicking the "mp3" link below.

Air Date: 3/25/2007 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Robert Sutton
Ever work with a jerk?  Ever wonder if you're a jerk?  Bob Sutton takes workplace bullying seriously in his book with the great title, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.  What I liked about his book is that he not only highlights the horrible things bullies do at work, but his tips on surviving these jerks are very sound.  For those interested in reading about (and talking about) jackasses that people have had the pleasure in knowing and working with, you can hop on over to his blog by clicking HERE.

Air Date: 3/11/2007 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
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Nora Ephron
There are many "firsts" when doing a program like this one.  But this is the first time I think I was contacted by a PR firm to do an interview with someone as noted as Nora. It would be nice to think that they heard a show and thought it was a good match.  However, what happens is that PR firms representing individuals like Nora Ephron blanket radio stations in the top markets with solicitations and wait to see what comes back. Then they schedule accordingly. Anyway, all that has nothing to do with the actual interview -- which was about her book I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts On Being a Woman.  The book itself reminded me of some blogs I read, in that her essays are somewhat random thoughts about aging, New York City, politics, and mortality.  However, there is a theme in the book and it's really about how one lives in the course of a lifetime.  There are many head-shaking confessions of things she did in her salad days, but  after reading the book, one certainly sees her less as a celebrity and more like a neighbor who lives next door.

Air Date: 12/17/2006 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Daniel J. Levitin
I first heard about Daniel Levitin's book by reading a review of it in Salon.com.  After searching for Daniel on the Internet, I found his academic webpage and read that he was a musician before becoming an academic.  After exchanging e-mails and talking about music and his book, I found out he was a Bay Area native who worked in the San Francisco music scene for years before turning his interest toward neuropsychology.  Since I'm such a music fan (and I play drums), I really loved the first couple of chapters of his book, This Is Your Brain On Music:  The Science of a Human Obsession.  Why? Well, he wrote about music theory in a such a clear manner that it just opened up a lot of musical things I intuitively knew, but lacked intellectually.  When he came on the show, I really enjoyed the discussion we had on music and some of the research he detailed in his book.

Air Date: 10/1/2006 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Unita Blackwell
A veteran of the civil rights struggle, Unita is also a friend of my wife's former boss.  She was on a book tour promoting her new book, Barefootin' Life Lesson from the Road to Freedom, and came to the Bay Area for visit.  At a dinner party held in her honor, I was invited to meet her and do an interview.  So, I grabbed a audio recorder from the station and went down to meet her.  We had a great pre-interview conversation that I should have recorded, but think this interview came out well. 

Air Date: 9/17/2006 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

George Kohlrieser, Professor of Leadership 
George Kohlrieser has written a book that gets to the heart of the kind of politics we as adults experience everyday in our place of employment:  office politics.  The book is entitled Hostage at the Table:  How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance, and it’s primarily directed at leaders in the workplace.  However, after reading the book, I realized that many of Kohlrieser’s suggestions for overcoming conflict can be used by regular working folks as well.  After the interview, George told me that he used to host his own radio program in Ohio and said that he thought I was a very good interviewer.  It was one of those rare moments in the media business when one comment makes your day!

Air Date: 7/30/2006 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

 
Tim Grieve and Kevin Drum
I've had both of these guys on the program more than once (see below).  Kevin writes for the Washington Monthly's blog "Political Animal,"and Tim writes for Salon.com's "War Room."  The topic was Karl Rove's role in revealing the identity of a CIA agent in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.  I thought both guys did a wonderful job articulating why this story is important. Alas,  they also talk about why this event probably won't have much of an effect on the political climate in 2006.

Air Date: 6/18/2006 on KKIQ and KKDV Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist and Professor of Economics at Princeton University
Krugman is seen as one of the only print columnists in a major newspaper who never tempered his critique of the Bush administration's policies during a time when approval of the administration was at an all time high.

Air Date: 1/11/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: Part I Part II Part III

Evan Wolfson, Author
Evan Wolfson is fighting the good fight with his unyielding desire for justice. His book, Why Marriage Matters, is a very good argument for marriage equality. He was very articulate on the topic and shed some important light on how marriage is more than love, religious tradition, and procreation. The legal argument for marriage equality ought to make even the most die hard homophobe reconsider their position.

Air Date: 7/17/2005 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Theo Gonzalves
Theo is another friend from grad school. We got our academic feet wet teaching as Graduate Student Instructors at San Francisco State University, argued about political theory in the student union at a weekly get together of "theory snobs," and talked just as passionately about music too (Theo is quite the musician!). After Theo wrote a piece in AsianWeek about the parallels between the Spanish-American war and our current war in Iraq, I had to have him on the program to talk about the article and other things related to the fog of war.

Air Date: 9/12/05 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Steven Denning, Author
Steven is author of the book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling and Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership through Storytelling. After reading The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, I think Steven makes a compelling argument for incorporating what we should have learned in college Humanities courses into the business world. That is to say, the power of a story in creating understanding among humans. We had a chance to chat about the business world and how the use of storytelling can inspire changes in large-scale organizations -- and the roadblocks one may encounter. Oh, and just so you know Steven knows what he's talking about, check out part of his C.V.: Lawyer, Oxford grad, Director of Southern African Department and Program Director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank, business consultant, and a novelist.

Air Date: 5/15/2005 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Lewis Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine
Lapham is often criticized for being a turncoat to his class since he comes from a great deal of wealth. But, his essays in Harper's are consistently well argued (even if you don't agree with him), and his unwavering desire to uphold the Enlightenment foundations of the early American Republic makes him a conservative of a very different era.

Air Date: 6/29/2003 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

I was able to get Lewis on the program again for a talk on "The Bush Doctrine and Political Culture."
Air Date: 04/25/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Mark Hamill, Actor, Author, and Film Director
Most noted for his role as Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars" ("A New Hope," The Empire Strikes Back," "Return of the Jedi.") Mark recently directed a movie called "Comic Book:The Movie" that is out on DVD,and has created his own comic book character called the Black Pearl. He's a very gracious, smart and down to earth kind of guy and it was a lot of fun talking to him. Finally got to meet Mark in person at the California Independent Film Festival in Livermore, CA on 11/4/04. On my left is Patrick Gutierrez (an Account Executive at KKIQ). I didn't even know Patrick was standing there until I reviewed the photos.

Air Date: 10/24/04 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Brian Cooley
Brian works for CNET, but I've known him since the mid 80s when he was the news director of the now defunct KKIS AM/FM radio in Concord, CA, and I was an "On Air Personality" at the same station. Now that he's a big shot at CNET and is on TV quite a bit (I see him every Tuesday morning on CBS 5's Early Edition), I had to have him on the program to talk about an issue I like to talk about: computer technology. I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like gadgets and seeing how creative people can be in using them. Since Brian and I both work in media, the way in which new "personal" media gadgets are affecting radio and television is not only exciting and fascinating, but augurs ill for those industries in the future -- or so it seems from our perspective.

Air Date: 4/17/2005 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

  JOAN WALSH
She's the current Editor-in-Chief at Salon.com. I wrote to her about being on the program after reading an article she penned on bloggers, new media, and old media for Salon. She was kind enough to make time for me on short notice. The interview turned out to be quite good and she was able to make it clear that Salon is a new media/old media hybrid publication that should be around for a long time if their journalistic standards remain at the level Walsh is trying to uphold.

Air Date: 3/13/2005 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Anne Norton
Anne was one of my professors at U Penn, and she has written a really great book on a little known political philosophy professor named Leo Strauss whose teachings animate the ideas and actions of many right wing political activists in the present day. Unfortunately, the phone connection wasn't the greatest, so there's some "hiss" on the audio that gets louder as the interview progresses.

Air Date: 12/19/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Kevin Drum
Kevin writes a blog for the Washington Monthly called "Political Animal," I have been reading his work since he wrote under the name "Cal Pundit." I think he's a very reasoned and informed writer who --truth be told-- was a bit reticent about being on the radio. But I think these three interviews demonstrate that he's also an articulate speaker.

Democratic National Convention
Air Date: 8/1/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

2004: Year in Review.
Air Date: 1/9/2005 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Cloris Leachman, Stage, Screen and Television Actress
She was a lot of fun to talk to. There was so much on the raw audio of us laughing about "Young Frankenstein," that I had to cut it out so the show would spotlight HER work and not sound like two people who have gone insane.

Air Date: 8/17/2003 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

George Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
He's quite noted in his field and has recently started to write and talk about the way in which language is used in politics in his book Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives.

Air Date: 12/28/2003 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Deborah Koons Garcia, filmmaker
Deborah Koons Garcia is a filmmaker in the Bay Area whose film, The Future of Food, is an examination of the way in which genetically modified foods have legal, financial, and health consequences on a global scale. She spent years making this film and it's quite groundbreaking in highlighting an industry seems to have a tremendous amount of unchecked power in the world.

Air Date: 11/28/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Kali Gross, Asst. Professor of History and African American Studies, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

The two of us were in grad school together at the University of Pennsylvania and became pretty good friends. I thought she did a really great interview on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

Air Date: 5/30/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Tony Curtis, Actor
Film actor, Tony Curtis, came to Pleasanton to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Independent Film Festival. He was supposed to be at the festival when Mark Hamill was there, but he came down with pneumonia and couldn't attend. Well, he got better and rescheduled his appearance. The festival organizers invited local press down to the Rose Hotel to interview Tony, so on this interview you'll hear other voices asking questions. One thing that baffled me was his use of the term "odious" to describe comparing actors of today to those of his generation. Maybe he wanted to say "erroneous?"

Air Date: 12/5/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3

Dan Ellsberg
Dan Ellsberg is one of those names that either hits you like a sledgehammer, or makes you go "huh?" If you were born after 1975, you might not know who he is. But if you were born before 1975, you'll recognize his name as the individual who leaked the famed Pentagon Papers. On his website, his biography tells the story in more detail. Here's a snippet:

"[Ellsberg] worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon." Our conversation was on secrecy in politics.

Air Date: 5/2/2004 on KKIQ Radio
Download the Interview: mp3