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The History and Experience of Black Americans in Palm Springs Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

In a story for the Los Angeles Times, journalist Tyrone Beason shines a light on the experience and history of Black Americans living in Palm Springs. While few in numbers, Black residents are part of a history that reaches back to the first half of the 20th century when, Beason writes, "hundreds of Black people from the South, and from Los Angeles and the Bay Area, settled in desert communities like Palm Springs." Beason interviews a number of current residents, some whose families have been in Palm Springs for generations, about the homes they've made in predominantly Black neighborhoods and the discrimination they've faced. Beason joins us to discuss how the U.S.'s legacy of segregated housing is reflected in Palm Springs and why Black Americans in California's desert assert they are "here to stay."

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BAMPFA’s ‘New Time’ Explores Feminisms in Art Over Past 2 Decades Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

When visitors now walk into the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, they’ll face a mural outlining the earth’s strata designed by the late feminist artist Luchita Hurtado, part of BAMPFA’s newest exhibit “New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century.” The exhibit examines the feminist practice of more than 67 contemporary artists through pieces spanning the past two decades of feminist art. With sections dedicated to examining gender expansivity, the “male gaze” and women’s labor, the exhibit is part of a larger BAMPFA effort to bring together more than 100 arts organizations dedicated to social justice known as the Feminist Art Coalition. We’ll speak with the exhibit’s curator to discuss what it means to center feminism in 21st century art.

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Savala Nolan Recounts Trespass Against Black Womens’ Bodies in ‘Don’t Let it Get you Down’ Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

In her debut memoir, "Don’t Let it Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body," Savala Nolan’s 12 deeply personal essays probe unsettled territory in her own life. Nolan tackles motherhood, sex, and feelings of otherness from the perspective of a self-described big-bodied mixed-race woman. One essay recounts her persistent prenatal pain that was ignored by her white physicians despite multiple emergency room visits. The author and director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, joins us to share her observations about the way our culture treats Black women.

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Drought Felt By California Farmers, Who Fear Worst is Yet to Come Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

Nearly half of California is mired in exceptional drought, including vast swaths of the Central Valley, which produces roughly 40% of the nation's fruits, vegetables and nuts. Water shortages in the region are having profound effects on growers, who are uprooting crops, letting fields lie fallow and turning their lands into solar farms and other uses. We'll hear from farmers about how the drought is affecting their operations and the steps they're taking to mitigate the worst impacts.

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Remembering Michael Morgan, Groundbreaking Conductor of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

Michael Morgan, conductor of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra died last week at 63. Morgan was known as a virtuosic conductor and a passionate advocate for making classical music accessible to an Oakland community he was deeply invested in. He embraced a melding of musical genres, even bringing in comedian W. Kamau Bell and activist Dolores Huerta to curate playlists for his orchestra to perform. “Being a classical musician, being a conductor, being Black, being gay — all of these things put you on the outside,” Michael Morgan, said in 2013. “So you get accustomed to constructing your own world because there are not a lot of clear paths to follow and not a lot of people that are just like you.” We remember Michael Morgan with some of the musicians and performers he worked with.

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Citizen App Adds 24/7 Safety Experts, Raising Questions About Disaster Voyeurism, Vigilantism Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

The Citizen app, which, like Nextdoor, has been blamed for inciting vigilantism, recently launched a private service of on-call safety experts that users can contact 24/7 for help. Called “Protect,” this service monitors a user’s location, connecting them with a Citizen employee who can decide to bump the situation up to a 911 call. We’ll hear about the new frontier of safety apps and why critics say these crime and safety-reporting apps promote harassment, racial bias and over-surveillance.

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Ed Yong on ‘How the Pandemic Now Ends’ Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

“The ‘zero COVID’ dream of fully stamping out the virus is a fantasy,” writes the Atlantic’s Ed Yong in his most recent piece, “How the Pandemic Now Ends.” Yong, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on COVID-19, updates his seminal March 2020 article “How the Pandemic Will End” in wake of the delta variant. Vaccines alone will not end the pandemic, he writes — the pandemic will now never fully end, it will mutate into an endemic. But how long it takes for that to happen depends on mitigation efforts — many of which have been eschewed by state and local governments in an attempt to return to “normalcy.” He joins us to discuss this stage of the pandemic’s estimated impacts on hospitals and vulnerable populations as well as how we’ll reach the light at the end of the tunnel.

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Vaccines Have Decreased Efficacy Against Delta Variant, Still Reduce Infection Risk by 2/3, CDC Finds Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

The Centers for Disease Control published a study on Tuesday that found that while vaccine efficacy against the delta variant of covid-19 is moderately decreased, vaccines still lower infection risk for the SARS-CoV-2 virus by two-thirds. The study reported the efficacy of Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines against the virus dropped from about 90 percent to 66 percent once the delta variant became the dominant strain. This study comes one day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its full approval of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine on Monday. The announcement is expected to improve vaccination rates and push into effect private and public employer vaccine mandates, which had been contingent on FDA’s action. We’ll discuss the study and the effects of the first covid-19 vaccine FDA authorization and take your questions.

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Frustrated Napa Wine Growers Want More Fire Protection Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

After wildfires destroyed more than 30 wine properties in the last year alone, Napa County’s wine industry is asking for more firefighting resources and is even proposing that the county investigate forming its own fire department. Unlike other rural counties with few resources, Napa can afford additional firefighting helicopters and used fire trucks. We’ll hear how a community scarred by years of wildfire devastation wants to change how it fights wildfire and what that means for ensuring access to high-stakes emergency resources for all.

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Californians Reel From Yet Another Massive Fire Season Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

More than 42,000 California residents have been told to evacuate their homes as nine major wildfires continue to burn. More than one and a half million acres have burned this year, that’s more than burned this time last year, in what was a record breaking fire season. We’ll get an update on the fires and evacuations, and we’ll check in on the effectiveness of the state’s response.

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