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My Work
Your Call
I am Senior Producer and fill-in host of Your Call the live, daily call-in show on KALW 91.7 FM, Public Radio in San Francisco. I have produced hundreds of shows since 2004. I have been Senior Producer since 2006 and Fill-In host since 2007. Here are all the shows I have hosted, arranged chronologically:
Friday Media Roundtable: May 15, 2009
[05.15.09] A conversation with Mike Madden, Washington correspondent for Salon and Jonathan Steele, the roving Foreign Correspondent from the Guardian.
What Do You Need for Your Best Birth?
[05.14.09] What social supports do women and their partners need to make informed decisions about how to bring their babies into the world? A conversation with Abby Apstein, co-author of Your Best Birth, and San Francisco mid-wife Maria Iorillo.
Flat Broke in the Free Market
[05.11.09] A conversation with former Washington Post South Africa and South America Bureua Chief, John Jeter, author of Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People.
Friday Media Roundtable: June 6, 2008
[06.06.08] A conversation with Frank Russo of the California Progress Report, Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times and David Danelo, author of Blood Stripes: A Grunts Eye View of the War in Iraq and the upcoming book The Border: Exploring the US-Mexican Divide.
Robert Thurman, author of Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet and the World
[06.05.08] Talking with Robert Thurman about his vision for a resolution to China's occua[tion of Tibet.
Russell Banks, author of Dreaming Up
America
[06.03.08] Talking with Russell
Banks about his first non-fiction collection. Banks takes a novelists eye to colonial America to find the root of the dreams and obsessions that
bind us today. Do the aspirations in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution still call Americans to action?
Term Limits in the 2008 Election
[06-02-08] A conversation with David Latterman, Principle at Fall Line Analytics;
Thad Kousser, Professor of political science at UC San Diego; Jesse Taylor columnist for the Berkeley Daily Planet.
The Ethics, Economics and Aesthetics of Eating Fruit
[05-28-08] Adam Gollner, author of "The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession," and Dan Koeppel, author of "Bananas!: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World."
Forget Me Not
[05-14-08] Sue Halpern, author of Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From the Front Lines of Memory Research
Polling and Our Democracy
[01-28-08] How accurate are polls? How are they conducted,
who funds them and how accurate are they?
Friday Media Roundtable: May 30, 2008
[05-30-08] A conversation with John Nichols of the Nation magazine, Anna Badkhen
from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English about how the news of the week was covered.
Friday Media Roundtable: May 23, 2008
[05-23-08] A conversation with Clare Cummings, author of Uncertain Peril:
Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, Shmuel Rosner for Haaretz and Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle about how the news of the week was covered.
Indian Gaming Propositions
[01-29-08] A debate about the Indian Gaming Proposals that
would triple Southern California slots that was on
the February 2008 ballot.
What brings voters to the polls?
[01-21-08] What kind of elections and policies maximize voter turn-out, and what keeps voters at home? With Christine Pelosi, author , "Campaign Boot Camp" and Allen Raymond author of "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a
Republican Operative"
Whatever Happened to
Universal Healthcare in California?
[12-04-07] Why did health care reform stall in Sacramento in 2007? Who is fighting to get it moving again?
Sudan 101
[05-24-07] An introduction to Sudanese with Alex de Waal, fellow of
the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University and Scott Edwards from Amnesty International.
Gamer Theory- Video games, Fairness and History
[05-17-07] McKenzie Wark, author of "Gamer Theory"
I was producer and occasional reporter for Philoso?hy Talk, which airs on KALW, KUCR, Oregon Public Broadcasting, KSCL, KZSU and KRCC, among others.
The Root System is a blog I started about pre- and post-natal brain development. That's where I come in. The name comes from the obvious
parallels between dendrites and tree roots. Dendrology is the study of roots. Dendrites are the receiving side of synapses. The massive increase in synaptic
connections in the first two years of life is called arborization. But most importantly, the job of a parent is to root their child firmly in this earth and to other people. Those connections,
to place and people and culture, are re-woven by the brain in a fabric of axons and dendrites and synapses.
This is the biography of a hundred-thousand square feet. In the heart of San Francisco, where City Hall meets the
city's most important street, there is a plaza with no benches and a fountain with a fence around. How does this happen?
Why does a public space fail? Is it just the homeless and the drug addicts? Or is it something deeper? Something
hidden. Can good intentions and idealism become so removed from reality, they actually border on negligence? This is
the story of United Nations Plaza.
A documentary I made while a grad student at UC Berkeley School of Journalism. It first aired on Invisible Ink on KALW in San Francisco.
It was a finalist at the Third Coast Audio Festival
Competition. In early 2005 it was the Feature Documentary on Transom, the Peabody award winning showcase for
excellence in public radio. That was pretty awesome.
It is still available for download and broadcast on PRX. Since the premiere in May of 2004, it has aired on public radio stations
across the country including on WBEZ in Chicago, WFVU in New York City, WZBC in Boston, WBSR in Providence, and KFAI in Minneapolis/St.Paul.
Praise for 100,000 Square Feet
"Portraits are tough in radio, because you must take something inherently static and make it move. All
character, no action. A portrait of a place may be even tougher." - Jay Allison, Public Radio
Godfather
"Great subject and great piece."- Joe Richman, Producer Radio
Diaries
"Not the likeliest, nor the easiest of ideas, but it's brought off with quiet elegance,
even when folks are grabbing for food."-Robert Krulwich, "the man who simplifies without being
simple"
"A great piece of work. Sympathetic but not sentimental, clear-eyed without being cold. Terrific writing as
well."Jackson Braider, WGBH
"A bravura piece of urban reporting and political
thinking... This is truly great work." - Bill McKibben, author of Long Distance and The End of
Nature
The KALW News department runs a weekly news magazine and I have filed several reports and interviews with them. The latest interview, with
Richard Rayner, author of The Associates is not yet posted on their website. I am hounding them about it right now.
I have begun doing interviews for Mother Jones online. The first interview is here.
I spoke with the author of a piece about a Emmanuel Constant, the former head of a Haitian death squad.
PRI and WNYC's new morning show, The Takeaway in conjunction with WNYC, KPCC and KALW had live national coverage of the Super Duper Tuesday election.
I covered the Republicans in Northern California Republican Headquarters in San Jose.
While at Berkeley, I was in Lowell Bergman's Investigative Reporting Class. I had two assignments: chart the American Intelligence
system's organization chart before and after 9-11 and explain the
Material Support Statute that used to prosecute the Lackawanna Six. The results were used for a Frontline documentary and New York Times
story written by Lowell Bergman.
In September of 2005, I produced a piece for The World on PRI about
local band Charming Hostess for their album Sarajevo Blues. Sarajevo Blues is challenging and haunting music, a collaboration between
Charming Hostess and the Sarajevan poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic. The story explored the political and musical traditions that ChoHo
steeps in. It isn't on The World's site anymore, but you can listen here.
I made several pieces for B-Side, the brilliant side gig of Tamara Keith. Only one of them is available online, a story about a young Ballerino
about to dance the Nutcracker. Again. And again. And again...
Sadly
another piece I did about the heat of a Sahara summer, when it gets so hot you shiver and start to put clothes back on, is MIA.
The ballerino piece first aired was made for the Job Files, an occasionally series about how people make a living. I interviewed James Sofranco, then a young Ballerino in the
Corps of the San Francisco Ballet. The Nutcracker is both the biggest moneymaker for the ballet, and the worst nightmare of the dancers, who have usually
done it about a thousand times. This is James' story.
In the Summer of 2006, I was brought into the production of "Ferlinghetti: Open Eye,
Open Mind" which aired on KWQED. I helped direct the live call-in show and have continued working with Jim McKee, Erik Bauersfeld and Lawrence Ferlinghetti since, including the new spoken word opera tentatively
called the Waratorio. If you speak Finnish, here is a story about the Waratorio .
When Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe took over for a beloved and dingy diner, it looked like more gentrification in Emeryville, but the true story is much more interesting. Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe takes over for Eugene's was published in the Chrnicle in 2002.
My story California Jury Verdicts Keep on Climbing is a painstakingly researched round up of the largest jury awards in California from 2002. The story and the accompanying
chart were published in a special report over five pages of the paper. The story was chosen by the editors as story of the week.
I also completed The Recorder's annualPublic Defender Salary Survey. This is part I of II. I conducted a salary survey of all ten
Bay Area public defenders and district attorneys. This front page article including a salary comparison between counties, entry level public defenders and district attorneys,
and the salaries of
senior staff.
This is where I am putting work done at Berkeley that didn't fit into other categories. In 2002, I was assigned to the Care Not Cash campaign.
Here is one of the stories I wrote about the election. S.F. Votes on Competing Plans for Homeless
I wrote another story about the Sunrise ceremony held annually on Alcatraz. It was called Solemn Memories of a Protest 33 Years
Ago.
A few of the stories I wrote while at Berkeley were published in the Daily Californian including Ballot Measure to Decide Whether Waterfront Plans Sink or Swim. The fate of Berkeley's last stretch of privately owned waterfront land will be decided by the ballot.
I was a small enterprise development volunteer in Diourbel, Senegal from early 1997 to mid 1999. Senegal is in the Sahel, on the border of the Sahara.
Even eleven years ago it was possible to see the effect of climate change: less rain, fewer trees, more desert and more illness. My job was to find technological and cultural responses to the
challenges posed by climate change and poverty. Technological advances could be genetic, gadget or knowledge based - improved seeds, appropriate processing equipment, accounting systems for the illiterate. The cultural responses were often stories from other Senegalese people of nearby countries. Facts never convinced anyone to make a risky change, but a compelling
story opened up new possibilities.
I wrote "Selling Men" when I returned home.
I was research assistant for John Battelle for his book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
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