[caption id="attachment_268630" align="alignright" width="345"] Source: Army.mil[/caption]

On today's show, we talk to Representative John Garamendi, recently back from a trip to South Korea, and he wants to take Donald Trump’s finger off the nuclear trigger button, by ending the president’s authority to order a first strike. We’ll have him off to take your call. But first, David Neiwert joins us to go through the people and organizations behind the violence in Charlottesville – and the protests planned for Berkeley and San Francisco in less than two weeks.

[caption id="attachment_268424" align="alignright" width="307"] Source: Wikimedia Commons[/caption]

On today's show, we hear an eye-witness account of this weekends white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, VA. Reverend Traci Blackmon, was a counter-protester throughout the weekend, and she serves as the Executive Minister of Justice and Witness at The United Church of Christ.

Next, we discuss the Medicare buy-in bill with Congressmember Jared Huffman (representative of California's second district), who was one of the legislators who introduced  the “Medicare Buy-In and Healthcare Stabilization Act.” The legislation would allow people ages 50-64 to buy into Medicare with the aim of protecting them from inflated rates (since insurance companies typically consider them higher risk).

 

 

On today's show, Salima Hamirani talks to André Spicer about a new trend where companies microchip their employees, putting a small radio device under their skin. Then, David George Haskell joins us to talk about his new book The Song of Trees, in which he uses music of the forest to investigate the intimate networks that connect life on earth.

Guests

André Spicer, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University of London

David George Haskell, Professor of Biology, Sewanee: The University of the South

On today's show, hosts Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Cat Brooks talk about diversity at Google, and in tech more broadly – and take your calls.  Google is the midst of a blow-up over an internal memo circulated by one of its engineers suggesting the reason so few women work there might have something to do with how their brains work. Before that, we dive into a conversation with Mitch Jeserich about the ongoing North Korea situation and the FBI raid of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Guests

Y-Vonne Hutchinson,  co-founder of the advocacy group Project Include, and principal at the diversity solutions firm Ready Set.

 

Image: wocintech stock - 198 by flickr user WOCinTech Chat under CC BY 2.0 [1], resized

[1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

On today's show, hosts Cat Brooks and Brian Edwards-Tiekert discuss how ongoing healthcare turmoil in Congress and under the Trump administration are impacting California's insurance rates. Joining us is California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, who leads the California Department of Insurance and regulates the California insurance market – the nation's largest. Before that, we hear from the annual anti-nuclear protest at Livermore Lab on the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and on the eve of escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.

Guests:

Commissioner Dave Jones, Insurance Commissioner of California, whose office oversees the licensing and regulation of California's insurance companies and market, the largest in the nation under the ACA.

Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a watchdog group whose mission is the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

 Image: stethoscope by flickr user Rosmarie Voegtli, under CC BY 2.0, resized.

[caption id="attachment_268187" align="alignright" width="345"] Source: Inyarwanda[/caption]

On the first half of today's show, South African president Jacob Zuma faces a no-confidence vote. We discuss why, as well as the potential impacts on the country. Plus: the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea threatening retaliation against the United States over a new round of sanctions that was voted through unanimously at the UN Security Council.

Guests:

Walter Turner, host of Africa Today, which airs Mondays at 7:PM, and chair of the social sciences department at College of Marin

Christine Hong, UC Santa Cruz Associate Professor of Literature, executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute, and coordinating committee member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War

 

[caption id="attachment_267987" align="alignright" width="346"] Source: Flickr (Public Citizen)[/caption]

To kick off the week, Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Cat Brooks talk current events and what's happening in the world with Mitch Jeserich.

Then, a conversation with Joshua Holland (contributor to The Nation and Rolling Stone and the host of Politics and Reality Radio) about why transitioning to a single payer system could prove to be more difficult than expected.

Featuring "Polishing The Mirror" by Ram Dass on today's Up Front.

It's the last day of KPFA's Summer Fund Drive, please support KPFA so we can continue to showcase independent voices, who speak truth to power. Thank you!

You can get Ram Dass' Polishing The Mirror audiobook as a thank you gift for donating today and many more thank you gifts at:

https://secure.kpfa.org/support/ [1]

[1] https://secure.kpfa.org/support/

[caption id="attachment_267838" align="alignright" width="370"] Source: Vimeo[/caption]

On today's show, hosts Cat Brooks and Brian Edwards-Tiekert play segments from two of our fund drive premiums, which are available as thank-you gifts for supporting KPFA.

First, we hear clips from James Baldwin's revolutionary documentary, I Am Not Your Negro. The film covers the history of racism and the civil rights movement in the United States, and is based on Baldwin's unfinished personal account of the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Next, excerpts from Portraits of the Artist, a collection of actor, scholar, and activist Paul Robeson's films. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson became a movie star in Jim Crow America, and used his platform to advocate for the rights of the oppressed.

[caption id="attachment_267778" align="alignright" width="370"] Source: Impact Hub Oakland[/caption]

Host Brian Edwards-Tiekert kicks off the morning with a new talk from Paul Hawken, presenting his book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reduce Global Warming. Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur and activist, as well as the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, a non-profit dedicated to finding and researching the best technological, social, and ecological solutions to climate change.