Communities across the Bay Area, including Gilroy, Oakley and Pittsburg, are pushing back on new data centers in their cities. Data centers, which house the computing equipment and servers that power the internet, have been around for decades, but opposition to them has exploded as tech companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into building thousands of new centers nationwide. Residents worry the facilities will suck up scarce water and electricity and pollute the environment to power the riches of AI investors. We’ll talk about the data center boom and how it’s playing out in the Bay Area.

Guests:

Molly Taft, senior climate reporter, WIRED

Jonathan Koomey, researcher and scientist, Koomey Analytics; author, "Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs"

Hema Sivanandam, East Contra Costa reporter, Bay Area News Group

Britt Smith, Gilroy resident; activist and co-founder, Stop Gilroy Data Center

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Historian Ibram X. Kendi says that in order to understand the rise of authoritarianism, we need to understand great replacement theory. It’s the racist idea that “powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures and electoral power and freedoms of white people,” Kendi writes in his new book, “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.” We talk to the National Book Award-winning author about how politicians are using great replacement theory to justify authoritarian power and how it has moved from the fringes to the mainstream.

Guests:

Ibram X. Kendi, professor of history, Howard University and founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study; author, "Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age"; his previous books include "How to Be an Antiracist" and "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America."

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New Yorker magazine poetry editor Kevin Young has called poetry "the most efficient mode of time travel." In his new volume of poems "Night Watch,” Young, a literary hyphenate who edits, writes and teaches, takes readers on a journey of loss and re-emergence. From his cycle of poems about a conjoined pair of twins born into slavery and kidnapped to a carnival freak show to his meditations on grief set to the phases of the moon, Young’s spare and incisive language provides the reader passage through history and memory. On this Juneteenth holiday we listen back on our conversation with Young about his collection and what it means to be a poet today.

Guests:

Kevin Young, poet and author; Young's latest poetry collection is "Night Watch"; Young has been the poetry editor for the New Yorker since 2017 and from 2021 to 2025 served as the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Ultra-endurance athlete Catherine Breed has accomplished many physical feats — including a record-breaking swim across Lake Tahoe—but her latest challenge may be her most audacious. Beginning in July, she’ll spend several months swimming the entire coastline of California. The 900-mile journey will begin at the top of California, and Breed will swim to the California-Mexico border. She joins us to talk about how she’s preparing to avoid sharks and fatigue to conquer the currents of the Pacific Ocean.

Guests:

Catherine Breed, ultra-endurance athlete and swimmer; president and founder, Sea Dreamers

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Journalist Jonathan Weber has had a front row seat to San Francisco’s many rises and falls as the nation’s tech capital since the early 1990s. His new book, “City on the Edge” offers a sweeping history of the tech industry in San Francisco, chronicling its unprecedented successes as well as its devastating consequences. Drawing on 200 interviews with mayors, CEOs, political leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, and artists, Weber tells the story of a war waged for the heart of San Francisco that has had an impact far beyond the city’s famed Golden Gates.

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We tend to focus on how climate change affects coral reefs, sea turtles and polar bears on melting ice. But we rarely focus on how climate change is affecting microbes — the bacteria, fungi and viruses we can only see with microscopes — which outnumber all other life on earth. So says science writer Shayla Love, who warns that a warming planet might be making those microorganisms mutate in a concerning and even deadly way. And that melting ice may even unleash new, unfamiliar microbes. We talk with Love about her New Yorker article, “Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes.”

Guests:

Shayla Love, science writer; her recent New Yorker article is “Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes”

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Cigarettes are cool again…especially with GenZ. Despite decades of anti-smoking campaigns, you’re likely to see more young people smoking in films, at bars, on street corners, and in social media feeds. Researchers tie the trend to Y2K nostalgia, soft nihilism, and a turn away from “clean girl” wellness culture. Actual youth smoking rates are still at historic lows, but we’ll explore how glamorization complicates the public health conversation around nicotine.

Guests:

Pamela Ling, professor of medicine, UCSF; Ling studies the tobacco industry marketing strategies targeting young adults, women and other high risk populations

Kevin Truong, business editor, The San Francisco Standard; Truong co-wrote the piece "They Know It Kills You. Gen Z is Smoking Cigarettes Anyway"

Degen Pener, journalist; Pener wrote the piece "Cigarettes Get a Sequel: Hollywood's 'Cool' Habit Is Back"

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It’s no longer news that Hollywood studios are using artificial intelligence in editing, animation, visual effects and more. But last week “Dreams of Violets,” a new film about protests in Iran, became the first fully AI-generated live-action feature to screen at Tribeca and is a project that journalist Steven Zeitchik says the industry is watching nervously. We talk about the rapidly growing use of A.I. in filmmaking and the impacts that’s having on audiences, industry professionals and an artform built on human storytelling.

Guests:

Steven Zeitchik, senior editor for technology and politics, Hollywood Reporter; author, "Mind and Iron," a humanist newsletter about our AI future

Peter Murrieta, executive producer, showrunner and writer; secretary-treasurer, Writers Guild of America West

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Oakland filmmaker, rapper and activist Boots Riley’s new film ‘I Love Boosters’ is a surreal crime comedy that follows three women who shoplift clothes to make ends meet. Like all of his work, there’s radical pro-worker politics, indictments of industry, and funk-filled absurdism. We’ll talk to Riley about his distinctive storytelling and how it centers his hometown.

Guests:

Boots Riley, writer and director, "I Love Boosters;" his previous films include "Sorry to Bother You"

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After decades of decline, many church leaders believe that religious life is on the upswing as some younger Americans flock to Christianity — including Vice President JD Vance, whose new book on his Catholic conversion drops this week. But the fuller picture is more complicated. Coming up, we’ll talk to religion reporters and a church leader about what may be driving this shift, and what its lasting impacts could be.

Guests:

Michael O'Loughlin, executive editor, National Catholic Reporter; O'Loughlin has covered the Catholic church for both the Boston Globe and Crux; author, "Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear"

Lauren Jackson, deputy editorial director for newsletters and the host of “Believing," The New York Times

Ryan Burge, professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center, Washington University; author, “Graphs about Religion”

Danté Stewart, author, “Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle;” an ordained minister at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga.

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