The 38

Links to Out of Trouble and my new website nikharter.com and my new Instagram for the Pod. New episodes up every Thursday! 

Big things to come, stay tuned! Please rate and review if you have a second too, it's super appreciated. Thank you! 

Other Resources:

Movement for Black Lives is a leading organization nationally.

Wikipedia page about Defunding the Police. 

I hit the streets for a "protest" in Oakland. 

This is actually an episode I made for my new podcast, Out of Trouble, which is yet to be released. I'll be making an announcement on this feed when it is. So the style of this episode is going to be a little different than what I've done previously for The 38. 

I hope this finds you well and helps you process as it helped me. 

[email protected]

Email: [email protected]

I got into this crazy fucking situation when I was trying to score an interview with this wacko, right, and he makes it a condition of the interview that I join him for a dice game. That's how I end up hanging out with a group of drug dealers and miscreants at a gay bar in the Castro at 10 in the morning on a Wednesday. I show up not really knowing what to expect, and quickly realize my friend (the wacko) Gary has more or less set this whole thing up to put his seedy dice friends on display for me. It's a queerly deranged sitcom and Gary intends to be the star, until The Cocaine Hurricane steals the show. Gary knows the microphone will draw a performance out of all of them, and in fact, I believe that’s the point of my being there. They tell jokes, go on rants, and share the most personal details of their life, while I muse on the power a microphone has to draw people out.

So I spend three hours playing dice with a megalomaniacal hobo, a drug-addled über drivers and computer programmers, a skinhead, and straight-up drug dealers. We play dice and I’m amazed at how the microphone seems to cause a change in all of them. The booze and whatever substances they’re coming off of only exacerbate the effect I know that microphones already have (they help people be vulnerable). I leave carrying this guy Dan’s whole fucking life story on my recorder. Gary actually waits until afterward to inform me that they were all drug dealers and users and liars (especially Dan according to Gary). So I just held onto the for months, because... wtf do I do with it? Is any of it even real? Well…thank you corona, now you get to decide for yourself. 

Btw, if you ever want someone to tell you their deepest darkest secrets— maybe it’s someone close to you, and it’s something you’ve wanted to know for a while— pull out a recorder and have a couple of drinks. Tell them why you're interested. See what happens. Hell, they might even perform for you! This story is about the power of a microphone. 

Chill Vibes. Beauty. Art. Glorious Distraction.

Venmo: @Nik-Harter

Email: [email protected]

Dana Galloway reconnects folks with their deceased and estranged loved ones via findagrave.com. On this episode, I accompany her to Cypress Lawn Cemetery on one of her Find a Grave missions, just south of San Francisco. We tour the cemetery while discussing death, burial rituals, and bay area history. Dana shares how she became a grave hunter after someone found a lost family member for her. 

The music for this episode was done by Golden Living Room. Check him out on Spotify, or find him here on Bandcamp. 

If you're interested in pauper's graves, cemeteries, taphophilia, ancestry, or alternative burial ideas-- beware. Not only will these topics be covered in this episode as we explore the bay area's Necropolis, Colma C.A., but Dana and I will also have serious (and sometimes humorous) discussions about death. What does it mean to die, for yourself, and the people in your life? How does life change after the first time someone close to you passes? Have you thought about how you'd like to buried? Have you ever felt the urge to visit a grave?

This episode is not for the faint of heart. But if you do choose to journey with me deep into the bowls of the mausoleum, you'll come away with a sense of peace and wonder. That's what it means to visit a cemetery. That's what it means to find a grave. 

In the “College Dropout” series we examined why the dropout rate stands at 47%, and how becoming educated is related to becoming an adult. But what if you’re already an “adult” when you go to college? In this episode we answer the question: are you behind in life if you go back to school in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond? How can we can think about going back to school when you’re older in a way that’s not so discouraging?

I’ll be presenting a series of interrelated interviews with some Adult Learners I met at the City College of San Francisco, along with an interview I conducted with the chancellor of C.C.S.F., Mark Rocha.

Chancellor Rocha was an Adult Learner himself; a lifelong english teacher, he went back to school at 55 to get an engineering degree. Chancellor Rocha has some wise words (or not) for one of our Adult Learners, Max, who’s feeling a little “behind the 8-ball” being on a campus with so many angsty young adults.

Music by Eli Siegel 

One out of every two students who attend Community College drop out. Only 1 in 5 will get their degree in four years. Why?

I’m Nikolas Harter, and in this three part series produced out of the KCSF studios at the City College of San Francisco, I interview students and administrators, and break down statistics to come to some surprising conclusions about our flawed system of higher education.

If you don’t know what career you want to pursue, is going straight to college after high school really the best option? How is acquiring an education connected to success, happiness, and becoming an adult? These days, is our system of higher education even capable of raising the financial well-being of its students, or does it perpetuate society’s inequities? 

In Part 1, I approach this question of why 47% of students drop out of school by breaking down the data. Did you know “work responsibilities” is the number one reason students report for dropping out of school? It’s ironic, because “financial struggle” is the number one reason students go to college in the first place! We’ll meet a couple CCSF community members, and put some faces to the data.

Music by Sam Vanderlist and Cory Foss

In Part 2, I explore the personal reasons for why a student might drop out with “F-Everything” Paul Lopez. Paul dropped out of school when he was 18. Back then, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he left school and moved up to the bay with his sister to get a full time job. Now he’s back, returning to school at C.C.S.F. at 22 years old. I told him about the high drop out rate at Community Colleges, and he told me he feels like a number. 

We’ll also meet the students from S.M.A.C. (students making a change), a student group on campus advocating for the rights of the school’s minority populations (and everyone else’s too). 80% of C.C. students in California are placed into remedial classes, and S.M.A.C. is not happy about it. It’s not just personal, or existential reasons for why so many students are dropping out. The system itself discourages students by preventing them from taking college level courses until they repeat High School Math and English. No wonder it takes most students (four out of five) more than four years to graduate. 

Thankfully, the C.C.S.F. administration has been made aware of the problem (thank you S.M.A.C.), and is implementing new systems, such as Guided Pathways, to channel students through college in a more efficient manner.

Music by Sam Vanderlist

In Part 3, I’ll share about my personal college experience, and square off with current C.C.S.F. student Brandon Powell. Is attending college about pursuing your dreams? Or making ends meet? Brandon shares some cockroach stories, and we debate what school and life is all about. 

Why should we value public schools? What’s the purpose of education, and how is becoming educated connected to success, happiness, and becoming an adult? All this and more on the final segment of College Dropout.

I’m Nikolas Harter for KCSF.

Music by Sam Vanderlist

This is a non-narrated episode, with no formal introduction or outro. Please rate/review!

Moldavia says she has "nine bloods in her." A black bigot who believes in radical multi-culturalism, supports Drumpf, and runs a 'foundation' which works to inspire Americans to learn more languages and cultures, Moldavia herself can say something in over 3,000 languages.

I unpack my encounter with her, which I am calling "the most frustrating interview I've ever conducted" with a friend of mine, Stephen Williams. Stephen tells me a little bit about his experience growing up in the USA as an African American and raising two mixed-race sons. We discuss how to help people 

Check out Moldavia's foundation, SAPAWLAC's Youtube page here.