The 7th Avenue Project

Luis Valdez--famed playwright and founder of El Teatro Campesino--and his son Kinan discuss Luis's play Mummifed Deer, being directed by Kinan at UC Santa Cruz. We talk about family secrets, forgotten wars, the perils of identity and the theater of "rascuachismo."

We explore the changing sound of radio documentaries (and changing ideas of realism)--from the work of Norman Corwin in the 1940s to This American Life and Radiolab today--with John Biewen of Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. He's the editor of "Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound," a book of essays by great radio producers.

Kumail Nanjiani's stand-up performances and one-man show (“Unpronounceable”) have earned him great reviews and a growing fan base. Pretty impressive, considering he took up comedy fairly recently, after immigrating to the US from Pakistan at 18. We talk about life and laughs in Pakistan and America, pushing back against South Asian stereotypes,learning American English from the movies, his creative work ethic (he tries to write new material every day) and more.

Marc Maron's hilarious, raw and often revelatory heart-to-hearts with fellow comedians such as Louie C.K., Carlos Mencia, Robin Williams, Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman and many others have made WTF one of the most listened-to podcasts on the web. In this interview Marc talks about the impact of WTF on his life, his sometimes uneasy relationships with other comics, his on-mic persona and the differences between conventional radio and the faster, looser world of podcasting.

They play, they sing and make lovely, original and uncategorizable music. The four women of the Real Vocal String Quartet combine classical backgrounds with influences from across the musical spectrum: pop, folk, jazz and international… In the first part of the program, RVSQ founder and violinist Irene Sazer and violist Dina Maccabee discuss the ensemble's distinctive sound and special chemistry as we listen to tracks from their recent CD. Then, Irene and Dina are joined by the group's other half, violinist Alisa Rose and cellist Jessica Ivry, to perform some new pieces they're working on.

Comedian and humor honcho Paul Provenza returns to the 7th Avenue Project to discuss the state of his art and his new Showtime series "The Green Room." It's a comedy round table in which comics mix it up in no-holds-barred conversation (and occasional head-butting).

A rebroadcast of a show we recorded at Christmastime a year ago, about a writing program for incarcerated youths called "The Beat Within." We talked to kids in Santa Cruz Juvenile Hall who participate in the program, and to Beat Within workshop leaders Jill Wolfson and Dennis Morton.

Comedian and author Amy Sedaris stopped by to show off her latest book of demented domesticity, "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People." Plus an excerpt from our Christmas 2005 interview with filmmaker John Waters.

Cal Tech theoretical physicist and Cosmic Variance blogger Sean Carroll considers various ideas of time, including Newton's, Einstein's and Sean's own pet theory (think bubbles and baby universes). We also talk a lot about entropy—the basis of time's arrow, Sean explains—and perforce about eggs.

San Diego's “Frozen Zoo” is one of the world's largest collections of living animal tissue, collected from hundreds of species for research, conservation and even cloning. We talked to geneticist Oliver Ryder, one of the scientists who manage the Frozen Zoo. Also, a conversation with David Haussler, coordinator of the Genome 10K Project, which is using samples from the Frozen Zoo and other sources to map the genomes of 10,000 species.