The 7th Avenue Project

It's not just organisms that compete in nature—molecules do, too. Sofie Salama and colleagues have been exploring an age-old tug-of-war inside our genome, between genes that spread like kudzu and others that perform a kind of weed control. The conflict between jumping genes (aka transposons), and repressors may have a biological payoff, contributing new regulatory elements that drive organismal complexity and new evolutionary possibilities.

Tillie Olsen didn't publish much, but her work has had an outsize impact. Her stories were instant classics and part of the great democratization of 20th-century American lit. The fact that they were painstakingly written while working menial jobs, raising four kids and campaigning tirelessly for human rights added to her legend. With the recent publication of some of her previously out-of-print works, I talked with teacher/writer Julie Olsen Edwards and poet/teacher Rebekah Edwards – Tillie's daughter and granddaughter, respectively – about her life, writing and legacy.

When we last spoke to Maria Bamford in 2008, she was still flying a little under the mainstream radar. In recent years she's broken through, and success couldn't happen to a nicer, funnier person. Maria's especially well-known and lauded for her hilarious-yet-sympathetic depictions of her own dysfunctional family and struggles with depression, unwanted thought syndrome and other DSM-listed conditions. This time we talked about the latest chapter of her career, comedic solutions for world problems, joke-theft, heckler-handling, pug-herding, love, relationships and meds.

Jonathon Keats is still searching for the perfect job title. In the meantime he's making do with “experimental philosopher,” though he's also been called a conceptual artist and a poet of ideas. His chosen form is the Gedankenexperiment, brought to life and acted out. In his decade-plus career he has “genetically engineered God,” made porn movies for plants, built a church to science and hustled extra-dimensional real estate. His latest venture: a consulting firm that trains bacteria for careers in corporate management. Microbial Associates has its public launch event at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco on October 21st. Funny yes, but it's not all a big joke. For all the funning there's a serious intent at the heart of Jonathon's antics. By taking ideas to unreal extremes, Jonathon aims to explore the very real implications of our beliefs.

Abigail Washburn always considered singing and songwriting a sideline and never thought she could make a career of it. But a sharp-eared music exec knew better. After overhearing her play at a bluegrass convention, he signed her on the spot to a Nashville record deal. She set aside her plans to become a lawyer in China, took up music full time, turned out a series of highly regarded albums and began a musical partnership with banjo master Béla Fleck. Then came love, marriage, baby carriage – and now their first duo album. Abby and I talked about her highly empathetic approach to song, the evolution of her voice, how a suburban Midwestern girl became a countrified tunesmith and how she and Béla learned to blend their two very different banjo styles and sensibilities.

As Ira Glass was getting ready to perform Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host in our area as part of his cousin Philip Glass's Days and Nights Festival, I grabbed the opportunity to chat with him. We talked about Three Acts, a movement-and-storytelling piece he created with dancers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass. Willy-nilly the conversation turned to Ira's radio career, the version of himself he plays on air and the benefits of keeping some things close to the vest.

I included parts of this interview on the radio show, but this online version is the first time it's been available uncut. Brian was coming to Philip Glass's Days and Nights Festival to present and narrate the film adaptation of his relativistic physics fable, Icarus at the Edge of Time. We talked about the principles the story conveys, especially the way gravity stretches time, and about his collaboration with Philip Glass, who composed the film's score. Also, a bit on Brian's passion for physics education, teaching free online courses at World Science U and grappling – literally – with fellow celebrity physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Julia Reynolds never planned on becoming an expert on gang violence. But as a reporter covering towns like Salinas, CA, she found the carnage hard to ignore, and she wondered why so many young men were keen for a career that often ends in an early grave or a prison cell. After a decade of getting to know gang members, their families and anti-gang law enforcement officials, she's produced a vivid portrait of life and death in one of California's most notorious crime organizations. Drawing on her own first-hand reporting as well as police surveillance tapes and court discovery documents, her new book "Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang" has a novelistic, you-are-there immediacy while remaining resolutely factual.

You wouldn't know it from watching CSI, but forensic science may not be so scientific after all. In recent years the use of DNA evidence has exposed just how badly traditional crime lab techniques can fail, helping to convict the innocent while the guilty go free. Jim Dwyer, Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter and columnist for the New York Times, has been covering wrongful convictions and DNA-based exonerations for years. He and I talked about the many ways conventional forensics can go wrong, as described and demonstrated in his recent eBook "False Conviction: Innocence, Guilt and Science."

Writer Max Brooks discusses his graphic novel “The Harlem Hellfighters,” about a historic African-American regiment in WWI, as well as his best-selling zombie fiction, his life and career.