The Nato Sessions

My guest is Tom Ammiano, California State Assemblyman from San Francisco, former President of the Board of Supervisors, protégé of Harvey Milk, champion of all progressive causes, and one of the first out gay comedians in San Francisco. Nowadays, a lot of people don’t know about Tom’s comedy days, but in today’s episode he talked about blazing trails, names names of the closet-cases of comedy and the homophobic bookers, and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Today’s episode is another round-table, with Kevine Boggess of Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth, Ken Tray of United Educators of San Francisco, and educator and comedian Micia Mosley. Are schools a way to create social equity or a way to crush children’s spirits? Why can’t we just have good schools for kids?

This episode, Nato talks to Aaron Davidman, whose one-man show “Wrestling Jerusalem,” about to close in San Francisco and begin a national tour, deals with Israel and Palestine in all its complexity. They talk about using art to unstick imagination and allow us to contain contradictory feelings. Also bonus standup clips from the vault.

Nato’s guest is comedian (and writer and director and TED talker) Negin Farsad from the tour documentary “The Muslims Are Coming” out now on Netflix. We talk about life as an Iranian-American feminist from Palm Springs with two master’s degrees, why people hate her, and stumbling into standup.

Vanessa Veselka is known for writing the novel Zazen and the “Best American Essay” “Truck-Stop Killer,” but she also has stories about growing up in 30 Rock, organizing unions, guitar, working on ships, and being a teenage runaway hitchhiker who escaped from a serial killer. She calls bullshit on memoir and Vanessa and Nato reveal the untold story of Nato’s abortive standup performance at Occupy San Francisco.

On The Nato Sessions we talk to comedian and comedy writer Guy Branum (of Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell & Chelsea Lately) about the impossible labyrinth of growing up a gay, Jewish, redneck Arkie almond farmer in rural California. We discuss working as a comedy writer while maintaining your own voice as a standup, and hash out our disagreements on boycotts, clickbait, outrage, and building the movement of gays where they go to find dick.

These days in San Francisco, gentrification is hotter than a gelato/massage food truck. We’ve got soaring housing costs. Mass evictions. Venerable businesses disappearing. Imperious techno-snobs. Google bus blockades. It’s scary and hard to understand what’s really behind it or what to do about it. Nato gets to the bottom of it ONCE AND FOR ALL with help from activists and thinkers Fernando Marti, Chris Carlsson, and Alicia Garza.

The Nato Sessions revisits the thrash-funk music scene in the Bay Area in the early nineties. Nato asks House of the Limbomaniacs, Damion Gallegos of Fungo Mungo, and Damon Wood of Smoking Section about the rise and file of the madcap live music community that most famously created Primus and Mr. Bungle. We learn about shit-and-dick-based songs, a new kind of toga party, and how important cheap rent is to musical innovation.

Whip out that tallis because on The Nato Sessions today it's all about Judaism, Jewish identity and the Torah with Rabbi David Kasher and writers Ben Greenman (The New Yorker) and Caitlin Roper (Wired). Ben and Caitlin contributed to the new book “Unscrolled: 54 Writers & Artists Wrestle with the Torah” as part of the Reboot network. We argue. A lot. Passionately, which I guess is the point.

In this episode, Nato has a great talk with Canadian Jew Kenny Hotz, best known from Kenny vs Spenny on Comedy Central. They ask the big questions like what is morality? Why is the real always funnier than the fake? Can Kenny make radical Muslims think Jews are ok?