Leslie LaPage called in to KUCI 88.9fm to talk about the La Femme Film Festival and more!

If you missed Leslie LaPage on today's show, listen to our conversation here!


For the past fifteen years Leslie La Page has produced, directed and line produced for Film, TV, Music Videos, commercials and Theatrical productions.

Ms. La Page has produced features nationally and internationally in both the independent and commercial markets.

Ms. La Page has over eight years of production background in independent films, and has served as producer, line producer and film production coordinator on numerous independent feature films for independent production companies as well as Black Entertainment Television Action Pay Per View (BET). While at BET she line produced their entire slate of original programs which aired on their network and received international and domestic video releases. She line produced commercials and promos for the HBO, Lifetime TV and BET, MTV and Nickelodeon.

Her production experience also involves her in the areas of marketing, developing scripts, creating promotional copy as well as promotional feature spots and trailers.

In 1997 Ms. La Page ran and operated TIGER’S EYE SOUND a dialogue editorial company, with her partner Bruce Murphy, editing and working with numerous awarding winning dialogue editors and editing over 20 independent feature films in the company’s first year. Ms. La Page and TIGER’S EYE SOUND dialogue edited such critically acclaimed films as: 1998 Academy Awards Nominee, Best Foreign Film – “Four Days in September”; 1998 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for “Smoke Signals”; and the film “Dead Man’s Curve” was a Sundance Film Festival Invitee.

In 2003, her Partner Saul Stein, Co-Executive Producer of “The Holy Land” has formed BooYah! Films and have released through Cavu Pictures the critically acclaimed film “The Holy Land”, which opened domestically in July at the Angelica Theatre in New York City and will be rolling out to 45 cities across the nation. She still has her production company Infinity Films which is involved in feature film, music video, and commercial productions.

Ms. La Page also consults independent filmmakers for feature films, script analysis, budgets, independent marketing, and film festivals and currently teaches at the New York Film Academy as an adjunct professor.

She has been a Slamdance Film Festival Programmer for over five years and was the creator and Executive Producer for the Slamdance Filmmaker’s Bootcamp. For the last two years Ms. LaPage holds the position of Director of Programming for the New Orleans Media Experience Film Festival (NOME 2003) occurring in Louisiana October 26- November 1st. Ms. LaPage holding the position of Director of Programming platformed over 65 short films (live action and animation), 10 features, and 5 documentaries. Five out of the ten features platformed at NOME 2003 went on to have theatrical distribution: Show Boy, Nursie, Hungry Hearts, Dog Walker and Flavors.

Ms. La Page holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre, Bachelor of Administration in Marketing, Accounting and a Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts.

Alex Azmi called in to KUCI 88.9fm to talk about “To Climb a Gold Mountain,” an inspiring documentary about the Chinese immigrant experience in early California.

DOCUMENTARY “TO CLIMB A GOLD MOUNTAIN”
SCREENED AT THE LA FEMME INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

WATCH THE TRAILER:
https://vimeo.com/108225231

If you missed Alex Azmi on today's show, listen to our conversation here.

“To Climb a Gold Mountain,” an inspiring documentary about
the Chinese immigrant experience in early California, screened as part of the LA Femme
InterCHINESE national Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 22. 

Directed by Alex Azmi and Rebecca Hu, written by David Fulmer, music composed by Ilsik
Byun and executive produced by Alex Azmi and Raymond Bell, "To Climb a Gold Mountain"
traces the lives of four women of Asian descent who lived in America from the 1850s to the present
day. The women came from different backgrounds and lived dramatically different lives. Each
woman’s story represents a distinct theme of struggle and triumph, and ushers in the succeeding story
leading up to the present time. The film relates both the tragic and the triumphant, and traces the
lives of these heroines that made the Chinese American community in California what it is
today.

The screening will be at Laemmle’s Music Hall Theatre, Venue 2, 9036 Wilshire Blvd on,
Saturday Oct. 22 at Noon, in Beverly Hills. Tickets are available online at
www.lafemme.org/festival.


ABOUT THE FILM
‘To Climb a Gold Mountain’ tells the stories of four women of Asian descent who lived in America from the 1850s to the present day. The women came from different backgrounds and lived dramatically different lives. Some of the women featured in the film, such as Anna May Wong, have reached success and fame. Still others, like Sing Ye, who lived in the 1800s and fought for freedom, are all but forgotten.

Each woman’s story represents a distinct theme of struggle and triumph, and ushers in the succeeding story leading up to the present time. Through these stories, the film tracks the progression, evolution and legacy of the immigrants in America as they integrate into the fabric of America.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Alex Azmi is a filmmaker with interest in documentaries that deals with social and cultural issues. Alex’s is currently involved in several projects including short films and other feature-length documentaries. The current active documentary is Man and Machine, which is about the impact of technology on humans.


And here are the links to the film and trailers:
Website: www.GoldMountainMovie.com
Teaser: https://vimeo.com/159199205
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/159201537

Michael Matteo Rossi joins me at 9:15am PST to talk about his powerful show VENGEANCE!

A Los Angeles native, Michael is no stranger to the film industry. In his early teens, Michael acted in stage plays, but it was his last year of High School when he realized he wanted to shift towards writing and directing. In his sophomore year at San Diego State, Michael decided to round up a talented and hungry group of actors and crew and make his first short film. It was a success and screened at the L.A. Shorts Fest. Michael felt it was his calling with the great reception the film got and how impressed people were at his age.

During the years to come, Michael directed and wrote several other short films, including The Last Wish, which screened at a number of festivals in the United States and received several awards, including the Sierra Nevada Award at the 2012 Mountain Film Awards. After making a few other short films that ran a great festival circuit, Michael realized it was time for him to direct and produce his first feature film. Right when he turned 26, he directed "Misogynist" where he won "Best Narrative Feature" at the LA underground film festival and “Best Director” at the IndieFest Awards.

The film was soon after picked up by Midnight releasing, one of the leading distributors of independent cult, thriller and horror films, for worldwide distribution and was released early 2015. Later that year, Michael completed his most recent feature, “Sable”, which is in the process of being signed by a distributor.

9:00am PST Monday, tune-in to KUCI 88.9fm and hear Sister Judy Bisignano, a Dominican nun, talk about her documentary “Sister Jaguar’s Journey."

If you missed Sister Jaguar on today's show, listen here.

“SISTER JAGUAR’S JOURNEY”, a documentary film about a nun who travels to Ecuador’s rainforest, takes part in a ayahuasca plant medicine ceremony, and finds God, was screened this past SUnday, 10/23 at the LSA Femme International Film Festival.

“Sister Jaguar’s Journey” tells the story of Sister Judy Bisignano, a Dominican nun, who spent sixty-eight years looking for God in all the wrong places. A lifetime of prayer and public service as a fierce and renowned educator failed to bring her the peace and divine connection she had always sought.

Over the years she started several unique and very successful alternative schools in Tucson, Arizona. Yet, after the Cesar Chavez Learning Community, a school in the Mexican-American community, closed she was forced to confront the devastating effects of her lifelong anger about her life, her work, and those around her.

Divine intervention comes in the form of Sandra Morse, a friend and professional communication philosopher, who invites Sister Judy to visit the Achuar community in the Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest; this trip forever changes Sister Judy’s life, launching her onto a path toward reconciliation with her turbulent, abusive, and angry past. There she eventually found the peace and forgiveness she sought through native plant medicine of the gentle Achuar people.

They encouraged her to turn to “Pachamama” - Earth Mother - and participate in the Achuar ayahuasca plant medicine ceremony to heal her soul. Her decision to take part in the ceremony was a pivotal moment for her, and offered a new beginning. Yes, a Dominican nun drinking ayahuasca - and it changed everything.

There on the banks of the Pastaza River with the Achuar, she found her true self. While sitting alone in a canoe along the river bank, she and two Achuar guides witnessed a black jaguar devour a white bird. According to the Achuar shaman, seeing a black jaguar in the Amazon jungle is a good omen, one that empowered Sister Judy to experience a series of cultural, environmental and spiritual shifts that ultimately transformed her life. It also gave her the nickname ““Hermana Otorango” or “Sister Jaguar”.

The film was directed and produced by Sande Zeig, written and edited by Melody London, and executive produced by Sandra Morse, the 20 minute documentary stars Sister Judy Bisignano and was shot on location in both the US and Ecuador. Since its initial release, the documentary has been an Official Selection on the festival circuit including the Illuminate Festival in Sedona, the Arizona International Film Festival, the Bisbee Film Festival, and the Female Eye Film Festival, in addition to the LaFemme International Film Festival.

There is an accompanying book with the same title written by Sister Judy and Sandra Morse; Sister Judy also does book signings around the country, and publishes a blog on her website http://www.sisterjaguarsjourney.com.

UCI Libraries to Host Second UCI Zinefest in Partnership with UCI Illuminations, Cross Cultural Center and LGBT Resource Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Irvine, California, October 19, 2016 – The University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries will host its second Zinefest, during International Open Access Week October 26, 2016 on the Orange County campus. In partnership with UCI Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts and Culture Initiative, Cross-Cultural Center and LGBT Resource Center, the Zinefest will encourage students, faculty, staff and community members to engage in creative expression through magazine making.

During the event, from noon to 4 p.m., Orange County zinester duo, ZebraPizza will be on-site to help guests create zines. Completed zines can be contributed to the UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives or kept for personal use. “Irvine is a college/business town that could really use some more zine flavor. As a former KUCI DJ (#DJZibaZ 2000-13) I see a real need to document music and student culture,” states Ziba of ZebraPizza Zine.

Special presentations will also be given by Emilee Mathews, Research Librarian for Visual Arts and Jeanne Scheper, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies. “I love to use Zine and “DIY” [do-it-yourself] practices in the classroom - students are savvy consumers in our image-driven ‘society of the spectacle,’ but zine-making allows them to also be inventive cultural critics. They make their own images and project new ideas into a world they invent — one that is often driven by social justice, community-building, and the playful imagination of possibility, and not just profit,” says Professor Scheper.

Additionally, library curators will highlight zines from the growing collection in Special Collection and Archives. This display will include newly created zines donated to the UCI Libraries from the annual Orange County Zinefest held this past August in Santa Ana, California.

A zine is defined as a small circulation of self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images usually reproduced via photocopier. The primary intent of publication is usually not for profit and instead serves as a communication vehicle for various subcultures or social justice movements, which draw inspiration from a "do-it-yourself" philosophy.



About UCI Libraries:

As one of the founding academic units on campus, the UCI Libraries connect users—faculty, researchers, scholars, students, staff or community members—to information resources, facilitating the creation, preservation, and sharing of knowledge in all disciplines. The Libraries support the research needs of UCI and the community through the Libraries’ website and at four library facilities: the Jack Langson Library, the Francisco J. Ayala Science Library, and the Libraries Gateway Study Center on the UCI campus, and the Forest J. Grunigen Medical Library in Orange. For more information on the UCI Libraries, visit http://www.lib.uci.edu/





About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

BRIANA GALLO’S SHORT DOCUMENTARY “THE BEE KEEPER” TO PREMIERE AT 12TH ANNUAL LA FEMME INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OCT. 21

Good buzz generated for this new documentary about the curative power of bees


BEVERLY HILLS, OCT 4 2016 -- “The BEE KEEPER”, a documentary short film by director Briana Gallo, will make its festival debut as part of the 12th Annual LA Femme International Film Festival in Beverly Hills on Friday, October 21, 2016.

“The BEE KEEPER” tells the story of Ed “Doc” Ziegler, a retired dentist living in a small town in New England. 35 years ago, he discovered apitherapy - the power of bees to heal - both physically and mentally. He now devotes his life to beekeeping and shares the curative powers of bee venom with his community. His neighbors and friends recount their own recovery stories and loving thoughts about this kind and humble man who, at the age of 97, is still tending to the needs of his ‘patients.’

First time filmmaker Briana Gallo is a fine art photographer and philanthropist. She believes in the power of photography to inspire hope and understanding, and to connect people around the world, as well as in our local communities. She has travelled to places like Honduras and Ethiopia, using her photography to support non-profits working to improve local lives. Briana uses her photography to open doors around the world, pull viewers outside their comfort zones, elicit tears and smiles, and make people say "I never knew."

The 13 minute documentary will be shown on Fri. Oct. 21 at the Laemmle’s Music Hall Theater, Venue 2 at 10 am. The theater is located at 9036 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills.

The film can only be seen as part of the festival, however tickets to the Festival include all screenings and can be purchased online at www.lafemme.org/festival.

For more information on the film or to schedule an interview with Briana Gallo, please contact Deborah Gilels, LA Media Consultants at 818- email to ddgilels@prodigy.net.

Featured Writer-Director Cevin Soling and his highly anticipated documentary, The Gilligan Manifesto at 9:30am PST today!

“THE GILLIGAN MANIFESTO” WILL DEBUT AT 12TH ANNUAL
LA FEMME INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, SATURDAY OCT. 22

Writer-Director Cevin Soling’s highly anticipated documentary, The Gilligan Manifesto, will be the Saturday night presentation at the La Femme International Film Festival on Oct. 22 at 6 pm at Laemmle’s Music Hall Theater Venue 2 in Beverly Hills.

If you missed Cevin Soling on today's show, listen here!

Just one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, radio and television writer Sherwood Schwartz began filming his comedy classic Gilligan's Island, which depicts seven Americans shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Soling’s film reveals that this seemingly innocuous sitcom was actually an analogue for a post-apocalyptic world where survivors had to rebuild civilization as this was a major concern during the Cold War where many families had fallout shelters in their homes. What is even more shocking is that the society the castaways create is founded on Marxist Communism. Soling’s revelation was published in the prestigious academic journal, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture.

To convert his article into a feature documentary, Soling interviewed creator Sherwood Schwartz. He also spoke with Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells, who played the Professor and Mary Ann, and several professors from Harvard.

“Sherwood Schwartz often noted that he conceived Gilligan’s Island as a social microcosm where people from all walks of life would have to figure out how to get along,” Soling said, “but he confessed to me, in his last interview, that the show was deliberately designed as lowbrow humor in order to conceal its political message. For this reason, American audiences never realized that the show celebrates Marxism and lampoons Western capitalism and democratic governance.”

“The most transgressive message conveyed by Gilligan’s Island is that it shows how much better off people are in under true communism – not the dictatorship government the Soviets and McCarthyites called communism. The characters that represent the pinnacle of success in capitalist society – the millionaire and the movie star, become whole people and establish social bonds that they never could have otherwise. On the island, their lives cease to be empty.”

La Femme board member Deborah Gilels served as associate producer on the documentary which was edited by Joe Davenport and narrated by Rennie Davis, who, along with Abbie Hoffman was a member of the Chicago Seven. David Jackson’s Showcase Entertainment is selling the worldwide rights.

Cevin Soling produced and directed the first theatrically released documentary on education, The War on Kids, which was honored as the best educational documentary at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival and has been broadcast on The Documentary Channel and The Sundance Channel.


Soling wrote, produced, and directed Ikland, which documented his efforts to rediscover the lost Ik tribe of northern Uganda, who were famously disparaged in the early 1970s as the worst people in the world. The film won Best Documentary Content at the Boston International Film Festival and was heralded by the NY Times and other major media outlets. Last year, he completed Mr. Cevin & the Cargo Cult, a documentary about a tribe in Vanuatu who worship America, and is currently working on The Summer of Hate, a documentary on the Beatles’ controversial observations on religion and racism during their tour of America in 1966.

ABOUT THE FILM
At the height of the Cold War, Gilligan's Island depicted seven Americans living in an analogue of a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors have to rebuild civilization. Remarkably, the society they create is pure communist. Interviews with the show's creator and some of the surviving actors, as well from professors from Harvard, reveal that Gilligan's Island was deliberately designed to be dismissed as low brow comedy in order to celebrate Marxism and lampoon Western democratic constructs.

Briana Gallo joined me at 9:15am to talk about her film “The Bee Keeper."

If you missed Briana Gallo on today's show, listen here!

Briana Gallo’s “The Bee Keeper” tells the story of Ed “Doc” Ziegler, a retired dentist living in a small town in New England. 35 years ago, he discovered apitherapy - the power of bees to heal - both physically and mentally. He now devotes his life to beekeeping and shares the curative powers of bee venom with his community. His neighbors and friends recount their own recovery stories and loving thoughts about this kind and humble man who, at the age of 97, is still tending to the needs of his ‘patients.

WATCH the trailer here.

ABOUT BRIANA GALLO

"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."

Briana Gallo is a Fine Art Photographer as well as a Photo Philanthropist. She currently lives and works in La Jolla, CA. She believes in the power of Photo Philanthropy to inspire hope and understanding, and to connect people around the world, as well as in our local communities. She visually articulates the mission of non-profit organizations in a compelling manner through Fine Art Photography. She believes in people’s interest in knowing more, in understanding better, in seeing the story, which can then lead to action and involvement.

In 2011, her travels took her to Honduras to work with Shoulder to Shoulder and the town of Guachipilincito. In 2012, she traveled to Cuba, where she captured the stories of the Cuban people and their vibrancy of life. 2013 she worked on a piece for Make It Right, a non-profit in the Lower Nine area of New Orleans focusing on housing for Katrina Victims. She is currently working on a number of projects in heart of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia. Each experience has inspired her to search for those communities where there is a story to be told. Briana forges real connections with communities when she shoots turning her lens into a bridge rather than a wall.

She is currently a member of the New Hampshire Art Association. She has had juried pieces in the PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont. She has attended two juried Fine Art shows – The Foundry in Pawtucket, RI and the Mystic Art Festival in Mystic, Connecticut. She also has pieces published in the PhotoPlace Gallery Books–Self Portrait, City Streets & Country Roads, Portraiture: Expression & Gesture, The Golden hours Dawn and Dusk, The Art of Travel Photography. Briana was featured in Omo Magazine in 2014. Her Cuban series is currently in the Emerald C Gallery, Coronado, CA.

Briana uses her photography to help people see through a variety of lenses. To open doors to what is surrounding us, both locally and abroad. The emotion she captures in her photography pulls viewers out of their comfort zones, provokes questions, brings smiles to ones face, tears to ones eyes, and makes one say, “I never knew.”

Alexandra Horowitz joined me at 9am PST to talk about her fascinating book, BEING A DOG: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell.

If you missed Alexandra Horowitz
on today's show, listen here!

Scribner is delighted to announce the publication, on October 4, 2016, of Alexandra Horowitz’s BEING A DOG: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell. In her New York Times bestselling Inside of a Dog (2009), Horowitz revealed the often surprising evolutionary reasons behind why dogs behave the way they do; in BEING A DOG, she explores what dogs know in even greater depth, following their lead to learn about the dog’s spectacular nose and how we mere humans can improve our under-used sense of smell. The result is a revelation about the world that we share.

In BEING A DOG, readers will learn how well a dog can smell versus how well a human can smell. We humans are what Alexandra and her fellow scientists call microsmatic, i.e. “poor smellers,” compared to dogs. We have a mere six million olfactory receptor cells in our noses, whereas dogs have between 200 million and a billion, depending on the breed. Here’s another comparison: Human beings have three receptor genes that allow us to see all the colors of the world. Dogs have some 800 receptor genes just for smell. In theory, they can smell billions of different odors. We therefore have a very difficult time understanding what dogs can do with their noses because most of us can’t even tell if what burnt in the kitchen this morning was the coffee or the toast.

So what, exactly, can dogs smell? Amyl acetate is the chemical that gives bananas their smell. Dogs can smell one drop of the chemical in a trillion drops of water. Dogs smell earthquakes before they happen, and rainstorms miles away. They have been trained to find explosives, land-mines, chemical accelerants, missing people, underwater cadavers, drugs of every type, counterfeit goods, illicit cell phones in prison and imported shark fins in suitcases, dry rot, termites, fire ants, bed bugs, truffles under the ground, and dairy cows in estrous. They smell what you had for breakfast and whether a cat touched your leg yesterday. They can smell cancer, both inside human beings and in lab samples. They can smell their way home, the time that has passed since a flower closed up, and the body under the rubble.

BEING A DOG delves into all of these remarkable abilities and more, revealing a whole world of experiences we miss every day. Horowitz, inspired by her dogs, tries to be a better smeller. She spends days smelling everything her dogs smell. And she volunteers at an olfaction lab at Rockefeller University (sniffing hundreds of bottles of scents per session.) It is not that we humans can’t smell; it’s that we largely don’t. Based on the biological facts alone, the major determining factor in whether we smell an odor or not seems to be just this: whether we bother to try and smell it.

Writing with scientific rigor and her trademark wit, Horowitz changes our perspective on dogs – and smelling – forever. Readers will finish this charming and informative book feeling that they have broken free of human constraints and understood smell as never before; that they have, however fleetingly, been a dog.



Alexandra Horowitz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation. She teaches at Barnard College, where she runs the Dog Cognition Lab. She lives with her family and two large, highly sniffy dogs in New York City.

Visit her website: alexandrahorowitz.ne


More praise for BEING A DOG:

“I’m not entirely certain whether Alexandra Horowitz’s BEING A DOG has made me want to buy a dog or morph into one—but I do know that it was magical. Horowitz has crafted an utterly engrossing, witty, finely-observed narrative that will make you look at the power of the nose in a wholly new way.”—Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

MEDIA ALERT 12TH ANNUAL LA FEMME INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS CEREMONY HONORING AISHA TYLER, GINA TORRES, WENDIE MALICK, CONNIE STEVENS AND KERRIS DORSEY

WHAT: The 12th Annual La Femme International Film Festival closing ceremony will host a Red Carpet & Awards Ceremony on October 23, 2016. The evening will begin with award nominees, our honorees and celebrities walking the red carpet and culminate in an after party following the ceremony.

This year we will celebrate and honor the accomplishments of Aisha Tyler (The Talk) - Lupe Ontiveros Image Award; Gina Torres (Suits) - Visionary Award; Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me) - Humanitarian Award; Connie Stevens (Prairie Bones) - Lifetime Achievement Award; and Kerris Dorsey (Ray Donovan) - Rising Star Award.

WHY: The LA Femme Film Festival Awards Ceremony is attended by celebrities, Hollywood insiders, filmmakers and invited guests. Other celebrity guests may include Laurence Fishburne (Black-ish), Joely Fisher (‘Til Death), Dan Lauria (Pitch), Alfre Woodard (12 Years a Slave), Meredith Baxter (Famiy Ties), Robert Patrick (Scorpion), Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and many others.

WHEN: Sunday October 23, 2016
Red Carpet (6 pm – 7 pm)
Awards Ceremony at 7 pm WHERE: Los Angeles Theatre Center

514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013

CONTACT: Deborah Gilels 818-758-6509 or Lisa Lyons 818-726-8199

Deni Ellis Béchard, author of Into the Sun, joined me Monday at 9:45am PST

If you missed Deni Ellis Béchard
on today's show, listen here.

Kabul—Ten Years After 9/11: After a car explodes in the city, a Japanese-American journalist discovers that its passengers were acquaintances—three fellow expats who had formed an unlikely love triangle—and becomes convinced that a deeper story lies behind the moment of violence. The investigation that follows takes the journalist from Kabul to Louisiana, Maine, Québec, and Dubai, from love to jealousy to hate—and acutely reveals how the lives of individuals overseas have become inseparable from the larger story of America’s imperial misadventures.


About Deni Ellis Béchard

Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of the novel Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; Cures for Hunger, a memoir about growing up with his father, who robbed banks; and Of Bonobos and Men, winner of the 2015 Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the LA Times, Salon, Pacific Standard, and Foreign Policy, and he has reported from India, Iraq, Colombia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Afghanistan.

Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD and B. Brett Finlay, PhD, authors of "Let Them Eat Dirt - Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World," joined me Monday at 9am PST

If you missed today's show with
Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD, listen here

If you missed today's show 
with B. Brett Finlay, PhD, listen here

Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD, trained in the Finlay lab and is now an assistant professor at the University of Calgary in Canada. She has been studying intestinal microbiology and immunology for the past 10 years. Her recent study connecting asthma in very young babies to missing key intestinal bacterial species was deemed a breakthrough in the field and was reported by dozens of news outlets around the world in 2015. Arrieta has been published in leading scientific journals such as Gastroenterology, PNAS, and Science Translational Medicine. She spends her busy days juggling between experiments, science writing, kindergarten pick-ups, and play dates for her two young children.

B. Brett Finlay, PhD, is professor of microbiology at the University of British Columbia and a world leader in how bacterial infections work. He has been studying microbes for over thirty years and has published over four hundred and fifty articles. Also a founder of the biotech companies Inimex, Vedanta, and Microbiome Insights, Brett is Officer of the Order of Canada—the highest Canadian civilian recognition. He lives in Vancouver, BC, with his wife, who is a pediatrician, and has two grown-up kids.

Take a look at what is being researched in his lab.

Peter Himmelman, an award-winning Emmy and Grammy-nominated musician, founder of Big Muse, and author of Let Me Out, joined me Monday at 9:30am pst!

“Fear is one of life’s biggest roadblocks, which is why Peter Himmelman’s book is so important. Let Me Out gets to the heart of how we can keep fear from limiting our potential by tapping into our inner resilience, creativity, and strength. There’s deep wisdom here along with very practical tools for translating our ideas into the real world.”– Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post

If you missed Peter Himmelman on today's show,
listen here!

Whether we’re laid off from a job, growing a family, or moving to a new city, life often requires us to reinvent ourselves or switch paths. Making that successful transition, however, can be challenging due to our fear of failure or our inability to take action. After years of dreaming, training and good fortune, Peter Himmelman became an Emmy- and Grammy-nominated musician, songwriter and performer. But when the music industry hit hard times, he was forced to reinvent himself at age 52. While Himmelman developed exciting ideas of what he wanted to do, he also thought that’s impossible or how unrealistic. It took him two years to actually stop mulling and start doing.

Having made a living in the trenches of the creative world for the last thirty-five years, first as a musician and now as a top speaker and consultant on creativity and leadership for businesses around the world through his company Big Muse, Peter Himmelman knows first-hand both the pitfalls and triumphs of what goes into turning endless pondering into actual innovative achievement. In his forthcoming release LET ME OUT: Unlock Your Creative Mind and Bring Your Ideas to Life, he combines proven cognitive methods with his own unique artistic techniques to unite and convert left and right-brained thinking into action. Readers learn new ways to:


Reduce fear as a means to becoming more creative;


Create with purpose, whether it's an ad campaign, a song, or a new business;


Communicate more effectively and on a deeper level;


Complete worthwhile projects that have stayed in the "bits and pieces" phase forever


LET ME OUT tackles the fact that our greatest barrier to entry is often ourselves. For those who think starting a new path is unrealistic, this book provides practical tools and insights to make our creative goals take shape in the real world.


Peter Himmelman is an award-winning, Emmy and Grammy-nominated musician and the founder of Big Muse, a company that teaches creative thinking, leadership skills, and deeper levels of communication in all facets of life – from personal to professional. As Big Muse has grown in popularity over the last four years, Peter has come to share his program with thousands of individuals, including academic institutions like The Wharton School, UCLA, and The Ross School of Business, and international brands such as McDonald’s, Adobe, and Gap Inc. He has an Advanced Management Certificate from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Learn more at http://www.bigmuse.com/ and http://www.peterhimmelman.com/ home.php.

PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS, Pulitzer-prize winning war correspondent and author of PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS, joined me Monday at 9am PST!

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS, Pulitzer-prize winning war correspondent PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS is a gorgeous and evocative memoir that has captured the hearts and minds of our staff and the booksellers who have received an early glimpse of his pages recounting a haunting love affair with a mysterious older Japanese woman in the summer of 1959.

If you missed Paul Brinkley-Rogers on today's show, listen here!

“Please enjoy…the most romantic memoir you’re likely to read in a lifetime.”
—ELIN HILDERBRAND, New York Times bestselling author of HERE’S TO US


“A searing final love letter.”—DAILY EXPRESS (UK)


“A moving memoir exploring the last imprint of his first love.”—THE LADY (UK)


“[A] haunting memoir.”—DAILY MAIL (UK)

At age 75, Paul began writing PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS after discovering his long-lost love’s letters tucked inside a book by a British poet he had not opened in years. When he reread her passionate epistles—which are also featured verbatim in his memoir—he set out to recapture this singular time and place, his coming-of-age as a 19-year-old sailor aboard the USS Shangri-La, and to pay tribute to Kaji Yukiko, the incredible woman who continues to influence his life long after they parted more than half a century ago.

Paul and Yukiko met by chance in the Japanese seaport of Yokosuka. Picking him out of a crowd because he was carrying a book, she shared her astonishing knowledge of literature, music, film, and poetry with him and encouraged—even demanded—that he use the talent she saw in him to become the writer he is today. Through Yukiko, he discovered a shared passion for the arts and learned many heartbreaking truths about post-war Japan. He also learned what it takes to love without regret.

Theirs was not a quiet love story. When a member of the yakuza, Japan’s brutal crime syndicate, attempted to kidnap Yukiko, Paul realized that there was much more to her—and to Japan in the devastating wake of World War II—than he saw at first glance. Through the searing letters that Yukiko wrote to him and his vivid telling of a history made all the more powerful by the passage of time, PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS reaches across decades and continents, inviting readers to reclaim and celebrate the lifelong loves that never really end.

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS has quickly become an in-house favorite and is all the more personal to us because the beautiful image on the cover is a photo of the mother of Tara Parsons, Touchstone’s Editor-in-Chief (and the book’s editor). The photo of Parsons’ mother dressed in a formal kimono was taken in Japan during the same time period in which PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HAPPINESS is set.

Paul Brinkley-Rogers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and veteran war correspondent. For many years he worked in Asia as a staff member of Newsweek, covering the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, the death of Chairman Mao, and Japan's economic miracle. He also reported from Latin America for The Miami Herald, sharing the Pulitzer Prize with a reporting team in 2001 for coverage of the Elian Gonzalez custody battle. He is the author of Please Enjoy Your Happiness, a memoir. Now retired, he lives in Arizona.

Thanks to Moneeka Sawyer for having me on her show Bliss Bits! Loved talking about "Get the FUNK Out!"

Author Moneeka Sawyer invited me on her show, "Bliss Bits" today! I shared my insights on how to Get the FUNK Out, what inspired me to start my show at KUCI 88.9fm, and lots more!

Click this link to listen!