A companion to Friday’s 100th-consecutive weekly newsletter, today’s post consists of highlights from a handful of my favorite West Coast Sojourn podcast conversations. Consider it a thank you for all of the eyeball and earhole access.
Among the highlights—in order of appearance—are the first WCS Substack session, an October 27, 2023 chat with about psychedelic Judaism. Next comes a hilarious early ’24 joint featuring
and More recently, The Knife podcast’s co-producers dropped by The Sojourn. Here Hannah Smith responds to a question about true-crime obsessions’ role in crime hyper-awareness.My cohost Lev Anderson got most worked up about interviewing historical figure and Berkeley prof John Yoo. Amid this array of talk highlights, we consider that the notorious Republican might have charmed us.
As a kind of palette cleanser, this clip show’s next voice belongs to the thoroughly awesome Wendy Zeng. From her Northeast LA backyard, Zeng definitively changes the conversation, representing a wildly different Calif from Yoo. (Food and politics are better rarely paired than when Chef Zeng is cooking.) Next, Lloyd Francis,—former unofficial Mayor of Haight Street—explains how he got the fuck out of Fresno and started doing epic photo journalism for the San Jose Mercury News.
Here are 24 seconds inside the mind of a MAGA maniac, just because
Photography again take center stage with a quick bit from this spring’s ultra-casual, Northwest Portland talk with educator Rian Dundon and curator Intisar Abioto. (And some awkwardness from Lev) Marc Weidenbaum moves the dialogue into a musically unpredictable direction before we talk elevated cooking with the gifted Chef Maverick.
Bringing it all home is American River College alumnus Mike Wise. You may know Wise his writing on Native American runner Billy Mills or from his spearheading the former Washington Racial Slurs’ name change. He tells his inspirational CAKE story really well here.
So many great guests are not in this compilation. Guess you’ll just have to check them all out yourselves.
Find yourself thinking about the ideas, personalities, and information that you’ve come to know through this Substack? To “Buy Me a Coffee” would be a cool gesture. Cooler still is appreciation delivered via Venmo or GoFundMe.
