Talk of the Bay from KSQD

The Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program (I-HELP) is a non-profit that provides a safe, temporary place to sleep for people who are experiencing homelessness. Participants are provided an evening meal and sleep on mats in shared spaces, where they also receive person-to-person support and resources to help them move forward in their lives. 60 local faith communities provide the sleeping location and the meals.

Solar and wind technologies are already here to transition us to a clean energy future, making oil wars moot, but “Drill, Baby Drill” and Trump’s oil war in Iran begs the question: Why aren’t mainstream media outlets connecting the dots? Brady Bradshaw of The Center for Biological Diversity talks about the organization’s legal challenges to the forced opening of the Sable Pipeline in Santa Barbara. Then, Michael Richardson of Thirdact.org discusses the potential for the clean energy transition and how the impact of Trump’s all-out war on renewables could doom us to a broken planet if we don’t stop it.

Tony Sloss interviews a handful of protesters on the street for the Santa Cruz No Kings Rally.

The arts community of Santa Cruz County is coming together for this exciting new 11-day celebration showcasing the region’s rich artistic landscape. The festival will feature performances, exhibitions, workshops, and interactive events across venues countywide, inviting audiences of all ages to experience the transformative power of art. Host Christine Barrington interviews Ripple Effect Co-Founders Rose Sellery and Melissa Kreisa whose bold vision for a Santa Cruz Arts Festival gestated for years before blossoming into reality as the Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival. Their vision was born out of a shared belief that the arts not only enrich our lives but also strengthen our community and economy. At a time when many artists and organizations face mounting challenges, Ripple Effect provides a new opportunity for collaboration, visibility, and collective support. Grassroots and volunteer-driven, the festival is powered by the dedication of local arts organizations and community partners who believe in the unifying force of creativity. Ripple Effect invites you to join them for 11 days of powerful performances, art, poetry, fashion, music, and cultural celebrations throughout Santa Cruz County. The Ripple Effect Arts Festival brings together community, creativity, and culture to reflect the unique artistic pulse of our coastal community. Opening with Dancing in the Streets – in Downtown Santa Cruz from 5-9PM Experience 11 Days of Community & Creativity in venues throughout Santa Cruz County Closing with the Grand Finale from 4-9PM at The Grove @ Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

  In this interview, Len Beyea gets a download from tech experts Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, co-authors of The AI Con, about the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under the banner of “AI”, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors, helping the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna make clear, are “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With Emily Bender, Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. Drs. Bender and Hanna also run the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, tearing apart AI hype on their livestream and podcast. Alex has published widely, including in the journals Socius, Sociological Science, Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and has been a featured speaker at top-tier computer science conferences. Emily M. Bender, co-author of The AI Con, has been a member of the faculty at the University of Washington since 2003. She is currently the Thomas L. and Margo G. Wyckoff Endowed Professor in the Department of Linguistics and the faculty director of the Computational Linguistics MS program and the director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. For 2019-2022, she was the Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor. She is an Adjunct Professor in both the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW, and a member of the Tech Policy Lab, Value Sensitive Design Lab, and RAISE. Dr. Bender has served on the Executive Board of the Association for Computational Linguistics as VP Elect, VP, President and Past President. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Prior to joining the faculty at UW, she held positions at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, and worked in industry at YY Technologies. She received her PhD in Linguistics at Stanford University. She earned her AB (also in Linguistics) from UC Berkeley, and also studied at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

Babblery host Suki Wessling walked around our local No Kings 2026 Rally and asked people to do dramatic readings of their signs. Some are more dramatic than others, but all are heartfelt!

Busman’s holiday on Kauai. 150 people gathered in the tiny town of Ele’ele, Kauai to join the nationwide “No Kings” rallies. Why did they gather? They had a lot of answers.

Every winter I teach a storytelling class using The Moth Radio Hour as a model for how to tell personal narratives. What follows are some examples of their work.

  PODCAST AVAILABLE. In this Talk of the Bay, host Meilin Obinata welcomes Osbaldo Lucero of Salad Bytes Media to the station. Join this conversation about his journey as a local podcast innovator, launching multiple podcasts which platform Salinas topics: everything from soccer, small businesses and non profits and even politics. His podcasts attract an international audience, jumping up the Spotify charts in Latin America! Spoiler alert – there’s even a part of our conversation that mentions squids!!! Learn about his creative processes, and, how he bloomed and nurtured ideas into reality from the very beginnings of podcasting to now.