US Senator Kamala Harris in 2019. Presidential candidate Joe Biden announced Harris as his running mate yesterday. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
On this show:
0:08 – Yesterday, presidential candidate Joe Biden announced his long-awaited decision on a vice presidential running mate: U.S. Senator and former California attorney general Kamala Harris. Harris’s record as a prosecutor has alienated many to the left, in a time when nightly protests continue in U.S. cities against police violence. To discuss the rationale behind this choice and Harris’s political record, we’re joined by John Nichols (@NicholsUprising), national affairs correspondent for The Nation, and Steve Phillips (@StevePtweets), the founder of Democracy in Color. Steve is the host of the podcast “Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips,” and author of the book Brown Is the New White. He says Biden’s VP pick is “historic and smart” from an electoral standpoint.
0:34 – What does dating and sex look like during a pandemic, with social distancing guidelines still in place? We answer listener questions with Dr. Oliver Bacon, a physician at the San Francisco City Clinic, and Julia Feldman, a Bay Area-based sex educator who runs the sex education consultancy Giving The Talk. When it comes to dating, Julia advises people to “take the time to cultivate trust” before initiating any sort of intimacy.
1:08 – Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot imposed lockdown measures in response to mass protests against police violence and repression in the city. Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, describes what’s happening on the ground. She says Mayor Lightfoot is rejecting the demands of the movement against police violence, fueling ongoing protests amid a “continuation and escalation of police repression.”
1:19 – As Covid-19 continues to surge worldwide, low and middle income countries will likely experience heightened challenges in the fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria transmission. Dr. Britta Jewell (@brittajewell) is an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and coauthor of a new study in The Lancet modeling how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect the prevention and treatment of these diseases. Dr. Jewell says countries must continue to focus on all of these diseases, not just COVID.
1:33 – We turn to a series on sex and technology, produced by Elizabeth “Bee” Soll (@bee_soll), a recent intern for UpFront and UC Berkeley graduate. For the first installment, Bee speaks with Charlotte Laws, an author and advocate against “revenge porn,” about misogyny in online culture.