UpFront – January 2, 2026
UpFront delivers a mix of local, state, and international coverage through challenging interviews, civil debates, breaking updates, and in-depth discussions with authors.
UpFront
7:00 AM PACIFIC TIME: Mondays - Fridays
UpFront delivers a mix of local, state, and international coverage through challenging interviews, civil debates, breaking updates, and in-depth discussions with authors. UpFront PM is the afternoon edition of UpFront. Pitch us at [email protected].
Theme Music: Turn It Up by Digital Primitives, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.
Malcolm Harris on the paths through planetary crisis
00:08 Malcolm Harris, author of several books; the newest is What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. This is a rebroadcast from 2025.
Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on The AI Con
00:08 Emily M. Bender is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR); they’ve co-authored the book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. This is a rebroadcast from summer of 2025.
Extended interview with Julian Brave NoiseCat: We Survived the Night
00:08 — Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker, champion powwow dancer and student of Salish art and history. His debut book is “We Survived the Night.” This interview was originally recorded earlier in December 2025.
Mariah Blake on Life in the Age of Forever Chemicals
00:08 – Mariah Blake, investigative journalist just out with the book They Poisoned the World: Life and death in the age of forever chemicals.
Robert Reich on Robert Reich: Former labor secretary talks new memoir
00:08 Robert Reich, political economist who worked in the administrations of three presidents (most prominently as Secretary of Labor for Bill Clinton) now emeritus Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. His latest book is Coming Up Short: a memoir of my America. This is a rebroadcast of our original interview in summer of … Continued
Cultural Historian Jeff Chang on the Life of Bruce Lee
00:08 From Bruce Lee’s San Francisco origins during the segregationist era of the Chinese Exclusion Act and family’s immigration story, to his role in the lives and minds of young Asian Americans, a new book traces Lee’s story. We talk with Jeff Chang, cultural historian, about Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of … Continued
No Straight Road Takes You There: Extended Interview with Rebecca Solnit
0:08 – A rebroadcast of our powerful October 2025 interview with Rebecca Solnit, author of two dozen books, and a profound storyteller of grassroots movements and the climate and environmental crisis on this planet. Most recently, she published No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain.
Betty Reid Soskin, in her own voice
00:08 – Betty Reid Soskin has been a homefront warriors worker, a singer-songwriter and a performer, co-founder of the legendary Reid’s Records in South Berkeley, a writer and legislative aid and, until she turned 100, the oldest working National Park Service ranger. She died last weekend at the age of 104. This interview is from 2018, when … Continued
Ukraine news, Trump admin to dismantle NCAR, Parents organize to protect healthcare for trans kids
0:08 – Ukraine negotiations wrap up in Miami without a major announcement. John Feffer, Director of Foreign Policy in Focus, joins us. 0:34 – The Trump administration has fixed its eye on dismantling a major climate science research center in Colorado, called NCAR. We talk about the consequences with Eugene Cordero, professor of Meteorology and … Continued