KUCI: Get the Funk Out!

Ruth Weisberg, a versatile and vivacious voiceover narrator and coach, on-camera moderator, and keynote speaker chats with host Janeane

ABOUT RUTH WEISBERG
Ruth Weisberg is a versatile and vivacious voiceover narrator and coach, on-camera moderator, and keynote speaker.
Her distinctive and dynamic presence can be seen and heard on radio/TV spots, news commentary programs, interactive sites, e-learning and animated productions.
Ruth is also an instructor at The Voice Box, teaching group classes in voiceover narration, as well as mentoring and coaching voiceover students with individual private instruction.
Despite appearances she never spills ink.
She is also a big part of the Nokomis Beach Drum Circle in Sarasota County, Florida.
WATCH Ruth in the Accidental Art Model
LISTEN to her VO Reels
ruthweisberg.com

Author Amy Daughters talks about her book - Dear Dana: That Time I Went Crazy and Wrote All 580 of My Facebook Friends a Handwritten Letter

When Amy Daughters reconnected with her old pal Dana on Facebook, she had no idea how it would change her life. Though the two women hadn’t had any contact in 30 years, it didn’t take them long to catch up—and when Amy learned that Dana’s son Parker was doing a second stint at St. Jude battling cancer, she was suddenly inspired to begin writing the pair weekly letters.
When Parker died, Amy—not knowing what else to do—continued to write Dana. Eventually, Dana wrote back, and the two became pen pals, sharing things through the mail that they had never shared before. The richness of the experience left Amy wondering something: If my life could be so changed by someone I considered “just a Facebook friend”, what would happen if I wrote all my Facebook friends a letter?
A whopping 580 handwritten letters later Amy’s life, and most of all her heart, would never ever be the same again. As it turned out, there were actual individuals living very real lives behind each social media profile, and she was beautifully connected to each of those extraordinary, flawed people for a specific reason. They loved her, and she loved them. And nothing—not politics, beliefs, or lifestyle—could separate them.
MORE: getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

Host Janeane Bernstein speaks with Robin Benoit, author of THE EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD SORORITY GIRLS

THE EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD SORORITY GIRLS
As a group of eighty-something girlfriends deal with the mental decline of their sorority sister, they reconnect with their college sorority, advise their grandchildren, find new lives for themselves and continue to stay the closest of friends. Vivian, nicknamed “Button,” is an Alzheimer’s patient who adores her sorority group, Helen rediscovers love at age eighty-one, Ida’s crazy side comes out during football season and Laney is the “big sister” in charge of baking for the group. These three women consistently show up for Vivian as her mental health deteriorates — because that is what sisters do.
MORE: getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

Critically-acclaimed author, Annie Hartnett, on her brilliant new book, UNLIKELY ANIMALS

While visiting friends in New Hampshire, Hartnett became fascinated with nineteenth-century robber baron Austin Corbin’s historical estate, and a real life Doctor Doolittle that worked there! This surreal property, Corbin''s Park, became a secret, exclusive hunting park that still exists today. The true story is fascinating and it's no surprise it inspired Unlikely Animals—already receiving rave reviews!
“Hartnett masterfully balances a story of deep loss with the perfect amount of hilarity and tenderness.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Hartnett’s whimsical storytelling casts a spell.”—Publishers Weekly
“This is a big novel doing big things. It bears some similarity to Hartnett’s much- loved first novel, Rabbit Cake. . . . But Unlikely Animals is a broader, brassier, and even more fiercely tender story. In this, her second novel, Hartnett lands an astonishing leap as a storyteller.”—The Rumpus
“Wistfully charming . . . This unapologetically genre-bending tribute to life and death, and the beautiful weirdness found in both, has potential to spark exceptional book club discussions.”—Shelf Awareness
Author Annie Hartnett released her first novel, Rabbit Cake, in 2017 to critical acclaim. Numerous media outlets included it on their “Best of ” lists, and it was named a finalist for the New England Book Award, long-listed for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and shortlisted for The Crook's Corner Book Prize for Best Debut set in the South. Reviewers called it “[a] treasure” (People Magazine) and “truly terrific and original” (Booklist). Now, I’m excited to share that Hartnett has knocked it out of the park once more with her second novel, UNLIKELY ANIMALS (Ballantine Hardcover; On Sale 4/12/2022). When I first started reading this tender, funny, quirky story, I realized quickly that I had never encountered anything like it before.

Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder Discusses his latest book, For You When I Am Gone

We often focus on the material things we leave behind when we die, when what we really should consider is the legacy we leave behind. We write a will to divvy up who gets what, but rather than just stuff, we should be leaving something that speaks to who we wanted to be, who we were, and what we want for our loved ones in their lives. In FOR YOU WHEN I AM GONE: Twelve Essential Questions To Tell a Life Story, beloved Rabbi Steve Leder, bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, offers a new guide to help readers put into words what they hope their loved ones know after they have gone - creating what he calls an ethical will. Rabbi Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own. Rabbi Leder appears frequently on national TV and you can watch a few of his appearances here: FOX LA (grief during the pandemic), CBS Sunday Morning (the war in Ukraine), TODAY with Hoda and Jenna (on grief). Rabbi Steve Leder is available for interviews on Wednesday, June 8th. Sincerely, Ari
Ethical wills are ancient traditions, often including stories, reflections about your past, joy, regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. In FOR YOU WHEN I AM GONE, Rabbi Leder examines twelve questions to help readers put into words what they hope their loved ones know after they have gone, including: What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? And what did you learn from your biggest failure?
FOR YOU WHEN I AM GONE includes examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown. It inspires readers to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.
MORE: htp://getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

Justine Bautista Ph.D. Student | Social Ecology UC Irvine and member of the Mental Health Youth Action Forum in DC

Justine Bautista
Ph.D. Student | Social Ecology
University of California, Irvine
B.A. | Psychology
Chapman University
B.A. | Integrated Educational Studies,
Community Emphasis, Health Concentration
Chapman University
Pronouns: she/her
Justine was born and raised in Orange County, CA with roots in the Philippines. She is currently attending the University of California, Irvine for her PhD and Master’s. She graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelors degree in Psychology and in Integrated Educational Studies, and currently serves as a Research Fellow for the Connecting the EdTech Research Ecosystem Center (CERES). Justine has leveraged her skills in research to be able to understand how digital tools impact mental health outcomes in young people and how we can use media as a tool for creating lasting change.
READ MORE about the Mental Health Youth Action Forum in DC. Visit: getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

THE CANDY HOUSE by American Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan - NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY VULTURE, BUZZFEED, TIME, ENTERTAINMENT WEEK...

“A thrilling, endlessly stimulating work that demands to be read and reread.”
—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
Jennifer Egan’s bravura and brilliant new novel, THE CANDY HOUSE, a sibling novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, has just been published to rave reviews and massive attention, including profiles in Vogue, Time, and the Los Angeles Times and rave review in The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review.
THE CANDY HOUSE is a very smart novel asks big questions about the totalizing and flattening effects of digital culture, privacy, and surveillance – while also being a huge pleasure to read. It is one of this spring’s most hotly anticipated novels.Vogue’s recent profile of Jennifer Egan can be found here: https://www.vogue.com/article/jennifer-egan-profile
Scribner is thrilled to announce the publication, on April 5, 2022, of Jennifer Egan’s new novel, THE CANDY HOUSE. A sibling novel to her Pulitzer-Prize and National Book Critics Circle-winning A Visit from The Goon Squad, THE CANDY HOUSE is a triumph of imagination and empathy and every bit as bravura, brilliant, and exhilarating as its predecessor.
Spanning decades, with an intricate plot and interconnected characters, THE CANDY HOUSE is that rare thing: a book that is both pure pleasure on the sentence level and wildly ambitious in scope. In these pages we meet a tech billionaire who ushers in a new age of enhanced digital sharing, the anthropologist who unwittingly enabled this new era, “eluders” who seek to retain privacy and discretion in the face of the onslaught, and the “proxies” who impersonate them, plus record producers, aging rock stars and movie stars, spies, publicists, writers, academics, mothers, fathers, and children. Set in San Francisco, New York City, suburban country clubs, a beatnik forest enclave, the desert, and the mysterious nation of X, with entwined characters and plot points that overlap with A Visit from the Goon Squad, this is a dazzling achievement.
In THE CANDY HOUSE, Egan does in a few pages what it takes other writers a whole novel to accomplish, and she does it again and again. She can infuse everything from a suburban little league game to a cubicle in a tech office with mystery, meaning and purpose. And while this novel asks big questions about the totalizing and flattening effects of digital culture, privacy, and surveillance, its strengths are also in the narrative, in the intimacy of the relationships between the characters, in its humor and joy, and in its many forms of love. This remarkable novel is, in the end, a huge pleasure to read.
MORE: getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

May 9th - KUCI’s Dr. Janeane Bernstein speaks with Yuran, a third-year PSCI major at University of California Irvine, and Vice-Chair of WISE PAC

My name is Yuran, and I am a third-year PSCI major. I am the Vice-Chair of WISE PAC. I am interested in mental health because I want to become a high school counselor in the future, hoping to help students/youth in need.

DICI - the multi-talented Italian born, Milan and Miami artist creating infectious tracks and dynamic, professionally directed and produced videos

In less than two whirlwind years – from summer 2020 to spring 2022 - DICI has evolved from a quarantined 17-year-old freestyling rhymes and mastering the Pro Tools rig in his bedroom to emerging rap star with thousands of worldwide followers, a popular critically acclaimed indie EP on his own label (DICI Records) and an ever-growing discography of more than 17 singles. Since dropping his self-titled debut in January 2021, the multi-talented Italian born, Milan and Miami raised artist’s infectious tracks and dynamic, professionally directed and produced videos have garnered massive press hits, over 5M combined Spotify streams and YouTube views and over 100K Tik Tok followers.
MORE: http://getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org

Vanessa Hua, award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022 BY Vult...

Vanessa Hua, award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. For over two decades, she has been researching and writing about Asia and the diaspora. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among others. Her books, which integrate many of the themes she covers, are critically-acclaimed. A River of Stars was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books, and was called a "marvel" by O, The Oprah Magazine, and "delightful" by The Economist. Deceit and Other Possibilities, named a New York Times Editors' Choice, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature and was a finalist for a California Book Award, and a New American Voices Award.
Vanessa Hua's forthcoming book, Forbidden City, has already been hailed “magnificent” by Publisher’s Weekly, and is getting rave reviews. I've pasted materials below Hua's new book, as well as some of the articles she's written, establishing her as a voice for the Asian American community.
A Ballantine Hardcover & eBook | On Sale April 19, 2022
MORE: http://getthefunkoutshow.kuci.org