Marisela Norte has contributed to many publications including Rolling Stone, Interview, Elle, LA Weekly, Buzz, WEST, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Chicana Art, BOMB, Tu Ciudad and the upcoming issue of Propagandist. She has performed her work throughout California and many cities in the United States, and most recently at the Tate Modern in London. Norte has also co-authored the play, Black Butterfly, Jaquar Girl, Pinanta Woman and Other Super Hero Girls Like Me, and performed it at 350 Middle and High Schools in Los Angeles the last few years. Marisela Norte has been honored at the Kennedy Center in DC and nominated for an Ovation award. Her work can also be found in a number of anthologies, among them Microphone Fiends, Bordered Sexualities: Bodies on the Verge of a Nation, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, Rara Avis, and Chicana Art-The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities by Laura Perez.

María Elena Gaitán is a fourth generation musician, a performance artist and like her friend of many years, Marisela Norte, she is also a native of East Los Angeles. Gaitán's first performance art piece, "La Condición Femenina", was created and performed with Norte in the early 80's as part of the Asco conceptual art group's performances. Gaitán has brought performance to a wide range of venues throughout the United States and in Portugal, including performances of Igor Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale," directed by Peter Sellars with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Her artistic collaborative works have been featured by "Meet The Composer" and "Arts International." She is the first Latino artist ever invited to participate in the Ford Foundation's Africa Exchange Project and has developed artistic works about the African Diaspora in Mexico for over a decade. Her solo works have focused on social justice satire and women's health including: "Chola Con Cello: A Home Girl In The Philharmonic," "The Adventures of Connie Chancla," and "<¡The Teta Show!>" often performed for standing-room only audiences. She is the first U.S. artist to receive the Gateways Bi-national Ford/Rockefeller Residency Award and has been a Lead Artist for the Ford Foundation's Animating Democracy Initiative. Gaitán was a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation Award in 2003.

Slavoj Zizek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Princeton, and The New School. Arguably the only living philosopher who uses positively the terms "dialectical materialism" and "dictatorship of the proletariat," his work is controversial and has gained him a large following internationally. A philosopher and psychoanalyst, he is the author of more than thirty books and is the subject of the documentary Zizek!. His own critically acclaimed documentary, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, was the subject of a film retrospective in 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Mary Roach is the author of BONK, Spook, and the New York Times bestseller Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Stiff was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick for 2003, a Northern California Book Awards finalist, and an American Library Association Alex Award (for adult books that appeal to young adults) winner. Stiff has been translated into 16 languages, including Hungarian (Hullamerev) and Lithuania(Negyveilai). Before writing Bonk, Spook and Stiff, Mary wrote columns, essays, and feature articles for Outside, Wired, GQ, Salon.com, and the New York Times Magazine, among many others. She has always gravitated toward the peculiar, covering things like Eskimo food, flatulence, killer bees, vaginal weight-lifting, carrot addiction, and amputee bowling leagues. Mary works in an office with five other writers in Oakland, California, down the hall from a cosmetology school which produces a lot of fumes and perhaps explains Mary's writing style.

Father Gregory J. Boyle, S.J. is a Jesuit priest who is Founder/Executive Director of Jobs for a Future/Homeboy Industries, an employment referral center and economic development program located in Boyle Heights, a community with arguably the highest concentration of gang activity in Los Angeles.

In 1992, as a response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Father Boyle formed Homeboy Industries, to create businesses that provide training, work experience, and above all, the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side.

Father Boyle was born in Los Angeles. He received his BA in English from Gonzaga University, an MA in English from Loyola Marymount University, a Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology, and an STM degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. Before becoming Pastor of Dolores Mission (1986-1992), Father Boyle taught at Loyola High School and worked with Christian Base Communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He has also served as Chaplain of the Islas Marias Penal colony in Mexico and Folsom Prison. He is currently a member of the State Commission on Juvenile Justice, Crime and Delinquency Prevention, and serves on the National Youth Gang Center Advisory Board.

Robert Scheer is the editor-in-chief of the political blog www.truthdig.com and the author of seven books, including Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power; With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals; with his son Christopher and Lakshmi Chaudhry, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq. Most recently, he wrote Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush. Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Scheer can be heard on the political radio program Left, Right and Center on KCRW 89.9 FM. Scheer is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow.

*Please note, this panel discussion featured a screening of the film "Eat at Bill's: Life in the Monterey Market." The film portion of the program is not included in the podcast.

Lisa Brenneis is a drought-tolerant California native who grows organic citrus with her husband in Ojai, California. She recently finished her first feature-length video documentary, Eat at Bill's: Life in the Monterey Market. She supports her movie habit by writing technical reference books for Peachpit Press.

Bill Fujimoto was born in Caldwell ID, in 1946, and raised in Berkeley, CA. A 1968 graduate of the University of California, he worked for five years as a mechanical engineer at Lockheed, Sunnyvale, before deciding to join his parents' Berkeley store. Founded in 1962, Monterey Market is an independent market, specializing in fresh produce in season. Monterey Market currently grosses $15 million/yr at a single location in north Berkeley. The business has grown up with the food revolution in Northern California, and has a strong commitment to supporting local agriculture and sustainable farming practices. Bill Fujimoto was a founding member of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Market Collaborative.

Alan Ball is the creator and Executive Producer of "Six Feet Under," the critically acclaimed drama series on HBO. The series, about a family-run funeral home in Los Angeles, has garnered unprecedented ratings for the network, two Golden Globes (including Best Drama Series) and six Emmy awards. Alan was awarded an Emmy and a DGA award for directing the pilot of "Six Feet Under", his directorial debut. Alan's first produced feature film screenplay was "American Beauty," for which he received the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay, and the Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay, among others. His other television credits include "Oh Grow Up", "Cybill" and "Grace Under Fire." Prior to moving to Hollywood, he was a noted comedic playwright in New York.

Thomas Lynch is the author, most recently, of Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, a book he describes as "an ethnography of everyday life." His book, The Undertaking, won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bodies in Motion and at Rest won the Great Lakes Book Award. Of his three collections of poems, Still Life in Milford is the most recent. For thirty years he has been the funeral director in Milford, Michigan.

In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read - and imitated - poets in America. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W.S. Merwin's recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs.

His first book, A Mask for Janus, was published in 1952 in the Yale Younger Poets series -- chosen by W.H. Auden. His book of poems, The Carrier of Ladders, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. His other books include The Drunk in the Furnace, The Moving Target, The Lice, Flower & Hand, The Compass Flower, Feathers from the Hill, Opening the Hand, The Rain in the Trees, Travels, The Vixen, The Lost Upland, Unframed Originals, and The Folding Cliffs. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among many others. His latest works include the collections of poems The River Sound as well as a new translation of Dante's Purgatorio. In the fall of 2004, William Merwin was awarded the prestigious 2004 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. His book Migration won the 2005 National Book Award for Poetry, and was also named winner of the 2006 Ambassador Book Award for Poetry. W.S. Merwin was awarded the 2006 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for his book Present Company.

Born in 1945, August Wilson grew up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His childhood experiences in this black slum community would later inform his dramatic writings, including his first produced play, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, which was staged in 1981.

By early 1990's, Wilson had established himself as the best known and most popular African-American playwright. His second play, Fences, earned Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize. The Piano Lesson earned Wilson his 2nd Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as a Drama Desk Award.

On October 2, 2005, August Wilson passed away at the age of 60.