What to Pod: These days everyone has a podcast. But not everyone who launches a new show is a Norcal and public radio legend and one of the most respected interviewers around. Like Tom Brady, Michael Krasny couldn’t stay retired from doing what he does best and that’s good news for people who like thoughtful discussions on interesting topics. Subscribe to Grey Matter with Michael Krasny.

+ What to Book: In Solito, Javier Zamora takes readers along as he relives the three-thousand mile journey he made from El Salvador to San Rafael, California (the town where I grew up) when he was only nine years old. This is a migrant’s journey and child’s story that takes all the politics out and leaves all the humanity in.

+ What to Read: “The West has been wrong about China. It was long assumed that capitalism, the emergence of a middle class and the internet would cause China to eventually adopt Western political ideas. But these ideas cannot even begin to take root because the Communist Party has never allowed the intellectual soil needed for them to germinate. And it never will. Chinese minds have in fact never truly been free.” Ai Weiwei in the NYT (Gift Article): No, Capitalism and the Internet Will Not Free China’s People.