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  • Reimagining SFMOMA's Fisher Collection

    Reimagining SFMOMA's Fisher Collection
    2026/10/27

    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Emily spends time with Gamynne Guillotte (Chief Education and Public Engagement Officer) and Ted Mann (Project Assistant Curator) about SFMOMA's dramatic reimagining of the Doris and Don Fisher Collection — 250 works by 35 artists reinstalled for the first time since 2016.

    They also reorganized the galleries by artist rather than nationality or style — placing German artists like Richter alongside American contemporaries like Warhol — and used the Fishers' deep holdings to create mini-retrospectives for artists like Sol LeWitt and Philip Guston. A standout pairing of Anselm Kiefer and William Kentridge on the sixth floor explores how both artists confront their countries' fraught histories through material process. The episode highlights a rare collaboration where education and interpretation were involved from the very start of the exhibition design.

    For more about the reimagined Fisher Collection - CLICK HERE

    Learn more about Gamynne Guillote - CLICK HERE

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    Tune in next Episode, when Emily features artist Justin Hoover of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

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    About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:

    Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.

    Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil

    Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast

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    CREDITS:

    Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.

    Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

    The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.

    For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    17 分
  • Rodney Earl Jackson Jr. - Artistic Director, SF BATCO

    Rodney Earl Jackson Jr. - Artistic Director, SF BATCO
    2026/10/13

    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Emily & AIA is glad to partner with The Svane Family Foundation's Culture Forward initiative — a $5 million grant program to support arts and culture projects in downtown San Francisco.

    In this episode of *Art is Awesome*, Emily chats with Rodney Earl Jackson Jr., a San Francisco native who grew up in the Fillmore neighborhood and went on to perform on Broadway. After years on Broadway, Rodney and his co-founder Marcelo Javier — a Latino actor who faced similar typecasting — returned to San Francisco to start SFBATCO, driven by a desire to "expand the canon" and create opportunities for artists of color beyond the narrow roles available to them. The episode highlights their current production, *Every Saturday Night*, playing at the Strand Theater on Market Street. The play is a celebration of Black joy and culture rather than trauma, exploring themes of homeownership, displacement, and honoring the past while reconciling with the present. The production marks SFBATCO's first downtown show and their first all-Black cast.

    About Artist Rodney Earl Jackson Jr:

    Rodney is the Artistic Director & Co-Founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre (SFBATCO). He made his Broadway debut in “The Book of Mormon” and was last seen at American Conservatory Theatre & Arena Stage in the co-produced production of “Toni Stone”. Prior to that he traveled North America in the first national tour of “Motown: The Musical.”

    A San Francisco native who built his love and foundation for art and theatre in public city organizations such as SFartsEd, San Francisco Recreation and Park’s Young People’s Teen Musical Theater Company, and the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts’ where he graduated from the theatre department. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

    Other theatre credits: Berkeley Repertory “Ain’t Too Proud: the life and times of the Temptations”, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company “I, Too, Sing America”.
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    Follow Rodney on Instagram: @RodneyEarlJacksonJr

    Visit SFBATCO's Website: SFBATCO.org

    For more about Every Saturday Night - CLICK HERE

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    About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:

    Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.

    Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil

    Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast

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    CREDITS:

    Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.

    Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

    The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.

    For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    16 分
  • Griff Williams - Painter/Publisher/Gallerist

    Griff Williams - Painter/Publisher/Gallerist
    2026/10/06
    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Griff Williams, Griff Williams, a Bay Area artist, curator, and the founder of Gallery 16, which operated in San Francisco for over 30 years. Griff discusses his upbringing in a political family (his father was a longtime Montana congressman) and why he chose art over politics, attending the San Francisco Art Institute and opening Gallery 16 in 1993 as a multi-disciplinary space for visual art, performance, and music. He reflects on the gallery's mission to champion artists over luxury sales, and describes the 2021 documentary *Tell Them We Were Here*, made with his son Keelan, which profiles eight Bay Area artists tackling social issues like environmentalism, racism, and prison reform through their practice.Griff also addresses the recent closures of the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts, calling them devastating losses for the region's creative economy and cultural identity. He argues that elected officials are largely indifferent to working artists—many of whom are "the working poor" juggling multiple jobs—while public funding tends to favor large institutions like symphonies and ballets over small galleries and nonprofits. Now living in Sonoma with more studio time, Griff continues to curate, including the exhibition *Rex Ray: We Are All Made of Light* at the Monterey Museum of Art, and remains a passionate advocate for the Bay Area's arts community.About Artist Griff Williams:Griff Williams is an American multidisciplinary artist, painter, filmmaker, publisher, and gallerist, based in San Francisco. Known for his layered, textural abstract paintings that explore perception, memory, and form through color, surface, and material, Williams has built a career spanning painting, curatorial work, and publishing.Williams is the eldest of three siblings, raised in Montana’s rugged landscapes by Pat Williams, Montana’s longest-serving U.S. Congressman, and Carol Williams, the first female majority leader in the Montana SenateHe earned a BFA from the University of Montana in 1984 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993.Williams’s paintings often use a reimagined “paint-by-number” approach with poured resin and stenciled enamel, producing graphic, optically complex surfaces reminiscent of vintage postcards grokipedia.com. His work engages with abstraction, place, and narrative, blending craftsmanship with conceptual inquiry. He has also directed the 2021 award-winning documentary Tell Them We Were Here, focusing on socially engaged Bay Area artists.In 1993, Williams founded Gallery 16 in San Francisco, later expanding into Urban Digital Color. For over three decades, the gallery became a hub for contemporary art, exhibiting works by artists such as Margaret Kilgallen, Paul Sietsema, and Michelle Grabner. Through Gallery 16 Editions, he published influential monographs, including The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer (2019) and Rex Ray (2020).Williams has taught at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, and Mills College, and his work has been exhibited in venues such as the San Diego Museum of Art and San Jose Museum of Art. His writing and public speaking address arts policy and cultural issues in the Bay Area.His work has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, and Artnews. He is recognized as a key figure in San Francisco’s contemporary art scene, combining artistic practice with advocacy for the arts and regional cultural historyVisit Griff's Website: GriffWilliams.comFollow Griff on Instagram: @WilliamsGriff Learn More about Gallery16 - CLICK HERELearn More about exihibit Rex Ray: We Are All Made of Light - CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    17 分
  • Donna Personna - Playwright, Photographer, & Activist

    Donna Personna - Playwright, Photographer, & Activist
    2026/09/22
    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Emily & AIA is glad to partner with The Svane Family Foundation's Culture Forward initiative — a $5 million grant program to support arts and culture projects in downtown San Francisco. Today, Emily chats with Donna Personna, a San Francisco-based artist, activist, and 2019 San Francisco Pride Parade grand marshal. Donna talks with Emily about her mixed-media triptych *Home in the Promised Land*, created for the Svane Family Foundation's 2020 artist grant program; growing up in Texas and San Jose, and discovering San Francisco's queer community as a teenager at Compton's Cafeteria; then co-writing the play *Compton's Cafeteria Riot* with the Tenderloin Museum, dramatizing the 1966 transgender uprising against police harassment — three years before Stonewall.---About Artist Donna Personna:Donna Personna (She/Her) is a transgender rights activist and fine art artist, who focuses in photography, painting, and mixed media. Personna was friends with The Cockettes and played a part in Elevator Girls in Bondage. Personna co-wrote a play about the Compton Cafeteria riot, one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, and marking the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco. Personna moved to San Francisco at age 19 and has served on the boards of the Trans March and Transgender Day of Remembrance. In 2018, she raised San Francisco’s first Transgender flag at San Francisco City Hall with Mayor London Breed. In 2019, she was a Grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade.Follow Donna on Instagram: @Donna.PersonnaFor Tickets & Info on Compton's Cafeteria Riot, CLICK HEREFor More on Donna's work with The Svane Family Foundation, CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    17 分
  • Amy Trachtenberg - Multidisciplinary Artist

    Amy Trachtenberg - Multidisciplinary Artist
    2026/09/08

    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    About Artist Amy Trachtenberg:

    Amy Trachtenberg is a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes painting, collage, sculpture, installation, poetry and public projects. Diverse in their scale and material sources, hybrid paintings and objects exist between fiction and abstraction. By bringing what exists in the world into the work, awareness is aroused by the qualities of color, tactility, and an appetite for examining the remains of material culture. Structures woven together are built on memory and forgetfulness with relationships between architecture, the body and everyday objects.

    Visit Amy's Website: AmyTrachtenberg.com

    Follow Amy on Instagram: @AmyClaireT

    For more on Amy's Exhibit "Abstract Objects of Devotion" CLICK HERE

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    About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:

    Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.

    Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil

    Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast

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    CREDITS:

    Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.

    Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

    The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.

    For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    17 分
  • Kelsey Issel - Neon Artist & Culture Forward Director

    Kelsey Issel - Neon Artist & Culture Forward Director
    2026/08/25
    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Emily & AIA is glad to partner with The Svane Family Foundation's Culture Forward initiative — a $5 million grant program to support arts and culture projects in downtown San Francisco. In the first of episodes, Emily chats with Kelsey Issel, a neon artist and also the Director for the Culture Forward initiative. Kelsey traces her path from organizing the renegade Fountain Art Fair in the early 2010s (including a memorable "war of the inflatables" with union protesters at the 69th Regiment Armory) to co-founding She Bends, a women's neon arts collective. She discusses the foundation's unconventional approach to philanthropy, which began with giving 100 artists $10,000 each during COVID and evolved into Culture Forward — a general-support grant designed to get cash quickly into artists' hands with the explicit understanding that "some projects might fail." The episode also highlights the foundation's earlier million-dollar gifts to the Headlands Foundation Fellowship Program and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which enabled the acquisition of works from 30 local contemporary artists — several of whom have been past guests on the podcast. About Artist Kelsey Issel: Kelsey Issel is a culture worker, artist and curator whose practice centers the ethos of craft—learning through doing, cultivating attention, and recognizing the social responsibility held within materials. She leads Opie Project (space), an arts and culture firm that develops cross-sector programs investing in cultural capital, with partners including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the Port of San Francisco, and Coca-Cola. With a background in alternative photography, car mechanics, and neon, Kelsey’s hands-on material practice informs her approach to curating, programming, and public initiatives. Her work bridges art and infrastructure, sustaining cultural ecosystems and the communities that grow around them. Issel was the 2025/2026 Antigravity Residency Artist with Corning Museum of Glass and Rockwell Museum and sits on the Board of Directors at Southern Exposure in San Francisco. Learn More About "She Bends" Women In NEON - CLICK HERE For More On The Svane Family Foundation & The Culture Forward Initiative - CLICK HERE Follow Kelsey on Instagram: @KelseyMarieIssel Follow The Svane Family on Instagram: @SvaneFoundation -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 分
  • Miguel Novelo - Interdisciplinary Artist

    Miguel Novelo - Interdisciplinary Artist
    2026/08/11

    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    This week, host Emily chats with Miguel Novelo, a multidisciplinary artist from the Yucatan, Mexico, now based in the Bay Area. Miguel's solo exhibition Inframundo is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose through August 23rd.

    Inframundo is a large-scale, immersive installation featuring sculpture, video, and sound. Inspired by the cenotes and caverns of the Yucatan — underwater cave systems formed by the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago — the work explores Mayan cosmology, the cycles of nature, and what Miguel calls "techno shamanism": the use of emerging technology to evoke shamanic experiences and altered states of consciousness.

    About Artist Miguel Novelo:

    Miguel Novelo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher who focuses on emerging media and community organizing. Currently working on algorithmic movies, technoshammanic installations, thermodynamic hypnotism, and friendly computer viruses.

    Novelo earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2018, followed by a Master of Fine Arts from Stanford University in 2022. His work has been exhibited at various institutions, including the de Young Museum, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, and numerous international film festivals.
    Currently a lecturer at Stanford Art and Art History Department and San Jose State University.

    Visit Miguel's Website: MiguelNovelo.com

    Follow Miguel on Instagram: @xMiguelNovelo

    For more about his exhibit Inframundo, CLICK HERE.

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    About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:

    Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.

    Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil

    Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast

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    CREDITS:

    Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.

    Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

    The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.

    For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    16 分
  • Jonathon Keats - Conceptual Artist & Experimental Philosopher

    Jonathon Keats - Conceptual Artist & Experimental Philosopher
    2026/07/28
    Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Jonathon Keats — conceptual artist, experimental philosopher, and writer based in San Francisco. He has sold his thoughts, copyrighted his brain, choreographed a ballet for honeybees, and written six books. He contributes to Art in America, Popular Science, and Wired, and has exhibited at LACMA and Modernism Gallery SF. Jonathon discusses Centuries of the Bristlecone, an 11-foot-tall dual pendulum clock on permanent display at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. The clock, created in partnership with the Long Now Foundation, tells both atomic time and arboreal time — time as experienced by ancient bristlecone pine trees that can live up to 5,000 years. The project took over a decade to realize, with clockmakers Phil Abernathy and Brittany Cox. About Artist Jonathon Keats: Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher. His conceptually-driven transdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society, adapting methods from the sciences and the humanities. He has exhibited and lectured at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO. He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design – most recently You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future, published by Oxford University Press – and is the author of a weekly online art and design column for Forbes. He has been an artist-in residence at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, UC Berkeley's Sagehen Creek Field Station, and the LACMA Art + Technology Lab, a Black Mountain College Legacy Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an Imaginary Fellow at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and a Research Fellow at the Nevada Museum of Art's Center for Art + Environment. He is currently a research associate at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, a visiting scholar at San Jose State University’s CADRE Laboratory for New Media, a research fellow at the Highland Institute, a consulting philosopher at Earth Law Center, a Polar Lab artist at the Anchorage Museum, a Flux Exchange Artist at Flux Projects, and an artist-in-residence at Hyundai, the SETI Institute, and UC San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center. He co-directs the Center for Climate-Adapted Heritage Cuisine and serves as curatorial director of the Museum of Future History. For more from Jonathon: Nevada Museum of Art – Centuries of the Bristlecone Jonathon Keats at the Long Now New York Times: In the Fastest-Warming CIty in the US, These Artists See Hope -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 分