Commentaries from the Edge

Rabbi David Wolpe is a renown spiritual leader and scholar in the Jewish community and beyond. He is based in Los Angeles, California and holds the position of the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, a large and historic place of worship and learning. He has taught at various significant universities, appeared in multiple television series and appeared in a myriad of public debates with the lik...

Mental health has become a wider concern as the pandemic way of life has restricted human contact and promoted feelings of depression and despair.  For some time now, research has shown that turning to one’s sense of spirituality can be a powerful tool for increasing and maintaining mental health.  In certain agencies and organizations mental health services have incorporated a client’s spirituali...

Gypsies, known as Romani people, with their long history of moving across countries and continents, fit into the modern day movement of millions struggling to find a better and more peaceful life. Barry Fisher tells us the story of his own musical and professional legal relationship as their lawyer, a population often stereotyped, living in the realm of mystique and mystery. We come to understand...

Grieving, it seems, is something we all need to learn how to approach as it is inescapable in the human experience. It is offset by the joys and beauty of life as we carry it along with us. In these last two years, we are living in a time with grief all around us from the worldwide pandemic that persists. With guidance from Robin Kay, Ph.d, current Adjunct Faculty member at the University of South...

Note to Listeners - There are a few points on this podcast recording with tech difficulties. Thank you for listening for the valuable information about the functioning of the brain. K. G. Dr. Steven Siegel, Chair of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine and Chief Mental Health and Wellness Officer for Keck Medicine, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has spent years researchin...

Amie Quigley, Director of Community Programs at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in California, has spent over the last decade perfecting outreach techniques and practices to those who are homeless, often mentally ill and with addictions. The centerpiece of her successes is her way of organizing agencies and service groups to coordinate their services through the Church sponsored Hollywo...

Velina Hasu Houston, Playwright and Professor, child of a Japanese Mother and African American Father, was born on a United States Military Ship sitting in contested waters. All her life she has had that sense of fluid borders. Velina was raised in a small town in Kansas, middle America in every way, and at a young age announced that she wanted to write. Navigating through a society that more ofte...

“Telling Untold Stories: The Latino Theatre Company of the Los Angeles Theatre Company” Evelina Fernandez, a founding member of the Latino Theatre Company and currently an Associate Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Theatre Center located in the heart of downtown, Los Angeles, describes her path from her part in the original production of Zoot Suit which went to Broadway, to becoming a lifelong...

Everyone has an opinion about what the United States public education classrooms need, and everyone agrees there is something terribly wrong with how young people are learning, or not learning, in America’s public education system. Robin Lithgow, a prominent educator in California, was a classroom teacher for 21 years before becoming the Director of the Arts Branch of the Los Angeles Unified Schoo...

In December of 2020, at a moment when we were in the throes of a raging pandemic, Dr. Marvin J. Southard, former Director of the Los Angeles, California Department of Mental Health, talked about the costs and cures of our increasing divisiveness in the United States society and in families and friendships. We ended that episode by promising to visit this topic once again six months later, and in o...

At a time of drought in the area of Southern California, and in the Southwest region of the United States, award-winning Novelist, Barbara Crane, gives us hope with her compelling and beautifully written story, WHEN WATER WAS EVERYWHERE. Fictional characters are set in the history of California at the dramatic moment when it passes from being part of Mexico to joining the United States as a result...

The Karsh Family Social Service Center of the Los Angeles Wilshire Blvd. Jewish Temple is a Center for our times, offering a menu of free services for anyone walking through their doors. Given the increasing needs of individuals and families in many metropolitan cities of the U. S. , it is a model for how a religious institution can practice the commandment of love thy neighbor by reaching out. Th...

The organization, Faith and Community Empowerment (FACE), has a membership of over 300 Korean Churches in Los Angeles, California. The Founder and President of FACE, Hyepin Im, discusses the long standing history of Asians in the United States, especially in California, being an invisible minority and what this means with the current violent attacks against Asians. Suddenly, there is a focus on As...

Some young people have hardly known what a consistent family life could be. They have spent much of their childhood and adolescence being shuffled from one foster family to another in a system allowing them to arrive at 18 years old unprepared for their future as an adult. Today, there is an organization that is taking on this challenge head on based in Los Angeles, California. Listen to the appro...

In Los Angeles, California, there is a church that is historic for being a center for social justice and police community relations. It is called the Church of Epiphany, one of the oldest Episcopal Churches in L. A. , and has a famous basement where meetings of social activists of the 1970s, and beyond were part of the Chicano (Mexican American) Movement for immigrant reform and a Moratorium on th...

The long trail of brutality toward African American males is the backdrop of Pastor Oliver Buie’s opening commentary on 400 hundred years of being discounted and mistreated. Facing the last year, and the future in this year of 2021, he makes the case for the remedies for racism, and the call for America to live up to its promise at last. Recounting memories from his own life, Pastor Buie describes...

Dr. Tony Beliz, renown Psychologist in developing programs and trainings to assess persons prone to commit acts of violence, talks about his past work at the Los County Department of Mental Health as well as an independent consultant, to teach mental health staff, law enforcement personnel and educators how to respond to those individuals who, often out of hopelessness and isolation, become prone...

MEDIAU is a concept ready to facilitate new pathways to a career in the changing and expanding world of media. It offers an online education available globally credited by and associated with the University of California at Irvine (UCI). There are several unique aspects of an education at MediaU. Adam Leipzig, the Founder, is a former movie producer, and past President of National Geographic Films...

In the olden days there were orphanages in the United States. Since the 1980s, in a major metropolis like Los Angeles, California, there has been a foster care system for children who are not growing up with a family member. This system has created its own problems with currently 30,000 youth under the charge of the Los Angeles County government. In 2017, arrived on the scene a new coalition, the...

Healing is needed now more than ever. The arts, available to all, offer powerful tools for sustaining us as we navigate the challenges of life during this pandemic. Ping Ho, Founder and Director of the University of California at Los Angeles (USA) Arts & Healing Program, gives us a roadmap for how to harness the arts for our well-being. She insists that we are each capable of self-expression in my...

Marvin J. Southard, Ph.d in his long career, contributed to new understandings and acceptance of mental illness, explaining in his innovative programming, that we are all on the same path of mental wellness, educating communities on how to reduce the stigma of mental illness. He had a lasting impact as a Director of the Los Angeles County, California, Mental Health Department bringing together spi...

Speaking as a Pastor of the Word of Encouragement Community Church, Reverend Smith Pollard discusses why clergy are in a position to be out front in helping congregants deal with the issues of our time - the pandemic, social justice, systemic racism and economic struggle. Most importantly, she explains why Black Lives Matter means everyone’s life matters, and the tradition in history of clergy of...

The Pico Union Project is the name of an extraordinary community center located in a Jewish Synagogue dating back to 1909, situated in a multiethnic Los Angeles neighborhood of many refugees. The Center is a model of vibrancy that practices responding to the needs of neighbors with determination and imagination. PUP founded by Craig Taubman who worked for years in the music industry, uses his tale...

Learn about the history and operation of an important and pioneering regional theatre in the USA as part of the global City of Los Angeles. Evelina Fernandez, playwright, actress, and Associate Artistic Director, has been a part of the performing arts center (LATC) since the mid-1980s. She discusses the pioneering theatrical work of LATC celebrating and encouraging the arts from diverse communitie...

ARMENIANS: FROM TRAUMA TO RESILIENCE Salpi Ghazarian, Director of the University of Southern California Institute of Armenian Studies, comes to this episode at a moment of war in the Armenian enclave of Azerberijan where drones supplied by Turkey are attacking the population as a way of forcing Armenians to leave this territory. The moment conjures up the long historic story of trauma in Armenian...