Talk Policy To Me

  CONTENT WARNING: This episode involves mention of police violence against people of color. Since the 1970s, Black police officers have formed informal unions in response to racism within their departments and in the greater community. In this episode, reporter Elena Neale-Sacks talks to an economist, a law professor, and a former president of a Black police union to better understand the purpose...

  As vaccine rates rise and health experts give more public activities the stamp of approval, people have begun shifting from private spaces to public ones. Today, we're talking about what public spaces are and the policies that govern them. We'll also talk about the unhoused folks for whom the distinction between public and private space is less clear.  Archival audio from YouTube user Saul Rouda...

On this episode of TPTM, we're talking philanthropy yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Since the Gilded Age, philanthropists have positioned themselves as gracious, charitable forces in society who are experts in identifying and solving our social ails. But the institution of philanthropy has had its critics from day one. What are the origins of modern philanthropy in the US, and how did they lead u...

  With over 100 million users and counting in the US, TikTok is beginning to play a major role in the political education and mobilization of its young user base. In this episode, which was written and recorded in the aftermath of the November 2020 election, Talk Policy to Me reporter Noah Cole spoke with Aidan Kohn-Murphy and Toni Akande, two of the teens who run the "Gen Z for Change" TikTok pag...

  Last summer, as a part of the public reckoning with racialized police violence, chants and mantras like "Whose Streets? Our Streets" and "We Keep Us Safe" and "We Are The Change We've Been Waiting For" resounded in the streets and all over social media. What would it mean to take these slogans seriously? To actually imbue people and communities -- rather than political representatives and corpor...

  Black History Month 2021 has been an eventful occasion at the Goldman School of Public Policy. One student organization, Black Students in Public Policy (BiPP) has been responsible for putting together a weekly speaker series on health and wellness, economic policy, politics, and social impact in the Black community.  In this episode of Talk Policy To Me , we hear from 7 students in BiPP who sha...

  The highly contentious Georgia Senate elections are right around the corner. The results will determine which party holds a Senate majority for the next two years. In this episode, we take a step back and examine the Senate as an institution in the current political context of hyperpolarization. Is it still functional as a mechanism of effective government? Maybe. Or, maybe not. To help make sen...

  During the holiday season, food is often central to the celebration. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are experiencing hunger for the first time, and food insecurity has become a daily reality for many. Today, we're talking about what some say is a practical solution to rising hunger—urban agriculture and the policies that shape and support it. If you live in the Bay Area a...

  When shelter-in-place orders were mandated in cities across the US, city employees sprang into action to facilitate the transition. Day-to-day government happenings were instantly and radically transformed, but one thing that cities still needed to do? Community engagement. In the face of orders for folks to stay home and social distance, cities faced a reality where they needed to quickly and e...

  Nothing in the US Constitution mandates or guarantees a two-party political system. Yet Americans are accustomed to understanding the political landscape as a binary of Democrats and Republicans; third parties are rarely taken seriously, particularly on the national scale. Members and candidates of political third parties, like the Green Party, argue that this is bad for democracy. With an incre...

  On November 3rd, California voters will decide on Proposition 22. The Proposition aims to allow app-based drivers to maintain their status as Independent Contractors by carving out a special exception to Assembly Bill 5. We talk to Goldman Alumna Rebecca Stack-Martinez and the Chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center Ken Jacobs about the implications of Prop 22 on labor and the influence of money o...

  Talking: Election coverage—where's the policy? Hourly breaking news. An endless stream of push notifications. A backlog of political podcasts (but not this one, right?). Today we're talking about how the news media covers elections, and how voters can find real information within the sea of coverage in the final weeks before the election. See show notes and full transcript here: https://gspp.ber...

  Welcome to Season 4 of Talk Policy to Me! It's been a whirlwind of policy news and happenings since you last heard from us (to say the least) and there's a lot to catch up on. While we work hard on new episodes, we thought we'd pop into your feeds for a brief moment to introduce a few new members of the TPTM team and take a moment to ask one another: What media resources are you looking toward f...

The brutal murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis Police Department officers, and the failure of the justice system to quickly prosecute the police officers involved, has triggered an explosion of activism across the country, and the world, in loud protest of police brutality against Black people. These actions vary dramatically along spectrums of intended impact and severity. And the response...

The 2020 Census launched April 1st, 2020. With it comes yet another time where individuals have to distill their identities into check boxes with limited options. In this episode, we're exploring how the race/ethnicity category options were created and how those available choices impact policy. Host Sarah Edwards talks with Cristina Mora, Associate Director of Sociology and Co-Director of the Inst...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought America to a screeching standstill, with most non-essential businesses shutting down, events being cancelled and postponed, school systems going virtual, and skyrocketing unemployment. And on top of it all, we're technically in the midst of an election season, which has also been severely disrupted by the shelter-in-place measures implemented across the country. ...

Continuing with our effort to cover the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy issues, Sarah Edwards (MPP '20) speaks with Ellora Derenoncourt, who will join the Goldman Faculty in the fall. Tune in to the conversation unpacking the issues of racial inequality in health and economics and learn from Ellora's historic economics perspective. For more on Ellora's work, visit  her website . Check out the...

In discussions around expanding voter turnout, many different policy interventions come up—same day voter registration, automatic voter registration, making Election day a holiday. But what if the best way to change the likelihood of people voting actually came in changing their first voting experience? There's a body of evidence that shows that voting for the first time at 16, rather than 18, inc...

As the numbers are coming in, statistics show that communities of color, particularly Latinx and Black communities are both contracting COVID at higher rates and dying from it at higher rates. What is causing this inequity? What solutions can we enact, both now and in the future, to change this? Sarah Edwards (MPP '20) spoke with Rashawn Ray, David M. Rubenstein fellow at the Brookings Institution...

Welcome to the first episode in TPTM's brand new series on Democracy! Do you ever wonder why our voting and election systems work the way they do? Has anyone ever preached to you the virtues (or evils) of rank choice voting, blockchain, or eliminating the electoral college? Then tune in to the lastest TPTM episode where Colleen (MPP '21) sits down with elections-policy experts and fellow Goldman s...

We are nearly one month into California's shelter-in-place order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And it looks like, in the Bay Area at least, we're seeing some payoff from our early efforts to socially distance; hospitals have not seen the number of patients initially expected, and public health experts are tentatively declaring our success in flattening the proverbial curve. In spite of the...

To wrap-up our series on Demography Shifts, Colleen (MPP '21) sat down with Goldman School Visiting Assistant Professor Mia Bird, who started as an MPP student at GSPP before pursuing an MA in economic demography (and then returning again to GSPP as a PhD!). Professor Bird discusses the different approaches that demographers and policymakers might take toward demographic shifts, shares her perspec...

More than half of the student population in U.S. public schools identify as students of color; yet less than one in five—18 percent— of the teacher workforce identify as teachers of color. Does diversity and inclusion in the teaching profession even matter? And, if so, how can public policy play a constructive role? To find answers to these questions, Khalid Kaldi (MPP '21) sat down with two forme...

We know from research—and from personal experience with our own elders—that mobility and independence are key components of mental and emotional wellness for the over 65, or senior, population. However, once they're no longer able to drive their cars due to health and safety concerns, that mobility—or ease of getting from point A to point B—plummets. A senior who no longer drives may be supported...

As our population ages, we are faced with a number of policy challenges. One, in particular, stands out: how will we provide care for those who need help? Our next episode in the series around Demographic Shifts explores the policy implications of the aging population and the people who will help care for them. California expects to see its population of seniors rise from 15 to 25% in the next 40...