After months of discussions, Davis is closing in on new rules to tame downtown's late-night bar scene, which had grown in size, unruliness and violence until the fatal stabbing of a visiting college student last September shocked the town and prompted the city to clamp down. On today’s show we talk with Davis Enterprise reporter Felicia Alvarez, who writes about the issue for the paper.
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Dr. Angela Courtney, left, who earned a PhD in integrative pathobiology from UC Davis last year, has developed a urine test to detect breast cancer. She has also formed Adrastia Biotech with fellow UC Davis alum Mike Gilson to develop a commercial version of the test … and survived breast cancer herself. Today we talk with Courtney and Gilson about her remarkable work, and what it would mean to have a simple, early way to detect a cancer that killed 41,000 women and 400 men in the United States in 2012. They filed for a formal patent at the end of last August, and hope to get the test to market in about two years. (photo courtesy UC Davis)
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Oxford Circle, which formed at Davis High School, made it big enough in the 1960s to play the Fillmore, Avalon and other major stages in San Francisco and Sacramento, sharing the bill with bands like the Grateful Dead. Gary Lee Yoder (photo), Oxford Circle’s main singer and writer, and later a member of Kak and Blue Cheer, still lives in Davis, and his first appearance on Davisville 13 months ago became one of KDRT’s most popular shows online for 2014-15. Today he returns with more stories, including the first time he heard Janis Joplin sing—Yoder was backstage at the Avalon with Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia at the time—and sizes up the possibility of Oxford Circle playing again. “It’s on the back burner,” he says. “It’d be fun.”
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The “comments” section on the Davis Vanguard has evolved into a pretty good online discussion zone on various big issues affecting Davis. The opinions often go way beyond the couched language that sometimes passes for official discourse in town. Lately, the term “Vanguard 10” has emerged as a shorthand description of the most frequent commenters on the site … raising the question of whether they’re just a random handful of people who enjoy using the site, or instead represent the busiest end of what's emerging as one of the best online civic forums in town. Today we talk with two of the 10, Tia Will and Jeff Boone.
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This program first aired in March 2015, but we always knew we'd broadcast it at Christmas, too.
Fifty years ago David Willat, who was 11, was one of the half-dozen children who sang in the chorus on Vince Guaraldi’s classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Willat also sang in the choir on another of Guaraldi’s big projects that year, the Grace Cathedral Jazz Mass. On today’s program Willat talks about both experiences with host Bill Buchanan and Peanuts/Guaraldi expert Derrick Bang, Davis author of the 2012 book Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.
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Heard of the Davis Angels Network, or Silicon Valley Bank? The former is working to build a local culture that supports and invests in start-up companies in Davis, and the latter was founded in 1982 to become a major source of funding for emerging tech companies in the Silicon Valley (and grew into an international bank). On today’s Davisville, Lonnie Bookbinder of the Davis Angels, and retired SV Bank chairman Bob Medearis, who both live in Davis, talk about the real efforts to place more start-up ventures in town. There’s more going on in this area in Davis than you might know about.
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This week I'm glad to welcome Davis film critic Derrick Bang back to Davisville for our annual end-of-the-year movie show. 2015 has been a good year for movies, he says, and today we get his take on films to see and skip this season, the continuing importance of the Thanksgiving-New Year’s stretch to Hollywood, and the films he considers to be the most unappreciated movies of Christmas.
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Shades of Blue: Writers on Depression, Suicide, and Feeling Blue is a new collection of essays by 35 writers, edited by Amy Ferris. Two of the writers are Debra LoGuerico DeAngelo, Winters Express editor and columnist for the Davis Enterprise, and David Lacy, who grew up in Davis and now teaches writing in Southern California. "It is possible to find hope and solidarity in these pages, but don’t expect a feel-good trip," says the review in Publishers Weekly. "It’s a true-to-life kick in the pants designed to bring comfort to anyone who’s feeling hopeless." On today’s show, DeAngelo and Lacy talk about Shades of Blue, and the experiences behind their stories—Lacy’s “Allies in the Sky,” and DeAngelo’s “If I Love You, You’ll Leave.”
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In her Messenger series, Davis novelist Eileen Rendahl tells the story of a young woman living in Sacramento whose unusual powers allow her to recognize and talk to supernatural creatures—including a vampire who’s also an emergency-room doctor, and a werewolf who has tended bar for nearly 100 years. On today’s show we talk about the story, her snarky protagonist, the appeal of supernatural fiction, and why the creatures are no longer the icons of dread they were in the classics ... which doesn’t mean they’re cuddly.
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Even if you don’t own stocks, you’ve probably heard about the steep price swings in the stock market since August, and perhaps wondered what they mean. Brad Barber, a professor of finance at UC Davis, is an often-quoted expert (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN) on the market, investor psychology and related subjects. On today’s show we talk about investing in stocks, this year’s volatility, his research into the habits of the average investor, and the evolution away from pensions that guarantee a defined payout.
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