Davisville

We hear a lot about teen bullying, but this research from the University of California, Davis, is new: It says most such bullying occurs among peers climbing the social ladder, and the “highest rates of bullying occur between friends, and between friends of friends.” As if junior high weren’t difficult enough.

Today I talk with sociology Professor Robert Faris about why this happens—it’s “driven by this pursuit of something that is so ephemeral: popularity in high school,” he says—and what to do about it. Many conventional anti-bullying efforts, Faris continues, aren’t working. Churning, low-quality friendships contribute to the abuse, but solid and stable friendships can be part of the cure.

The report's co-authors are sociologists Diane Felmlee at Pennsylvania State University and Cassie McMillan at Northeastern University.

We have a new president in the White House, but the conflicts that tear at the country haven’t gone away. To do more than separate into groups and shout at each other, we need to do a better job of addressing and resolving conflicts. On today’s Davisville Kara Hunter, executive director of the Yolo Conflict Resolution Center, talks about how to handle conflict, wherever we find it.

She believes the quantity of conflict might not have increased in recent years, but our exposure to it has. Also, people might have become more comfortable sharing their disdain, disappointment and disillusionment.

To address the prevalence of conflict, she’d start in three areas, which she discusses on the show. She’s optimistic that we can get a handle on the problem, but says we’ll need good leaders who demonstrate conflict management, and we’ll need to consider our “will” – when we’re confrontational, are we just venting? Or once that’s done, do we really want to see change?

Brett Lee just spent 8 years on the Davis City Council, including two years as mayor. As he leaves office, we get his take on where Davis is strong (volunteerism), some lasting effects of the pandemic on the town, what he’ll do next, and how his views changed on the perennial question in Davis: Where do you allow developers to add housing, if anywhere?

Chris Hillman co-founded the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Desert Rose Band. He helped create iconic recordings like “Eight Miles High,” The Gilded Palace of Sin and Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and his latest record, Bidin’ My Time in 2017, was produced by Tom Petty. One of his earliest steady paying gigs, in 1964, was in a concocted band whose ersatz hillbilly songs included a tune about a mule. The music was “horrible,” he says. But great adventures were about to begin. Now 76, Hillman has collected some of his stories and experiences in his new book Time Between, and talks about a few of them today on Davisville.