Twice weekly at 9:30 p.m., volunteers bring food donated by Davis restaurants and stores to tables in Central Park. Anyone who wants the food is then free to take what they want; the cooked food usually goes first. This is the Davis Night Market, created by students at UC Davis to reduce food waste in Davis and to get food to the hungry. The market serves about 30 people on an average night, and the founders would like to build it into a daily operation. Any food left over goes in the “freedges”—community refrigerators like the tiny libraries you see in front yards around town.
Today we talk with two of the Night Market founders, Valerie Weinborn and Ernst Oehninger, about why they do this, the reaction they’ve had, and what they hope to achieve. She’s a veterinarian from Chile who has a doctorate in Food Science; he’s a PhD student in Natural Resource Economics and comes from a family of farmers in Brazil.
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“Pffft, English. Who needs that? I'm never going to England.”
"Sensitive love letters are my specialty. 'Dear Baby, Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: you.' "
"D'oh!"
The Simpsons has delivered enough humor, satire, great writing and insight during its 30 years on TV to have attracted serious attention (and sites devoted to its funny quotes, like these from main character Homer Simpson). Karma Waltonen, an instructor at UC Davis whose expertise ranges from Margaret Atwood to stand-up comedy, teaches a class on the Fox network cartoon series at the University of California, Davis, and recently published her second book on the show, The Simpsons' Beloved Springfield: Essays on the TV Series and Town That Are Part of Us All (co-edited with Denise Du Vernay). On Davisville today she talks about The Simpsons, why the program matters, why students want to study it, and similarities between Springfield and Davis.
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Biotechnology is changing lives, products and expectations, creating both possibilities and risks. The changes are enormous, and more are ahead. My guest today is Jim DeKloe (pictured), founder and director of the Industrial biotechnology program, and a professor of biological sciences and biotech, at Solano Community College. We talk about the center in Vacaville, its unusual (for a community college) bachelor’s degree, biotech, the creation of a ”life sciences corridor” between Sacramento and the Bay Area, the need for ethics and laws to keep up, and how a product he knew from his time at Genentech saved his 4-year-old son’s life.
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Traffic on Interstate 80 through Davis is getting worse, and although proposed solutions are in the works, they’re several years in the future—assuming the money to pay for them can be found, and a consensus about what to do emerges. Today we talk with Anne Ternus-Bellamy, local government reporter for the Davis Enterprise, about the Yolo 80 project, other local traffic developments, and the spread of regional traffic into more streets in Davis, guided by apps that help people find paths around the clogs on I-80.
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Helping kids grow up well is a challenge that doesn't end. The question occupies parents, teachers, maybe almost everyone, and we address the subject today, not in a broad policy sense, but through one conversation with one person engaged in the work. Gemma Miner, the academic coordinator for volunteer engagement for the California 4-H, has 33 years of working with youth to help them develop confidence, leadership and life skills, plus degrees in recreation and experience as a pediatric registered nurse. We talk about the 4-H program (the photo shows her with some of her materials), what kids and youths need, how to reach them, what not to do, and how adults can make their experiences interesting to a child.
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Today I welcome back Derrick Bang for our ninth annual talk about movies. This time we cover streaming, the increased supply of films, the appeal of watching a good movie with hundreds of others in a large theater, six movies he’s looking forward to this holiday season, and three he isn’t – including Playmobil: The Movie and a remake of the 1974 slasher film Black Christmas. An entertaining critic who’s as comfortable skewering a turkey as he is appraising a masterpiece or waving away a mediocrity, Derrick writes reviews for the Davis Enterprise and his blog Derrick Bang on Film.
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(This program first aired in October 2018) American life is full of conflict – political, social, economic, all types. Today’s guest is Kara Hunter, executive director of the Yolo Conflict Resolution Center, who knows a lot about the subject. We discuss the center, what it does in Davis, who uses it, the results they get, and also about conflict overall.
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“Sacramento is projected to feel much like Arizona by 2100,” writes Kat Kerlin in the five-part online project UC Davis is presenting this fall, Becoming Arizona. “What can it be doing now to prepare?” On today’s Davisville I talk with her and Helene Margolis, an associate adjunct professor in the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine, about the series, the public health aspect, what to anticipate, what's being done, and how to get ready.
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October is a natural month for stories, particularly ones of a certain category—ones about the supernatural, bizarre events, terrors of various kinds, not always from monsters. My guest today is Gene O’Neill, a novelist and short-story mixed-genre writer who has twice won the Bram Stoker Award for best horror/dark fiction. Our topics include why people read dark fiction, the different genres, psychological vs. supernatural horror, Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House, new writers he recommends, his book The Burden of Indigo, his upcoming project The White Plague Chronicles, and the new movie Joker.
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If you follow the news, you know that the population is aging and changing as more people live longer--and that baby boomers want more from their senior years than previous generations expected. Our guests today talk about the demographic trend and some of the effects we're already seeing in Davis and Yolo County: Christi Skibbins, executive director of Meals on Wheels in Yolo County, and Sheila Allen, executive director of the Yolo Healthy Aging Alliance.
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