Derrick Bang says he’s looking forward to seeing Steven Spielberg’s new movie, The Fabelmans, but hopes to pass on the modern-cannibals-in-love story, Bones and All. It’s time for our annual year-end movie talk with Derrick, and Davisville host Bill Buchanan begins by confessing he has seen only one movie in a theater this year. We also get Derrick’s take on some of 2022’s worst movies, some of its culturally significant ones, and how he keeps interested in movies after watching, reviewing and dissecting them since his days at the California Aggie in the 1970s.
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There’s a lot of magic in Vince Guaraldi’s music, especially A Charlie Brown Christmas. This fall Craft Recordings is releasing extended deluxe versions of the holiday classic, and we talk with three of the people involved: brothers Jason and Sean Mendelson, whose late father Lee Mendelson was the executive producer of the Peanuts holiday specials, and Davis author Derrick Bang, who wrote the expanded CD/LP’s liner notes.
We also talk about the soundtrack to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which Craft released in August.
Holiday music would be very different if Lee Mendelson hadn’t brought Guaraldi and Peanuts creator Charles Schulz together. We hear about how they met, talk about Guaraldi and the music — and Jason gamely recreates the moment when, as a kid, he was voicing Marcie in the Happy New Year, Charlie Brown TV special and the character gave Charlie Brown a smooch.
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Old rooftop TV antennas can become shovel handles. Discarded bedframes can be feedstock. Owners of balky vacuum cleaners can learn how to maintain them, instead of trash them. Boomers with a house full of unwanted possessions can get advice on handing them off to new uses. Community Mercantile, a new nonprofit store stocked with re-used items that offers this kind of serious recycling to the town, has its grand opening this Sunday, Oct. 30. Today on Davisville, we talk with co-founders Larry Fisher and Stephanie Koop about what they’re doing, and why.
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It’s 1909, and the Golden Fleece Traveling Players have arrived at the Woodland Opera House to present a melodrama, Daughter of the West. But strange accidents disrupt preparations for the performance — and the ghost of William Porter, who has haunted the Opera House since dying there in a fire in 1892, takes credit for the trouble when he appears to one of the company’s players.
This is a partial synopsis of the WOH’s current play, Ghost of the Woodland Opera House, and here’s the Halloween angle — some of the story is true. Today on Davisville we talk with Matthew Abergel and Bob Cooner, the co-authors of the play, which Matthew is also directing.
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Young adult buyers rediscovering a sense of community as they listen to records together. Interest in long-gone bands like Led Zeppelin. High prices for LPs you couldn't give away a decade ago. People emerging from the pandemic who bring in boxes of their vinyl records because they want to get stuff out of their homes, and they don't want the records to be thrown away. Paul Wilbur, the longtime manager of Armadillo Music in downtown Davis, says the current market for LPs and CDs isn't easily explained, but love for music is a big part of it. He’s our guest today on Davisville.
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In a remote Chilean desert, the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization is building a huge telescope that promises to see deeper into space than any optical telescope now existing. The work involves five countries and more than a dozen leading universities and institutes — and the president of the nonprofit that’s building it, Robert Shelton, lives in Davis. He joins us today on Davisville to talk about this huge new eye on the distant reaches of space and what it might show us, like whether we’re alone in the universe.
(The rendering depicts the Giant Magellan Telescope, now being built in Chile.)
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Imagine that you want to speak, but you can’t, because a stroke or disease has robbed you of the ability. Two researchers at UC Davis are helping to create a “brain-machine interface” that would use a brain implant and technology to recreate an individual's ability to talk. That advance would be profoundly important to the individual, of course, and for all of us, it’s a promising use of technology.
Today on Davisville we talk with Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky about their research, how the interface would work, who it can help, recent advances in neuroprosthetics, the novel leadership set-up of their lab, and what brought them to UC Davis.
(This UC Davis Health photo shows members of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab, with Sergey Stavisky at the far left, and David Brandman second from right.)
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The night sky is one of the best parts of Davis during summer and early fall. Hot days yield to mild evenings that make it easy to spend time outdoors after sunset, and a bright moon on the horizon can feel elemental, inviting thoughts about subjects that go far beyond the daily routine.
On today’s program Vinita Domier from the Davis Astronomy Club talks about the attractions of the night sky. With the James Webb space telescope, humans can now see farther in space than ever. We also we hear from stargazers at two recent nighttime events where the club's members brought out their telescopes: one event in the Explorit Science Center parking lot, and the other at a Yolo Basin Foundation benefit held one Saturday night deep in the Yolo Bypass.
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The migration of people from the Bay Area to Davis inspired by the pandemic has cooled, the average price of a house in Davis has shot past $900,000, and more than half of the city’s homebuyers now seem to be millennials. That's some of the updated Davis housing information you'll hear in today's conversation with three members of a Davis family who have made local real estate their career: Steve, Kit, and James Boschken. Steve, a real estate broker, and Kit own Boschken Properties, where she is also manager, and their son James is a real estate agent and property manager who’s about to move back to Davis from Texas.
(This July 2022 photo shows the site of the Chiles Ranch new home development planned on East Eighth Street in Davis)
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Today we dig into a form of American political expression that dates way back in U.S. history, applies to any type of view or opinion, and leaves behind artifacts of campaigns that helped shape who we are: political campaign buttons and memorabilia, powered by the people, events and aspirations the items represented. My guests are Bob Warren—son of Earl Warren, former governor of California and onetime chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court—and Adam Gottlieb. Both live in Davis, and both are active in American Political Items Collectors, which has its next national convention in Reno July 22-23.
And if you happen to find a certain button from the 1920 Cox/Roosevelt campaign in a box you inherited from your grandparents, your ship has just come in.
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