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Podcast: Talk Policy to Me

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Episodes from 2018

Episode 204: Talking Elections

3 reasons millennials might vote more than Gen-Z


Young voter turnout is lower than overall voter turnout. But, as we approach the 2018 midterm elections, UC Berkeley public policy student Sarah Edwards speaks with Buffy Wicks, Sarah Anzia, and others to find that there are reasons to be optimistic about young voter engagement:

  1. Millennials are opinion leaders -- and have helped transform the social, cultural and political landscape in the last decade
  2. Young people are a tech-savvy cohort who can and are deploying technology to get out the vote
  3. While hot-button issues for young voters have been notably muted or absent, increasing concern around college loan debt and social safety nets are poised to drive interest and engagement higher

Wondering how to get more involved and have better conversations about voter engagement? Here’s a few ideas from our team:

  1. Vote!
  2. Attend community meetings in your local community
  3. Join our mailing list at Berkeley Institute for Young Americans

Speakers featured on this episode

Buffy Wicks headshot

Buffy Wicks is a candidate for the CA State Assembly in District 15. She was one of the architects of President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns.


Sarah Anzia headshot

Sarah Anzia is a political scientist who studies American politics with a focus on state and local government, elections, interest groups, political parties, and public policy. She is the Michelle J. Schwartz Associate Professor of Public Policy & Associate Professor of Political Science at the Goldman School of Public Policy. 


Joshua Dyck headshot

Joshua J Dyck studies American politics, public opinion and voting behavior, elections, and state politics. He is Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.


Max Lubin headshot

Max Lubin is the CEO of Rise, Inc and the founder of Vote Crew. He is a graduate student at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley

 

 

Read more about Episode 204: Talking Elections

Episode 203: Talking Food Policy

The role of your dinner plate in food systems -- and other food policy questions

 

Food surrounds us -- and yet we can become careless about how food is transformed from the farm to something palatable on our plate. UC Berkeley public policy student, Reem Rayef, interviews Nina Ichikawa at the Berkeley Food Institute about what consumers should be thinking about in their individual consumption choices, but also what the impact the aggregation of those choices means for food overall.

Considering the role of multiple actors in U.S. food policy, they also discuss how coalitions of like-minded groups can mobilize greater and more equitable access to healthy foods. Get some food for thought with this episode all about food.

Wondering how to get more involved and have better conversations about food policy? Here are a few ideas from our team:

  1. Form a more mindful cohort of food consumers with a book club, reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma or Six Seasons.
  2. Cook a local meal. Try shopping at the farmer’s market and learning about the sources of your food and the farmers who grew them.

Speakers featured on this episode

Nina F. Ichikawa is the policy director of the Berkeley Food Institute. She is a fourth-generation Californian and policy professional dedicated to making good food accessible, sustainable, and culturally appropriate. Prior to joining BFI, she served in the office of Senator Daniel K. Inouye and with the US Department of Agriculture’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Initiative. In 2011, she was named a Food and Community Fellow by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. In 2009 she launched the Food and Agriculture section for Hyphen magazine, and she has also written for Civil Eats, Grist, Al-Jazeera America, NBCNews.com, and Rafu Shimpo. Her writings on Asian American food and farming have been published in Amerasia Journal and Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader. Following research on sustainable food systems in rural Japan and Mexico, Nina received an MA in International Relations/Food Policy from Meiji Gakuin University and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies/Food Policy from UC Berkeley.

Read more about Episode 203: Talking Food Policy

Episode 202: Talking Policing and Criminal Justice with Tara Regan Anderson

The dinosaur in the room: can prosecutors help bring the criminal justice system into the 21st century?


Historically, prosecutors’ records were judged by the number of people who were put behind bars. For Tara Regan Anderson (MPP 2010) and her colleagues in San Francisco Defense Attorney Gascon’s office, that’s no longer the goal. Join her and Jonathan Stein (MMP/JD 2013) for a conversation about the shift in thinking around prosecution and the impact this shift is having on police officers, individuals interacting with the police, and the people connected to those individuals. In this episode, Tara talks about her work to support children of incarcerated parents and elaborates on how the criminal justice system affects all those involved, not just the individual entering the system.  

Interested in learning more about the work being done to support children of those in the criminal justice system? Here are three suggestions: 

  1. Explore the research from the Quattrone Center  
  2. Learn more about on-the-ground efforts from Project What! 
  3. Read Tara’s article “The Power of One Embrace”, shared on the National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s  

Read more about Episode 202: Talking Policing and Criminal Justice with Tara Regan Anderson

Episode 201: Talking Implicit Bias in Policing with Professor Jack Glaser

Implicit Bias: A buzzword or an area for major policy change?


As the country takes stock of the growing number of stories of people of color dying at the hands of police officers, more and more we are hearing about the role of implicit bias. Implicit bias trainings are being implemented at police districts across the nation—but what is implicit bias, and how do we tackle it? In this episode, Goldman School Professor Jack Glaser and MPA alumna Jasmine Jones talk about the brain’s role in implicit bias, the difference between implicit bias and prejudice, and the limits of trying to break the patterns of implicit bias without changing the societal landscape.  

Listen to Jack and Jasmine unpack the research about whether public policies can provide a solution for overcoming implicit bias in policing.  

Speakers featured on this epsiode

Jack Glaser is Professor and Associate Dean of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy. He is a social psychologist whose primary research interest is in stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. He studies these intergroup biases at multiple levels of analysis. For example, he investigates the unconscious operation of stereotypes and prejudice using computerized reaction time methods, and is investigating the implications of such subtle forms of bias in law enforcement. In particular, he is interested in racial profiling, especially as it relates to the psychology of stereotyping, and the self-fulfilling effects of such stereotype-based discrimination.

Additionally, Professor Glaser has conducted research on a very extreme manifestation of intergroup bias - hate crime - and has carried out analyses of historical data as well as racist rhetoric on the Internet to challenge assumptions about economic predictors of intergroup violence. Another area of interest is in electoral politics and political ideology, specifically the role of emotion (as experienced and expressed) in politics. Professor Glaser is working with the Center for Policing Equity as one of the principal investigators on a National Science Foundation- and Google-funded project to build a National Justice Database of police stops and use of force incidents. He is the author of Suspect Race: Causes & Consequences of Racial Profiling.

Read more about Episode 201: Talking Implicit Bias in Policing with Professor Jack Glaser

Episode 105: Talking Mental Health Policy with Jessie Harney

 

Goldman School student Jessie Harney speaks with host Jonathan Stein (MPP/JD '13) about mental health support for people suffering from PTSD, especially victims of sexual assault.

Jessie is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Truman State University and a Master of Science in Biostatistics from Washington University in St. Louis. Jessie’s research interests lie in criminal justice, and more specifically, prison reform. Her hobbies include Muay Thai, anything from the Legend of Zelda series, and cheese. 

Read more about Episode 105: Talking Mental Health Policy with Jessie Harney

Episode 104: Talking Mental Health Policy with Professor Lonnie Snowden

Psychologist Lonnie R. Snowden is Professor of the Graduate School in the Health Policy and Management Division in the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley. He also holds affiliated appointments in Berkeley's Psychology Department and in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, and he has held appointments in Berkeley's Institute for Personality and Social Research, at the Brown School, Washington University, St. Louis, and at RAND.

Professor Snowden's research focuses on mental health and other health services disparities in access and quality of care, and he approaches understanding these disparities from treatment systems and mental health policy perspectives. He has published more than 170 papers in the peer-reviewed research literature and has received 6 research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as receiving research awards from many other sources.He contributed to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General and was co-scientific editor of Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General.

His outstanding achievement awards include The American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy, The Surgeon General's Exemplary Service Award, the Berkeley Citation, and the American Public Health Association's Steve Banks Mentoring Award. 

Read more about Episode 104: Talking Mental Health Policy with Professor Lonnie Snowden

Episode 102: Talking the personal side of DACA with Jesús Guzmán

In Episode 2 of Talk Policy to Me, host Jasmine Jones speaks with immigrant rights activist and Goldman student  Jesús Guzmán about his personal story, the future of DACA, and the complexities of growing up in a mixed-status family.

Speakers featured in this episode

Jesús Guzmán is a second-year MPP candidate at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. While at GSPP, Jesús has served on the leadership teams for both the Labor Policy Group and the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative.

Jesús has also served as the program analyst for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Jesús is currently completing his advanced policy analysis with the Marin Economic Forum with a focus on the housing shortage and income inequality. Jesús’ policy interests include labor economics, equity in energy policy, and economic development.

Prior to attending graduate school, Jesús was the Program Director for the Graton Day Labor Center in Northern California where he developed innovative workforce training programs and advocated for inclusive immigrant and labor policies.

Jesús was born in Jalisco, México and grew up in Sonoma County where he now resides with his wife Stephanie and daughter Victoria.

Read more about Episode 102: Talking the personal side of DACA with Jesús Guzmán

Episode 101: Talking Immigration with Professor Steve Raphael

In episode 1 of Talk Policy To Me, host Jasmine Jones speaks with Professor Steve Raphael about immigration.

 

Guest Bio

Steven Raphael is a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and holds the James D. Marver Chair at the Goldman School of Public Policy.

He works on immigration policy, research questions pertaining to various aspects of racial inequality, the economics of labor unions, social insurance policies, homelessness, and low-income housing.

His research focuses on also the economics of low-wage labor markets, housing, and the economics of crime and corrections. His most recent research focuses on the social consequences of the large increases in US incarceration rates and racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes.

He is the author (with Michael Stoll) of Why Are so Many Americans in Prison? (Russell Sage Foundation Press) and The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research).  Raphael is research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the California Policy Lab, the  University of Michigan National Poverty Center, the University of Chicago Crime Lab, IZA, Bonn Germany, and the Public Policy Institute of California. Raphael holds a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley.

Read his papers on "Undocumented Immigrants and Their Experience with Illegality" and "Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration."

Read more about Episode 101: Talking Immigration with Professor Steve Raphael

Meet Our Podcast Hosts!

Jasmine Jones hails from Richmond, CA and graduated with a BA in Sociology from San Francisco State University. She has over half a decade of community organizing experience in low-income communities dealing with the school-to-prison pipeline, particularly addressing the issue of school police.

She was a founding member and the lead organizer at the Black Organizing Project based in Oakland, CA and under her leadership, working alongside parents and students, she passed four historic policies within Oakland Unified School District. In 2013 Jasmine was appointed by the mayor to the Human Rights and Human Relations Commission in the city of Richmond and has served as the Chair of the commission from 2014-2017. She transitioned into Leadership for Educational Equity in 2015 where she became a civic engagement coach training over 250 educators throughout the Bay Area in political leadership.

Jasmine is currently a Master of Publica Affairs (MPA) student at the Goldman School.


Jonathan Stein (MPP/JD '13) is the head of the Voting Rights Program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus and previously served as a voting rights staff attorney for the ACLU of California. He is Chair of the Board of Directors at California Common Cause and Chair of the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission. He is a Bay Area native.