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Episodes from 2019
Grab a warm drink and cozy up under your favorite blanket, listeners! In Talk Policy To Me’s final episode of 2019, we got all five hosts in one room to talk about... talking policy during the holidays. Join our hosts Reem, Khalid, Colleen, Spencer, and Sarah as they explore how policy gets personal during the holidays when we gather with family and friends, reckon with hometown and childhood memories, and look toward the future as a new year approaches.
How does public policy get all wrapped up in your holiday festivities?
Looking for better ways to talk policy all season long?
- TPTM Challenge! Talk about policies, not personalities: ask everyone at your holiday dinner table to share one public policy they are grateful for.
- Perfect your productive, political persuasion with NYT’s Angry Uncle Bot for when talk of impeachment (inevitably) comes up.
- Need a moment to step away from all the political chatter? Check out Harvard Med’s strategies for self-care this holiday season.
Happy Holidays from all of us here at Talk Policy to Me. Catch you in 2020!
We’re not used to thinking about transportation as a raced policy area. But, like all other policy areas, transportation policy has the potential to improve racial equity or widen racial disparities. But writer and historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi asserts that all ideas, actions, and policies are either racist or anti-racist, removing the gray area of so-called ‘race neutrality’ in his recently published book, How To Be An Anti-Racist. This means that transportation policy – like all other policy areas – has the potential to improve racial equity, or widen racial disparities.
For the final episode of our policy design series, Talk Policy To Me host Reem Rayef interviews two transportation experts about how planners and policymakers can build transportation systems that serve all communities, and improve accessibility for those who need it most. Dan Chatman, Associate Professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of City & Regional Planning, discusses how public transit infrastructures can facilitate increased racial segregation, and describes the inequitable distribution of transit’s costs and benefits between white and non-white communities. Lateefah Simon, District 7 Representative on the BART Board of Directors and President of the Oakland-based Akonadi Foundation, makes the concept of anti-racist transportation policy concrete through discussion of current policy debates happening at the BART Board of Directors. Dan and Lateefah are passionate about centering racial equity in designing both transportation infrastructures, and the policies that we lay over those infrastructures. If you listen closely, you can hear them banging their fists on the studio table, as they drive home their points on transit justice.
The inequities of transit and transportation systems are clearly visible in the Bay Area, where BART lines and highways bisect historically Black neighborhoods, transit fares are regressive, and transit-oriented development is code for Black displacement. But the system isn’t broken beyond repair. Listen to this episode of Talk Policy To Me to learn how policymakers are integrating radical ideas of anti-racism into bureaucratic and regulatory processes to bring about justice in transportation systems, and beyond.
For more information about anti-racism, check out Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How To Be An Antiracist. It’s an impactful and important read.
For reading about equitable and just transportation policy in California, visit TransForm at www.transformca.org.
The study referenced in the interview with Dan Chatman, titled “Race, Space, and Struggles for Mobility: Transportation Impacts on African Americans in Oakland and the Bay Area” can be found here.
Thanks to the UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute for the use of footage from the September 2019 talk by Ibram X. Kendi which was excerpted in this episode. The speech and panel conversation can be found in their entirety here.
Who benefits most from the tax system? What did the Trump tax cuts achieve? How do taxes affect inequality? What’s the relationship between taxes and democracy?
Tax policy seems like it was designed by, of, and for the rich. But, as our guest today Gabriel Zucman points out, the US tax code was once a vastly different beast.
Zucman is an associate professor of economics at UC Berkeley, director of the Center on Wealth and Income Inequality, and economic advisor for two 2020 presidential campaigns. His latest book The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make them Pay, co-written with UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, documents the dramatic transformation of the US tax code. In less than a lifetime, Americans exchanged the most progressive tax system in the world—a tax system with marginal income tax rates as high as 94 percent for the highest earners—for one where the 400 wealthiest members of society pay a lower tax rate than any other income group.
Zucman’s work is clear. Tax dodging” and the current iteration of the tax system—from income and payroll taxes to sales and property taxes—are not inevitable outcomes, but deliberate choices made by policymakers to privilege the interests of wealthy Americans and multinational corporations. If you believe this theory, it follows that we can and should make better choices in the future. For a preview of what these choices might look like and an outline of how we can design a progressive tax system for the twenty-first century, tune in to this conversation between Khalid Kaldi (MPP ’21) and Gabriel Zucman.
If tax policy brings you joy, check out:
- Tax Policy Simulator
- 60 Profitable Fortune 500 Companies Avoided All Federal Income Taxes in 2018, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Report)
- Combating Inequality Conference (Video)
What options do we have in our toolkit as policymakers when it comes to policy design? Are the tools government typically chooses to wield the most effective ones? If not, how can we get government to invest in a new approach to policy design?
In episode three of our series on policy design and implementation, Colleen Pulawski (MPP ’21) speaks with Brandon Greene of the Oakland Civic Design Lab and Michael Ford in the Oakland Department of Transportation about using human-centered design to restructure government policies and services. Spencer Bowen (MPP ‘20) joins in the conversation to help unpack what we, as policy students, should take away from this application of human-centered design.
Interested in following Oakland’s efforts to use human-centered frameworks to design better government systems? Eager to learn about other teams doing similar work? Check out the resources below:
- Check out the CDL’s website and keep up with their current and future work on Medium
- Read Brandon’s 12-week series on innovation in city government on GovLoop
- Explore Bloomberg Philanthropies’ work with i-teams across the globe or Apolitical’s Innovation Lab Directory
Was school integration a “failed experiment”? Is the impact of policy limited when it comes to education?
In this episode, Goldman Professor Rucker Johnson debunks the myths around school integration and shares insights from his new book, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works.
In this second episode of our series on Policy Design and Implementation, Sarah Edwards (MPP ’20) speaks with Professor Johnson about the way well-designed policy can lead to significant outcomes for all children. The conversation covers the impacts of historic desegregation, the dangers of current resegregation, and the best combination of policies to achieve diversity and educational excellence.
As with many of the issues that Talk Policy to Me covers, there is more to the story of integration and race in schools than we could cover in this short episode. Here are a few resources we suggest if you are interested in diving deeper:
Check out Children of the Dream, available at your local bookstore
Read “It Was Never About Busing” by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Explore the Washington Posts’ map on school district diversity
What do Healthcare.gov, police officer recruitment, and 911 call centers have in common? All can be improved through smart policy design tweaks!
In this episode, Goldman Professor Elizabeth Linos and TPTM host Spencer Bowen (MPP 2020) discuss how small changes in policy design can result in big differences in impact. The first in our ongoing series on Policy Design and Implementation, this episode helps break down the different mechanisms that can be used to influence the direction of policy results. In addition, Professor Linos shares her most recent research, about small changes to improve the day-to-day lives (and then the retention!) of 911 call center staff. Do you want to learn more about the big impact of small design changes? Here’s our top three:
- Read Elizabeth Linos’ article
- Check out the book Nudge from your local library
- Learn about one of the first “nudge units” in government, the Behavioral Insights Team, and what they’re working on today.
The Talk Policy to Me team is back for Season 3! This season, our three hosts from last year (Spencer, Reem, and Sarah) are joined by two new hosts, Colleen and Khalid. Host Spencer Bowen (MPP 2020) leads a conversation with the team about how policies we take for granted were once policy choices. Hear from all five hosts as to what “status quo” policies they can’t let go of.
We are excited to bring you Season 3 of Talk Policy To Me. New episodes are coming soon!
Find us on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
It’s often assumed that a college student living on ramen or going to events for free pizza is just part of the experience of being a “starving student.” But the data show a much grimmer reality: 56% of college students nationally have experienced housing insecurity and 40% of students at UC Berkeley are food insecure. How can this issue be tackled when the narrative downplays the depth of the problem?
In this episode, Sarah Edwards (MPP 2020) speaks with national and local experts on their efforts to change that narrative and provide real support to students. Sarah turns to Marissa Meyers from the Hope Center at Temple University for the national perspectives and to Ruben Canedo and Maria Balcazar Tellez* from the Berkeley Basic Needs Center for what’s happening on the UC Berkeley campus. Tune in to learn more about the challenges that many students face and the progress toward solutions.
What more can you do? Our team suggests you start here:
- Check out the most recent report from the Hope Center with results from their “Real College” Survey
- Follow the conversations around concerns with the cost of college and around funding basic needs on college campuses—we suggest this brief, this article, and this report as a place to start.
- Help change the narrative downplaying the challenges many students face. Talk to the people in your life about this issue, share your story through the #realcollege campaign, or volunteer with the Berkeley Basic Needs Center.
* The episode incorrectly identifies Maria Balcazar Tellez as Maria Tellez. We apologize for the error.
Parks. Freeways. Street lamps. You might not group those together, but they’re all public goods – the goods and services that prop up a functioning society. They’re also things that our market-based economy doesn’t supply in the right places and right amounts without some thoughtful public policy.
Spencer Bowen (MPP ’20) sat down with his fellow MPP candidate Eric Harris Bernstein to talk about public goods – and specifically public restrooms.
In this episode, you’ll hear a broad overview of public goods, takes on ongoing bathroom-centered equity battles, scholarly perspectives on restrooms’ place in our culture, and much more. You’ll also hear a story about bathrooms that Eric produced in the fall for North Gate Radio’s “The Fix,” a radio show about public policy solutions.