Talk Policy To Me
by Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Institute for Young Americans
Old problems. New solutions. In Talk Policy To Me, see public policy with fresh eyes by meeting the next generation of activists, advocates, and policymakers. In each episode, you'll hear a young person's story — and learn how they're changing their corner of the world for the better.
Episodes
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The Kids Behind KOSA
This is the story of one young person's battle to transform tech policy for teens. Because while young people struggle with mental health on social media, big tech companies are profiting off their screen time. In this episode, meet Zamaan Qureshi, who got involved in tech policy as a teenager...
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Treno's Community Land Trust
Home. It's one of those ideas that is core to us. But what if your home was gentrifying — becoming less affordable and recognizable with each day? This episode tells the story of Treno Morton, a young person who has set off to safeguard home not just for himself, but for his historic Black...
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There's Something in the Water
Two recent college grads trying to address contaminated water in an isolated town. But what can two young people really do to help solve a 20-year-old problem embedded deep in the ground — and in local politics? We're exploring water justice and public policy in California's Central Valley and...
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Rose, Rising
This is the origin story of a teen climate activist who made it to the White House. Host Ava Kargosha shares the journey of former youth climate activist Rose Strauss, who made headlines for confronting a state senator about the oil money lurking behind his climate change denial. Listen in to…
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Don't be a WebQoof
This episode takes us to India, where fake news on Whatsapp spreads like wildfire. Is addressing it a hopeless cause? Learn about solutions with Abhishek Anand, a Gen Z journalist who joined a Deli-based fact-checking team. Listen to discover the team's techniques for battling an endless flow of...
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Farming Dreams
A bare plot of land. An innovative farming technique. And seemingly insurmountable challenges. This is the story of a 22-year-old farmer who crosses the country to help a small community facing food insecurity. Shamik Chandrachood moves from Kentucky to California to bring a technique called...
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Pushing the (Age) Limits
Emily Nguyen started working in the government as a teenager. Can teenagers get taken seriously in San Francisco City Hall? And why does it matter that youth like Emily participate in civics? Welcome to the first episode of Season 6, a story about the joys, surprises, and struggles of being young...
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Trailer: Season Six
A new season of Talk Policy to Me is launching soon. Transcript: https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/podcast/trailer-season-six
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Professor Robert B. Reich speaks at Goldman School commencement
Professor Robert B. Reich was voted by the graduating students of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy to be their faculty speaker. Always a beloved teacher, this occasion was especially meaningful because it marked Professor Reich's retirement from teaching. Robert Reich was introduced…
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TN Rep Justin Jones speaks at Goldman School commencement
Tennessee Representative Justin Jones addressed the graduates at the Goldman School of Public Policy's commencement on May 14, 2023. Representative Jones came into the national spotlight when he was expelled from the Tennessee legislature for taking to the assembly floor to protest gun violence…
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Episode 512: Talking Agriculture, Drought, and Resilience
This year, researchers found that the last 22 years were the driest consecutive years in the North American southwest in over a millennium. The pace and scale of climate change is forcing states and counties to adapt rapidly. In California, one of the industries at the forefront of the adaptation...
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Episode 511: Talking the Rise of Anti-LGBTQ Legislation
The annual number of anti-LGBTQ bills filed has skyrocketed over the past several years, from 41 in 2018 to 240 and counting in the first three months of this year. Half of these bills are targeting transgender people specifically. At the same time, surveys of the general public show over 70% say...
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Episode 510: Talking Social Equity Cannabis
Show Notes In 2016, California voters legalized recreational cannabis through Prop 64. Now, five years after legalization, city's are grappling with the difficulty of prioritizing social equity in the cannabis licensing process for Black, brown, and formerly incarcerated small business owners who...
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Episode 509: Talking Race-Class Fusion
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party take different approaches to talking about race and racism. While politicians in the Republican Party have used coded language or "dog whistles" to stoke racial division, politicians in the Democratic Party either avoid talking about race in favor of...
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Episode 508: Talking a Voting Overhaul, Part 2
This is the second episode in a two-part series about changing how we vote in the United States. In today's episode, Talk Policy To Me reporter Elena Neale-Sacks talks with voting systems researchers Sara Wolk and Clay Shentrup about what they think the order of operations should be to get to a...
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Episode 507: Talking a Voting Overhaul, Part 1
In recent months and years, legislation meant to make it more difficult to vote, especially for Black and brown people, has proliferated in some state legislatures. But problems with the way we vote in the United States go deeper than these laws. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Talk Policy To...
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Episode 506: Talking Dating in a Digital World
As of 2021, there were 30 million online dating users in the US and 321 million users worldwide. Despite this massive number of users, there's very little policy that regulates how users behave on these platforms. Studies show that a majority of women have experienced sexual harassment online and...
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Episode 505: Talking Fair Chance Housing
In February 2020, the Oakland City Council passed Oakland's Fair Chance Housing ordinance. The legislation was the first in California — joining cities nationwide like Seattle and Portland — to ensure that people returning home from the criminal justice system can legally live with family members...
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Episode 504: Talking Vaccine Deniers
With 59% of the US population fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the increased availability of booster shots, and the rise of a new variant, having a highly vaccinated public is incredibly important to the fight against COVID in the months ahead. In this episode, Talk Policy to Me reporter Noah...
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Episode 503: Talking Oakland A's—Will they still or will they go?
The A's proposal for a new waterfront baseball stadium at Oakland's Howard Terminal is a multi-use development site that would include shops, parks, and housing. As the City of Oakland and Alameda County negotiate with the A's over how these benefits are paid for, much has been made about the...
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Episode 502: Talking Trade-offs and the Electric Grid
As Congress struggles to pass a spending bill that includes some of the biggest climate legislation the U.S. has seen, there's another big hurdle the country needs to clear to make big moves on climate change —the electric grid. In this episode, reporter Elena Neale-Sacks talks to energy policy...
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Episode 501: Talking "Your Neighbor, the Bounty Hunter"
Today's episode explores the new wave of "rights suppressing laws" with New York Times Op-Ed writers and legal scholars Jon Michaels and David Noll. Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/opinion/texas-abortion-law.html See show notes and full transcript here:...
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Season 5 Trailer
Season 5 of Talk Policy To Me is dropping soon, with new hosts Noah Cole and Amy Benziger. Listen and subscribe! See show notes and full transcript here: https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/podcast/season-5-trailer
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Episode 415: Talking with David C. Wilson
In this final episode of TPTM Season 4, we say goodbye to hosts Reem and Colleen and hello to the incoming Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy, Dr. David C. Wilson. See show notes and full transcript here:...
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Episode 414: Talking Lies Your High School Econ Teacher Told You
Cash transfers discourage work, price ceilings and floors (like the minimum wage) are economically inefficient, and trade makes everyone better off. If you've ever taken a basic economics course in high school or even in college, these were probably the major takeaways. But these are myths --dire...
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Episode 413: Talking Black Police Unions
CONTENT WARNING: This episode involves mention of police violence against people of color. Since the 1970s, Black police officers have formed informal unions in response to racism within their departments and in the greater community. In this episode, reporter Elena Neale-Sacks talks to an...
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Episode 412: Talking Public Spaces
As vaccine rates rise and health experts give more public activities the stamp of approval, people have begun shifting from private spaces to public ones. Today, we're talking about what public spaces are and the policies that govern them. We'll also talk about the unhoused folks for whom the...
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Episode 411: Talking philanthropy—yesterday, today, and tomorrow
On this episode of TPTM, we're talking philanthropy yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Since the Gilded Age, philanthropists have positioned themselves as gracious, charitable forces in society who are experts in identifying and solving our social ails. But the institution of philanthropy has had…
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Episode 410: Tok Policy To Me—Youth Political Mobilization through TikTok
With over 100 million users and counting in the US, TikTok is beginning to play a major role in the political education and mobilization of its young user base. In this episode, which was written and recorded in the aftermath of the November 2020 election, Talk Policy to Me reporter Noah Cole…
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Episode 409: Talking Anarchism and Direct Action
Last summer, as a part of the public reckoning with racialized police violence, chants and mantras like "Whose Streets? Our Streets" and "We Keep Us Safe" and "We Are The Change We've Been Waiting For" resounded in the streets and all over social media. What would it mean to take these slogans...
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Episode 408: Talking Black History Month 2021
Black History Month 2021 has been an eventful occasion at the Goldman School of Public Policy. One student organization, Black Students in Public Policy (BiPP) has been responsible for putting together a weekly speaker series on health and wellness, economic policy, politics, and social impact in...
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Episode 407: Talking the U.S. Senate—Is It Still Relevant?
The highly contentious Georgia Senate elections are right around the corner. The results will determine which party holds a Senate majority for the next two years. In this episode, we take a step back and examine the Senate as an institution in the current political context of hyperpolarization.…
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Episode 406: Talking Urban Agriculture & Food Policy
During the holiday season, food is often central to the celebration. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are experiencing hunger for the first time, and food insecurity has become a daily reality for many. Today, we're talking about what some say is a practical solution to…
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Episode 405: Talking The Future of Community Engagement
When shelter-in-place orders were mandated in cities across the US, city employees sprang into action to facilitate the transition. Day-to-day government happenings were instantly and radically transformed, but one thing that cities still needed to do? Community engagement. In the face of orders...
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Episode 404: Talking Ballot Access & The Green Party
Nothing in the US Constitution mandates or guarantees a two-party political system. Yet Americans are accustomed to understanding the political landscape as a binary of Democrats and Republicans; third parties are rarely taken seriously, particularly on the national scale. Members and candidates…
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Episode 403: Talking Prop 22, App-Based Drivers, and Labor
On November 3rd, California voters will decide on Proposition 22. The Proposition aims to allow app-based drivers to maintain their status as Independent Contractors by carving out a special exception to Assembly Bill 5. We talk to Goldman Alumna Rebecca Stack-Martinez and the Chair of the UC...
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Episode 402: Talking Election Coverage
Talking: Election coverage—where's the policy? Hourly breaking news. An endless stream of push notifications. A backlog of political podcasts (but not this one, right?). Today we're talking about how the news media covers elections, and how voters can find real information within the sea of...
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Episode 401: Talking Election Media Diets
Welcome to Season 4 of Talk Policy to Me! It's been a whirlwind of policy news and happenings since you last heard from us (to say the least) and there's a lot to catch up on. While we work hard on new episodes, we thought we'd pop into your feeds for a brief moment to introduce a few new members...
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Episode 320: Talking Young Voters
The brutal murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis Police Department officers, and the failure of the justice system to quickly prosecute the police officers involved, has triggered an explosion of activism across the country, and the world, in loud protest of police brutality against Black...
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Episode 319: Talking Identity, the Census, and How We're All Counted
The 2020 Census launched April 1st, 2020. With it comes yet another time where individuals have to distill their identities into check boxes with limited options. In this episode, we're exploring how the race/ethnicity category options were created and how those available choices impact policy....
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Episode 318: Talking Democracy in the Era of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought America to a screeching standstill, with most non-essential businesses shutting down, events being cancelled and postponed, school systems going virtual, and skyrocketing unemployment. And on top of it all, we're technically in the midst of an election season,...
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Episode 317: Talking COVID-19, Racial Inequality, and Economic Impacts
Continuing with our effort to cover the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy issues, Sarah Edwards (MPP '20) speaks with Ellora Derenoncourt, who will join the Goldman Faculty in the fall. Tune in to the conversation unpacking the issues of racial inequality in health and economics and learn from...
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Episode 316: Talking 16-Year-Olds and Voting
In discussions around expanding voter turnout, many different policy interventions come up—same day voter registration, automatic voter registration, making Election day a holiday. But what if the best way to change the likelihood of people voting actually came in changing their first voting...
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Episode 315: Talking COVID-19 and Racial Inequity
As the numbers are coming in, statistics show that communities of color, particularly Latinx and Black communities are both contracting COVID at higher rates and dying from it at higher rates. What is causing this inequity? What solutions can we enact, both now and in the future, to change this?...
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Episode 314: Talking Elections and Voting Systems
Welcome to the first episode in TPTM's brand new series on Democracy! Do you ever wonder why our voting and election systems work the way they do? Has anyone ever preached to you the virtues (or evils) of rank choice voting, blockchain, or eliminating the electoral college? Then tune in to the...
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Episode 313: COVID-19 Roundtable
We are nearly one month into California's shelter-in-place order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And it looks like, in the Bay Area at least, we're seeing some payoff from our early efforts to socially distance; hospitals have not seen the number of patients initially expected, and public...
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Episode 312: Talking Demography (Wrap Up!)
To wrap-up our series on Demography Shifts, Colleen (MPP '21) sat down with Goldman School Visiting Assistant Professor Mia Bird, who started as an MPP student at GSPP before pursuing an MA in economic demography (and then returning again to GSPP as a PhD!). Professor Bird discusses the different...
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Episode 311: Talking Educator Equity
More than half of the student population in U.S. public schools identify as students of color; yet less than one in five—18 percent— of the teacher workforce identify as teachers of color. Does diversity and inclusion in the teaching profession even matter? And, if so, how can public policy play…
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Episode 310: Talking Aging and Transportation
We know from research—and from personal experience with our own elders—that mobility and independence are key components of mental and emotional wellness for the over 65, or senior, population. However, once they're no longer able to drive their cars due to health and safety concerns, that...
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Episode 309: Talking Aging and Labor
As our population ages, we are faced with a number of policy challenges. One, in particular, stands out: how will we provide care for those who need help? Our next episode in the series around Demographic Shifts explores the policy implications of the aging population and the people who will help...
About this show
Old problems. New solutions. In Talk Policy To Me, see public policy with fresh eyes by meeting the next generation of activists, advocates, and policymakers. In each episode, you'll hear a young person's story — and learn how they're changing their corner of the world for the better.
Hosted by
Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Institute for Young Americans