With the onset of fall comes announcements for music and entertainment. This week, we talk with and organizer from one of the Valley’s oldest public lecture series on the upcoming season for the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall. Joining us in the studio is Vice Presidents of Programming, Joyce Kierejczyk. …
Read More »To Boost Southwest Fresno: An Incoming College Campus, But Some Residents Want More
The state has been charging companies for their carbon emissions since 2012, and last year, it gave some of that money to communities most affected by pollution, including Fresno. Some of it was slated for Southwest Fresno — an area that has suffered high rates of poverty and perceived neglect …
Read More »Author Steven Church Talks About His Latest Book, And Why It Is And Isn’t “Disturbing”
Author and Fresno State professor Steven Church has written several books, many of them as compilations of essays. His latest is called “ I’m Just Getting to the Disturbing Part: On Work, Fear, and Fatherhood .” The essays span Church’s adult life, from jobs he took soon after college to …
Read More »Fresno State Symposium To Address Concerning Arsenic Levels in Groundwater
In June of this year, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Communications published a research article linking over-pumping of the San Joaquin Valley’s groundwater to rising concentrations of arsenic . The research caught the attention of water leaders from across the state, and on Thursday, October 11, many will be gathering …
Read More »Photojournalist Matt Black On Rising Fear And Hope Among Immigrants In Farming Communities
We’ve brought you stories about undocumented immigrants in the San Joaquin Valley before, and many of them are struggling with changing policies under the Trump administration. Now, we speak to a journalist whose latest project covers immigration — through photography. Matt Black is a photojournalist based in Exeter, and his …
Read More »Report On Substance Use Finds Alcohol Use Is The Most Common
When it comes to addictive substances, opioids like heroin and fentanyl have in recent years been dominating headlines around the country. And rightly so: Nationally, the number of opioid overdose deaths more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2016. But as concerning and dangerous as opioids are, we shouldn’t forget about …
Read More »Valley Fever Medication Poses Added Risk For Pregnant Women
When Jennine Ochoa became pregnant at the end of 2017, she didn’t know what to expect. At 42, she’d waited longer than most women to start a family. But she said her first five months were easy. “I had no morning sickness, nothing,” she said. “It was completely uneventful until …
Read More »How A Law On Lead In School Drinking Water May Not Go Far Enough
In January of this year, a state law went into effect that requires public schools throughout California to test their drinking water for lead by July of 2019. Lawmakers enacted the regulation in an effort to improve water quality at schools. And while thousands of water districts have now tested …
Read More »California’s Worsening Wildfire Conditions Putting Firefighters At Risk
September is over, and that used to signal the end of wildfire season. But as 2017’s massive Thomas Fire showed us, wildfires in California can rage on well into December. Meanwhile firefighting has gotten a lot more complicated; there’s drought to contend with, and housing development in fire-prone areas. Six …
Read More »Following Horrific Shooting, District Attorney Reflects On Domestic Violence In Kern County
In the last 10 days, Bakersfield has been the site of two high-profile attacks: In one, a man and a woman were stabbed in a Starbucks; a few days later, another man gunned down his ex-wife and four other people in east Bakersfield before turning the gun on himself. On …
Read More »California’s Successes And Failures As A Healthcare Testing Ground
As the fifth largest economy on the globe, California is looked to in many ways as a world leader—not just in terms of agricultural production and climate change mitigation goals, but also in the field of health, where we’ve been a testing ground for new ideas in health care policy …
Read More »Fresno Bee Reporter On Fraud Against Immigrants Seeking Documentation
Since coming into office in 2017, President Donald Trump and his administration have instituted a multitude of executive orders and other changes to federal policy that have disrupted the lives of both documented and undocumented immigrants. Closer to home, however, fraud and deceit here in the San Joaquin Valley are …
Read More »Jose Antonio Vargas Talks About New Memoir, Life As An “Undocumented Citizen”
Since President Donald Trump took office there’s been a lot of attention on immigration policies and undocumented people. But, these talks have actually been taking place well before Trump’s candidacy. Here speaking with us is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who also happens to be undocumented, Jose Antonio Vargas. He just …
Read More »