Talk of the Bay from KSQD

  On this episode of Moment of Truth, host Meilin Obinata introduces you to the Chair of the Housing Committee and District 10 California State Senator Aisha Wahab. In this housing-centric conversation, you’ll hear about her personal experiences as a rare renter in the state legislature, her views on affordable housing and her concerns about the “silver tsunami” of seniors who will need housing that matches their income as they leave the workforce.  Our conversation also included consumer protection topics beyond housing, such as her battle with investor-owned utilities such as PG&E (SB 332) and online pricing protections to ensure all consumers are paying the same price for a service or product (SB 259).

In this Part II of our series on “Sad Francisco,” we continue our deep dive into the history of the tech executives, crypto billionaires and venture capital/incubator heads who have attempted a (relatively successful) coup in San Francisco and now appear to be organizing a coup on behalf Donald Trump and JD Vance, who worked in San Franciso for Peter Thiel’s Mithril. Long time Bay Area journalists D. Scot Miller and Kevin L. Jones, with the Doom Loop Dispatch podcast weigh in on the connections between Thiel and other VC and tech execs like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Garry Tan, Balaji Srinivasan, Ron Conway and others who, aligned with the YIMBY movement, have tilted San Francisco politics right of center and are now allied with MAGA. How might this impact Santa Cruz, CA or your own “Blue” city? Just what do these people want? Is anti-Blackness at the heart of this agenda? Links and Resources: David Talbot and a Season of the Witch interview Emily Mills on Twitter, formerly known as Prince, now known as Cr*p. (Yes, we are dead-naming Twitter) Gil Duran’s essential article at The New Republic, from April, 2024 Gil Duran on Twitter Gil Duran on Substack. The Sad Franciso Podcast, with Toshio Meronek The Doom Loop Dispatch Pod Strive CEO Matt Cole on Linked In (funded by JD Vance’s Narya) The Phoenix Papers report (Part I) on Big Money in SF Politics Peter Thiel’s Praxis Co. plans an autonomous city in the Mediterranean International “Network State” projects Kelly Hayes on Christo-nationalism and Techno-fascism News outlets reporting on all this: 48 Hills Mission Local The San Francisco Standard (note funded by billionaire Michael Moritz, who is also allied with California Forever, etc.) One of our early shows with Ali Collins, a recalled School Board Trustee in San Francisco

Just ahead of his sold-out talk in Santa Cruz on April 25th, Ami Chen Mills grabbed a half hour with actor, comedian and author Rainn Wilson (formerly Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) to discuss his book SoulBoom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, his Ba’hai faith, the kind of God he believes in, how spirituality has become too individualistic and consumeristic … and many other profound concerns for the human race. This is a shorter version of this interview, edited for KSQD’s spring pledge drive. Find the full interview (“Director’s Cut”) at Moment of Truth with Ami Chen Mills soon at the show page here at KSQD and at all your favorite podcast sites.

In this extraordinary interview with Palestinian Dr. and Professor Izzeldin Abuelaish, who lost three daughters and a niece to Israeli tank shelling in Gaza in 2009—the same day, 15 years ago, as this program–and who recently lost 22 family members in the Gaza Strip to the Israel-Hamas war, Dr. Izzeldin pleads for an end to the siege on Gaza and addresses co-existence, hate, anger, forgiveness and how to move forward toward peace. … We begin with a report on the tumultuous events of Jan. 9 and beyond, when the Santa Cruz City Council considered a community-drafted ceasefire resolution; what happened at that meeting and what happened after that. Dr. Abuelaish addresses comments from local participants in that meeting as well as calls and emails from live listeners. This show was aired as a special production of both the “Talk of the Bay” program and “Moment of Truth with Ami Chen Mills” at KSQD. Show Notes and Resources Please see Dr. Abuelaish’s biography below: Professor and Doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian Canadian physician and internationally recognized human rights and peace activist devoted to advancing health and education opportunities for women and girls in the Middle East. Dr. Abuelaish was born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. He lived through many hardships there, including poverty, violence, and the horrific tragedy of his three daughters’ and a niece’s deaths in the 2009 Gaza War. Professor Abuelaish has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and is known as the Nelson Mandela and “Martin Luther King of the Middle East,” having dedicated his life to using health as a vehicle for peace. Prof. Abuelaish’ s book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, an international best seller and autobiography of his loss and transformation, has achieved worldwide acclaim.  Published in 2010, now translated into 23 languages, this book was  inspired by the loss of his three daughters – Bessan, Mayar, and Aya – and their cousin Noor who were murdered by Israeli tank shelling on January 16th, 2009, the book has become a testament to Izzeldin’s commitment to forgiveness as the solution to conflict and the catalyst towards peace.   I Shall Not Hate has become both a documentary, due out this year and a play. Past US President Jimmy Carter has said of  Dr Abuelaish … “He has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land.” Professor Abuelaish has been awarded nine honorary doctorates, The Order of Ontario, The Meritorious Service Cross, the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award of Canada; and many other international-level awards. Doctor Abuelaish founded the Canadian charity, Daughters for Life, in memory of his daughters. Daughters for Life provides young women with the opportunity to pursue higher education and to become strong agents of change.  Currently, Dr. Abuelaish lives in Toronto and is a Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.  I Shall Not Hate, the book: https://www.amazon.com/Shall-Not-Hate-Doctors-Journey/dp/0802779492 The Daughters for Life Foundation: https://daughtersforlife.com/

  Len Beyea has been a host of KSQD’s Talk of the Bay program since 2019. In this episode, the roles are switched, and Len is interviewed by David Thiermann. Len and Dave have known each other since 1970, when Len took a Swahili class from David at UCSC. David suggested the role reversal, and here is the interview that resulted from that. David Thiermann has worked in Tanzania, Brazil, and Japan. He owned a juice bar & cafe in Santa Cruz in the late 70s and early 80s, where he hosted performers from all over the central coast. He became a professional career consultant in midlife, to help clients dissatisfied with their careers see through their personal and professional inhibitions, and to follow their dreams. “There are many people out there who need to clarify and diversify their career goals,” says Thiermann. “They need a glimpse of their true potential.” Since 1987, Thiermann has used biographical techniques to help some 2000 international clients make career changes and upgrades. His approach to securing his clients’ goals differs from that of other career counselors, by emphasizing support, unconditional acceptance and what he calls The ID Process. “I get to know someone very well. I use biographies, surveys, testing, and gather information for a portfolio,” says Thiermann. This surprisingly personal biographical technique is applauded by Thiermann’s clients – more than half of whom are referrals.

  Charles Pasternak has served as the Artistic Director for Santa Cruz Shakespeare since 2023. Before that, he served as Artistic Director of The Porters of Hellsgate Theatre Co in Los Angeles for over fifteen years. He has had a wide-ranging career as an actor and director at theatres across this country including American Players Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, The Denver Center, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, three seasons with The Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis and four with Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Alicia Gibson is the co-director of this year’s production of A Christmas Carol. She is the Production Manager for Santa Cruz Shakespeare, and she is very grateful to be a part of the Santa Cruz Shakespeare team. She has loved Shakespeare since high school and always looks forward to introducing more people to the work. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara theatre directing program. Prior to her tenure with SCS, Alicia worked for many years as a director and stage manager in Los Angeles.

Rachel Anne Goodman interviews Deputy Insurance Commissioner, Michael Soller about the crisis in home insurance in fire-prone areas, including Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. A recent New York Times article revealed some alarming details about the way the new regulations and rates were negotiated. It raised questions about the future of real estate in California, and the prospect of even higher costs of insuring a home with fewer choices of companies willing to write policies. Then, Justin Kloczko and Carmen Balber join in from Citizen Watchdog, some Lara’s loudest critics calling for his resignation due to his handling of the insurance crisis.    

  Heather Houston is the Artistic Director of the women’s choir Yala Lati. Heather is a well-established Santa Cruz-based musician, recording artist, vocal coach, song circle leader, and choral director, whose spirit uplifts hearts and weaves community through the power of singing. Over the last 3 decades, you may have heard her singing 3-part harmony with her acappella groups Dis Moi and Sirenz, singing jazz with the Steve Abrams Trio, leading large crowds in song at demonstrations and marches, or singing at Bay Area and central coast spiritual centers. She offers live transforming events internationally, online, and in person, from the Esalen Institute, to 1440 Multiversity, to Sivananda Bahamas. But most notably, her annual Sisters in Harmony summer singing retreat at  Green Mountain Retreat Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains gathers over 100 women in song and sisterhood. Heather Houston’s original music can be found on all the streaming platforms. Yala Lati celebrates its 20th anniversary on Saturday November 22nd with a performance at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz.

Humanities intern Daymia Rousseau has this look at how AI is impacting students and professors at UCSC.

Third District Santa Cruz County Supervisor Justin Cummings weighs in on threats to the California coast from offshore drilling and seabed mining, and what local governments are doing to ready themselves for the right to protect our coast.

What happened after November 4th? Find out from Tony Russomanno.

Two Aptos High students, Emily and Lucy, talk about their work as podcasters and environmental activists. The Aptos Community Youth Program is a free youth leadership and arts engagement program offered to students in the Santa Cruz County area. As part of their work digital media and visual art outlets such as podcasting, film production, photography, and painting murals have become part of their work in sharing stories of the youth as well as taking on projects that benefit the community such as school supply drives, volunteering with local non-profits, and working with elders in the community. Two students Lucy and Emily are on the student leadership board of this organization, and a part of the Aptos High School ASB. They have been involved in ACYP since middle school and their early high school years and now find themselves as seniors at Aptos High School.

Join Tony Russomanno with guests Chris Krohn and Laz Meiman for a special report in advance of the Nov. 4 election.

Cynthia Ranii, a Santa Cruz resident and elite table tennis player, is competing for a slot in the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympic Games. Ranii became paralyzed from the chest down in 2005 at age 58 after sudden onset of a rare neuro-immunologic disorder known as transverse myelitis. Ranii was at the peak of her career as a school district superintendent, she had a loving family that was expanding and she was athletic, active and healthy. Everything changed almost overnight. Ranii was suddenly thrust into a new reality where almost nothing was comfortable or familiar. And it was then that she turned to one of her life’s constants: athletics. After pursuing wheelchair tennis for a while, Ranii found she had a knack for table tennis and she began competing at the highest levels against both seated and able-bodied opponents. Now, at 78, she’s ready for a new challenge and is focusing all her efforts on medaling at the Paralympics. Should she succeed in doing so, she would likely be the oldest individual to ever compete — let alone medal — at the Paralympic or Olympic games. Ranii recently joined Talk of the Bay to us all about her journey, which is only  just beginning. NOTES Santa Cruz Sentinel: https: santacruzsentinel.com/2025/10/04/at-58-cynthia-ranii-was-paralyzed-from-the-chest-down-20-years-later-her-sights-are-set-on-a-paralympic-medal/ Photo: Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel

When was the last time you ran your weekend errands without getting behind the wheel of a car? How about commuting to work? What about a trip to the beach? It’s not easy in our modern world to get around without a personal four-wheeler, but that hasn’t stopped Santa Cruz County transportation leaders from challenging the public–and elected officials–to give it a shot. Multiple local transportation agencies helped organize Santa Cruz County’s first-ever Week Without Driving campaign, which lasted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5. Talk of the Bay host PK Hattis was joined Oct. 1 by a key architect of the initiative, Santa Cruz Metro Board Chair Rebecca Downing, who talked about where the idea came from and why it’s so important for local policymakers to participate. NOTES Santa Cruz Sentinel: santacruzsentinel.com/2025/09/18/transportation-officials-push-for-a-week-without-driving-in-santa-cruz-county/ Photo: Contributed – Santa Cruz Metro

Matt Miller, the director of mobility transformation at Ecology Action, returned to Talk of the Bay in September to talk about the Santa Cruz Bikeway, a new 11-mile route encircling the city of Santa Cruz using only existing roads and infrastructure. While the two month pilot project wrapped up Oct. 8, and along with it most of the 160 yellow “bikeway” signs posted on street corners across the city, the route itself remains completely available to the public. Matt joined the show Sept. 3rd to talk about what purpose the route is meant to serve and what his team hopes to glean from this temporary pilot program.   NOTES: Santa Cruz Sentinel: Have you seen those yellow ‘bikeway’ signs around Santa Cruz? Here’s what they’re signaling. Ecology Action’s Santa Cruz Bikeway webpage

Hedge funds and secretive investors are buying up local papers and stripping them for parts. These so-called vulture capitalists and their attack on journalism are the subject of a new film out on PBS, “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink by Rick Goldsmith. We hear from Goldsmith and investigative journalist Julie Reynolds about the film and the impact on our democracy of losing so many local papers such as the Monterey Herald, the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the San Jose Mercury News. You can stream the film here: https://www.pbs.org/video/stripped-for-parts-american-journalism-on-the-brink-dyEAIs/  

CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, Erica Padilla-Chavez is in the eye of the storm of hungry people seeking food in the wake of pending cuts to CalFresh/SNAP (EBT, food stamps). They are seeking 75 new volunteers to help with the influx of new clients suddenly in need of food in our communities. You can help by donating at thefoodbank.org. For advocacy, you can write to your state and federal representatives and indicate you support full funding of SNAP.

On October 28, 2025, George Cadman was joined on Talk of The Bay by Ken Reichman and Denise Allen of Indivisible Of Santa Cruz County to discuss the No Kings rally & march on Oct 18th, what’s next, how members of ISCC are working to protect our community from ICE, and how people can join one of their action teams and get involved.

In this episode of Talk of the Bay, host Meilin Obinata speaks with two people experiencing different aspects of the rent crisis in the City Salinas: Sam Messenger, a person who received a visit on October 13, 2025 from the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office investigator who was investigating him about his decision to sign a petition in favor of the renter protection ordinances at the Oldtown Farmer’s Market one day, and Councilmember Andrew Sandoval of the Protect Salinas Renters Coalition. Monterey County Now ran a piece “Investigation into petition signatures in Salinas casts suspicion all around” on Wednesday, October 23, with quotes from Messenger and Sandoval, just four days before this conversation, about the visits from the Monterey County DA investigators which residents of Salinas have been reporting, which the DA’s office did not comment upon. We open the show with a clip from this weekend’s Zohran Mamdani rally at which Anastasia Ocasia Cortez and Bernie Sanders spoke, featuring a few words from Bernie Sanders and Mamdani. Mamdani’s campaign slogans include “Freeze the Rent” referring to the freezing of rent increases for rent-stabilized housing in New York City along with other policies which center affordability for working class New Yorkers. Obinata gives a brief summary of the tumultuous history of the rental housing crisis which residents face in Salinas, from 2000 to the September 2024 vote by the Salinas City Council to approve of a set of four tenant protection ordinances. In November 2024, three Salinas councilmembers either lost or vacated their seats, changing the political composition of the council and orientations towards these renter protection ordinances. In June 2025, the majority of this council with this new composition then voted to repeal the package of renter protection ordinances which the previous city council had passed unanmimously in September 2024. Then, the Protect Salinas Renters Coalition collected signatures to put the ordinances back on the table with a voter referendum. The Monterey County Elections Office verified the signatures mid-August. In late September, the Salinas City Council, after multiple councilmembers offered motions regarding the referendum, a majority of four ultimately voted to put the ordinances on the November 2026 ballot against a three member minority for the voters to decide what would happen to the tenant protections. At the mid-point of the show, you’ll hear a clip from Tony Vasquez, a former mayor of Santa Monica who is running for California Treasurer. He was speaking about the importance of rent control for protecting the diversity of that city at the California Democratic Renters Council reception on Saturday, October 25th, which was part of California Democratic Executive Board Conference, held at the Monterey Hyatt. Close to the end of the show, Messenger confirms that the investigator who knocked on his door was carrying a firearm. Obinata notes that the California Apartment Association is staying on top of the Salinas renter protections, with an article from late September about the upcoming November 2026 vote. Note that KSQD attempted to get the District Attorney’s Office of Monterey County to participate in an interview for this show but were told that they were not commenting on election law violations. As of the publishing of this post, KSQD also has not received a call back from the Fair Political Practices Commission. After this show,