As California Tackles Single-Use Plastics In Landmark Bill, We Discuss Its Importance & Logistics
California’s Senate Bill 54 passed last week, a piece of landmark legislation for the country that would help phase out single-plastic waste and put greater emphasis on recycling by 2032. Along with this, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery would be the ones to enforce the law and make sure plastic manufacturers comply.
Today on AirTalk, we talk about the significance of SB 54 with Valley Industry and Commerce Association President Stuart Waldman and Heidi Sanborn, executive and founding director of the National Stewardship Action Council.
More Than Half Of American Adults Say Their Lives Are Somewhat Returning To Normal. Is Yours?
Life in general may never be the same as it was before March of 2020 when lockdowns and quarantines began as a then-relatively unknown virus started to spread across the country, but a new poll from the Associated Press and NORC shows that a majority of Americans think their lives are moving back in a direction of normalcy.
Of adults polled, 54 percent said their lives are somewhat the same as before the pandemic. 12 percent said their lives were exactly the same and 34 said their lives were not yet the same.
Today on AirTalk, we’re pose this question to you -- how close is your life now to the way you lived it before the pandemic? Are you still taking advantage of practices that became popular during the pandemic like curbside pickup at stores, grocery delivery or telehealth? Is your outlook on things like travel or visitng older relatives different than it was before? What concrete ways have you observed that your life is different now than it was before the pandemic? How is it the same? We take listener calls and hear their thoughts.
New 988 Mental Health Hotline Goes Live This Month – Are We Ready For It?
Mental health nonprofits across the state have been training hundreds of counselors in anticipation of a new national number that launches this month for people who are having mental health crises. The Federal Communications Commission picked the number 988, which launches July 16, to automatically feed into the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — 1-800-273-TALK, a 10-digit number that can be hard to remember. There have been concerns about whether current crisis response infrastructure overall will be able to meet demand, especially if 988 does eventually sync with emergency dispatches. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted last fall to roughly double the number of Department of Mental Health Psychiatric Mobile Response teams who will act as an alternative to a law enforcement response. But people who call these teams can often wait several hours or even a whole day before they hear back. Many questions remain about the implementation of this hotline and how the general public will be made aware of this alternative option.
Today on AirTalk, we’re joined by reporter at KPCC, Robert Garrova, vice president of Crisis Care & Suicide Prevention Center at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Shari Sinwelski, and Chief Executive Officer at the California Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies, Le Ondra Clark Harvey to discuss how the new hotline will be implemented and what challenges lay ahead.
With files from LAist. Read the full article here.
California Is Making Major Changes To Cannabis Taxation. How Will It Impact Local Growers And Retailers?
California is making major changes to its cannabis tax structure, including ditching a tax on growers. The changes were adopted last week as an effort to improve the legal cannabis industry, which has left owners and operators struggling to stay afloat. Some of the changes include expanding labor rights, creating tax credits for some businesses within the industry and shifting an excise tax from distributors to retailers. Some retailers feel they’ll take on more costs because of that change. And some growers are already being asked to lower their prices to accommodate the shift in taxes. Plus, what do the changes mean for consumers? Joining Larry to discuss the various implications of the changes is Nicole Elliott, director of the California Department of Cannabis Control, and Virgil Grant, LA-based owner and operator of 3 California Cannabis dispensaries, and he’s also a cultivator, policy writer, and activist.
The Large Hadron Collider Has Started Its Third Run To Uncover New Secrets Of The Universe
After three years of maintenance and upgrades, scientific experiments at Large Hadron Collider (or, as the cool kids call it, the LHC) have officially resumed. The LHC spent the last few months building up the energy levels of its two proton beams, which travel around a 17-mile long ring in opposite directions. With these two beams at their desired energy levels, experiments and data-collecting can begin in earnest and operate for nearly four years until another round of maintenance and upgrades is scheduled. With the upgraded equipment, the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the LHC are expected to record more particle collisions this time around than the last two runs combined. The start of run 3 also comes just one day after the 10 year anniversary of the landmark discovery of the Higgs boson particle at the LHC, which helped scientists at the scientific collaboration in charge of the collider CERN further understand the nature of our universe. Today on AirTalk, Larry is joined by physics reporter for Nature Elizabeth Gibney, and professor of physics at Caltech and one of the co-leaders of the Caltech team at CERN, which consists of experts in everything from the CMS particle collision detector, data analysis, and how new phenomena might manifest at the LHC Harvey Newman, to talk about the upgrades made to the LHC and its detectors, as well as what sort of mysteries may be unraveled during this run.
Sharing Memories Of The Mall As The Once Ubiquitous Centers Of Commerce Slowly Fade Away
Once the centerpiece of American commerce and an agora of sorts for young people who would hang out there, the mall has seen declines in recent years, fueled in large part by the rise of the internet and online shopping. But for many, the mall and the memories people associate with it are sources of nostalgia and bring back memories of a first job at a window store, family shopping outings or even just time spent hanging with friends at the food court. A recent New York Times op-ed explores how some developers are trying to repurpose malls into open, green spaces for mixed public use, and it got us thinking that it might be fun to look back on the rise and fall of the American mall, and what the future portends for the massive plots of land on which they sit and the buildings they once occupied.
Today on AirTalk, Columbia University Director of Retail Studies Mark Cohen joins Larry for a trip down memory lane as we explore the history of the American shopping mall from its birth to its rise to popularity to the decline we’re seeing now. Plus, we hear from listeners about their favorite memories of the mall! Whether it was a first job, a favorite store they’d frequent, or just memories of hanging out with their friends in the food court surrounded by the scent of buttery, doughy soft pretzels.