KCBS Radio In Depth

Another start to fire season, another reminder that we are living in a new, far more destructive normal. On this edition of KCBS In Depth, we discuss why this new normal is the result of some pretty abnormal fire management in California, and what it might take to bring our wildlands back to a more natural, fire resilient state. 

Guests:

• Bill Stewart, a forestry specialist with UC Berkeley and the co-director of Berkeley Forests
• Malcolm North, a forest ecologist with the US Forest Service and a professor at UC Davis

Host: Keith Menconi 

After generations battling wildfires, California has among the most robust fire fighting systems in the world, but as the last two weeks have demonstrated even the golden state has its limits. On this edition of KCBS In Depth, we take stock of California’s firefighting resources after weeks of major fire disasters that have stretched those resources to their breaking point.  

Guest: Brice Bennett, deputy state fire marshal and spokesperson, Cal Fire

Host: Keith Menconi 

After generations battling wildfires, California has among the most robust fire fighting systems in the world, but as the last two weeks have demonstrated even the golden state has its limits. On this edition of KCBS In Depth, we take stock of California’s firefighting resources after weeks of major fire disasters that have stretched those resources to their breaking point.  

Guest: Brice Bennett, deputy state fire marshal and spokesperson, Cal Fire

Host: Keith Menconi 

As we mark the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, KCBS In Depth takes a look back at the suffrage movement in California -- what it achieved and what was left unfinished -- and also consider how the legacy of activism that the suffrage movement helped create is still reshaping politics today. 

Guests: 

• Elaine Elinson, writer, co-author of “Wherever There's a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California”
• Aimee Allison, founder of She the People

Hosts: Keith Menconi, Melissa Culross  

As we mark the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, KCBS In Depth takes a look back at the suffrage movement in California -- what it achieved and what was left unfinished -- and also consider how the legacy of activism that the suffrage movement helped create is still reshaping politics today. 

Guests: 

Hosts: Keith Menconi, Melissa Culross  

It's now been 75 years since the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the beginning of the atomic age, but the threat of nuclear devastation is still very much with us. Our guests this week warn, though, that it’s not a sudden surprise attack that we should be most worried about, but instead, a sudden surprise mistake. 

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry and the Ploughshares Fund's Tom Collina join us to lay out that that warning and discuss their new book, “The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump." 

Guests: 

Host: Keith Menconi 

It's now been 75 years since the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the beginning of the atomic age, but the threat of nuclear devastation is still very much with us. Our guests this week warn, though, that it’s not a sudden surprise attack that we should be most worried about, but instead, a sudden surprise mistake. 

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry and the Ploughshares Fund's Tom Collina join us to lay out that that warning and discuss their new book, “The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump." 

Guests: 

• William Perry, a former secretary of defense and a professor of international relations at Stanford University
• Tom Collina, the policy director for the San Francisco-based Ploughshares Fund

Host: Keith Menconi 

With no end in sight for the Covid-19 pandemic, the November elections are shaping up to be an unprecedented test of the nation’s voting system. So, on this edition of KCBS In Depth, as election officials surge vote by mail systems and harden polling places, we take a closer look at the effort to create a socially distanced election. Then in the second half we speak with a longtime election reform advocate about what voters need to know to make sure their votes do indeed get counted this fall. 

Guests: 

• Nate Persily, a Stanford law professor, who earlier this year helped launch the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
• Kim Alexander, the president of the California Voter Foundation

Host: Keith Menconi