WITF Cooks Chef Donna Marie Desfor makes her annual pre-holiday visit to Smart Talk Thursday and it's always a fun show.

This year our theme is "spicing up the holidays" by turning up the flavor on traditional meals -- easy, quick ideas you can use to make your meal even more flavorful.

That includes fresh and dried spices and different ways to use them, hot sauces and condiments like mayonaisse, mustard, sour cream and yogurt. Then there are onions, garlic and butter and oils. And of course none of this would be complete with a holiday beverage such as hot chocolate, wine, cider and all those infused vodkas.

This show is not just about food either. We like to hear about your holiday memories and traditions -- even if they don't involve good.

The rate of opioid overdoses has skyrocketed in Pennsylvania. According to a DEA report, 3,383 Pennsylvanians died of drug overdoses - more than half involving heroin.

In recent years, heroin has seen a resurgence in use among addicts. Experts attribute this to the explosion of prescribed opioid painkillers. Medical trending in the late 90's and early 2000's led doctors to prescribe painkillers rather than recommend physical rehabilitation or alternative pain management. A proliferation of time-released, opioid painkillers flooded the market. Doctors were encouraged by the pharmaceutical companies to push them on patients and insurance companies were quick to pay for the drugs that were cheaper than other pain-management techniques. This led to widespread opioid pill abuse.

In 2013, the DEA began reducing the amounts of pills the pharmaceutical companies could manufacture. This drawback in supply led many addicts to turn to heroin, the illicit Schedule 1 narcotic that many painkillers base their chemistry on.

The problem of heroin addiction has been exacerbated by powerful additives used to strengthen street heroin. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain medication that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is being illegally manufactured and exported by Chinese labs and cut with heroin for distribution. Addicts seek the augmented high at the elevated risk of death by overdose.

And every day, a new story of another overdose fills the front pages. Earlier this month, Philadelphia saw 35 deaths in five days, all attributed to heroin cut with fentanyl. Another three died in York County - in a span of five hours. Police finding unattended children, found in squalid conditions with parents nodding off or dead from heroin, have become a common occurrence.

State and local officials are scrambling to find a solution to this growing trend. Governor Wolf recently signed a bill that would restrict prescriptions for minors and increase educational outreach. But these programs do little to address the underlying causes of addiction.

Smart Talk will spend the hour discussing opioid addiction and the consequences thereof. Deb Beck, President of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania will discuss the scope of the problem and some of the causes for the outbreak.

Jason Snyder, Special Assistant to Pennsylvania's Secretary of Human Services, will talk about a $20 million effort to fight the opioid addiction outbreak.

York County Assistant District Attorney David Sunday will talk about what he's seeing in the courtroom and which programs are most effective in treating addicts. Transforming Health Reporter Ben Allen will walk us through the maze of state agencies and private service providers working to combat opioid addictions.

The Civil War drama Mercy Street begins its second season on PBS and WITF-TV on January 22.

The critically-acclaimed program is remarkable in several ways. First of all from a cinematography standpoint, Mercy Street has the look and feel of a major motion picture. Like other PBS dramas, there are rich characters and smart writing.. Mercy Street is one of few TV series using the Civil War as its backdrop. A Union hospital located in Alexandria, Virginia is where the show is situated and the location itself brings several storylines into the program.

Mercy Street was hailed in the first season for its historic authenticity whether it be the depiction of medical care during the war or the lives led by freed blacks.

Season one ended with a failed assassination attempt on President Abraham Lincoln at the hospital. This season begins with a small pox outbreak among free African-Americans and former slaves that could have an impact on the hospital and the whites who work there.

ON Tuesday's Smart Talk, we'll discuss season two of Mercy Street with Lisa Wolfinger, the show's co-creator and Executive Producer, Audrey Davis, a historical consultant for Mercy Street and Director of the Alexandria Black History Museum and Dr. Ian Isherwood, Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

Conversion therapy is a non-scientific technique used to change the sexual orientation of people who identify as being gay. It is widely discredited among the medical community including the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Medical Association.

Supporters base their arguments on Biblical verse they feel dictates opposition to homosexuality.

Last year, the White House issued a statement declaring "As part of our dedication to protecting America's youth, this Administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors."

Conversion Therapy can be especially dangerous for adolescents as they are pressured or forced into the process by parents and religious organizations opposed to homosexuality. The administrators of the "therapy" are unlicensed and use unapproved techniques with no grounding in scientific reality.

The issue has been lifted to the forefront of LGBT+ concerns since Donald Trump's victory has elevated Republican Indiana Governor Mike Pence to the office of the vice president. Pence has supported conversion therapy in the past, saying in 2000: "[Public] Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior."

So, supporters of LGBT+ rights are very concerned.

Seven states have banned the use of conversion therapy on minors. A bill was brought before the state Legislature in the last session, but it died in committee without a vote.

Last week, the Pittsburgh City Council voted unanimously to ban the use of 'conversion therapy' on minors. The bill was introduced by council president Bruce Kraus, who stated, as a gay man, conversion therapy represented "a form of soul murder."

Council President Kraus will join Smart Talk's Scott LaMar to talk about the ban and we'll speak with the Human Rights Campaign about the scope of the practice.

Comedian and social commentator Peterson Toscano will share his experiences as a young man looking to use conversion therapy to suppress his homosexuality, something he only learned to accept later in life. A man who says he successfully changed his sexual orientation and provides the service will join us to discuss how and why he aids gay men who "choose to address those attractions in ways that align with their own personal faith, values, morals, beliefs and life goals."

From time to time, WITF invites musicians to the station to perform and sit for interviews which turn into multimedia features that appear on radio and the web. But these features were sporadic. In the past year I kept looking at our performance studio and thinking about our capabilities. With our audio and video gear, and with a vibrant Central PA music scene, I wanted to utilize it all to create a series that used all forms of media to showcase musicians and their stories.

That's how the series WITF Music began.

Each musician or band we feature gets the full multimedia treatment. They come to the Public Media Center in Harrisburg and perform 3-4 songs and sit for an interview. We do a multitrack audio recording, a video shoot and a photo shoot of the performance. The resulting media gets compiled into a few different products: a four-minute radio feature, YouTube videos, a collection of photos and a web article that ties it all together. Each of these elements can exist on its own as a product to be shared on radio and the web.

Today's Smart Talk will feature a handful of interviews and performances we've collected during WITF Music's first year, including appearances by Rivers, Apes of the State, Shine Delphi, Shawan and the Wonton, and THT GRL.

Our full collection of artist features can be found at www.witf.org/music

In Pennsylvania, more than half of the 2,562 municipalities have no police force. In these 1,287 communities, the State Police step in to conduct criminal investigations, patrol the streets, and enforce traffic codes.

The municipalities pay nothing for the law enforcement protection but receive half of the revenue generated from traffic citations. While this includes some rural communities, Hempfield Township outside of Pittsburgh (with a population of 43,000) relies on State Police coverage. The residents of Lower Macungie Township have a median household income of $80,000, but their community pays nothing for the State Police to protect them.

A 2012 report by Penn State's Justice Center for Research estimated the State Police spends nearly half its annual budget on municipal policing. Last year, state Representative Mike Sturla (D-96th) sponsored a bill that would have charged municipalities a $156 per capita fee to cover the costs of the State Police coverage as well as generate transportation revenue. The bill died in committee, but will be re-introduced in the next session.

David Sanko, executive director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Townships Supervisors, has expressed opposition to the fees, saying it would create an undue financial burden on the municipalities.

Sturla and Sanko will join WITF's Smart Talk to discuss the proposal. Also, Joe Kovel, President of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, will talk about the impact this policing of municipalities is having on the agency.

During Pennsylvania's nine-month state budget impasse that ended last March, school districts across the state weren't receiving state funding. At the height of the crisis, many were borrowing money and more than a few were making plans to close. One of the districts hardest hit was Erie. It was the district that probably was closest to shutting down when money dried up from Harrisburg.

Erie is a district surrounded by thriving suburban schools. It may be a good example of inequity in how Pennsylvania funds its schools.

Just two hours to the north of Erie is the Canadian province of Ontario. The city of Toronto has schools with student populations comparable socioeconomically with Erie, but the students in the Toronto schools are performing better than Erie.

WITF's Keystone Crossroads education reporter Kevin McCorry is producing a series this week comparing Ontario and Pennsylvania schools. He'll join us on Wednesday's Smart Talk.

Franklin and Marshall College President Dan Porterfield is leading a historic effort to enroll more low or moderate-income but talented students at thirty of the nation's top universities and colleges.

The American Talent Initiative, which was announced yesterday, will be funded by an initial $1.7 million grant from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies. As part of the program, the institutions will collaborate on recruiting and sharing ideas on what works.

Besides Franklin and Marshall, other participating colleges and universities include Harvard, Princeton, Duke and Stanford.

Dr. Dan Porterfield explains the initiative on Wednesday's Smart Talk.

Harrisburg's parking system is facing a tough road.

It's not hitting its revenue goals, and that's putting many in a bind.

The Harrisburg Parking Authority has authorized a lawsuit over payments from the deal and Dauphin County is warning that garages could fall into disrepair if money isn't set aside.

A public meeting is set for Monday.

To break it all down, PennLive reporter Christine Vendel will join me in studio.

Keystone Crossroads reporter Emily Previti will also share her insight and add context about what has becoming a very challenging situation.

Working pro bono, a Lancaster attorney successfully petitioned President Barack Obama to reduce the sentence of a nonviolent drug offender who was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Jason Rakel of Shreveport, Louisiana will be released to a residential drug treatment home next October.

McNees, Wallace, and Nurick Attorney Kiandra Bairwill talk about her work on the case.

It's the holiday season.

In that spirit, a planeterium show at the State Museum will combine astronomy with holiday traditions.

Where did the burning Yule log come from?

What about candles in windows?

Or the Hanukkah Menorah?

Jeni Ashton, Chief of Education at the State Museum, will answer those questions and more.

Human skeletal remains were recently found in the woods in Cumberland County. The bones are estimated to be about two years old. Now, the focus will be on identify the remains.

So what is the process? Who will assign a life to this scattering of old bones?

Graham Hetrick has served as Dauphin County's coroner for 25 years, participated in 3,000 autopsies and certified more than 13,000 deaths. He is an avid student of thanatology - the study of death and how passings impact people and society. He lectures on grief counseling and hosts The Coroner: I Speak for the Dead on the Investigation Discovery channel.

Hetrick will join Thursday's Smart Talk to talk about identifying human remains and discuss the topic of death and why it is important to understand the process of dying.

Also, The Diane Rehm Show has been a fixture on public radio stations, including WITF, but when she retires at the end of this year, a new program will make its debut. It's called 1A and will be hosted by Joshua Johnson.

He was the co-creator and host of Truth Be Told, a radio series about race in America, and spent five years as the morning host at KQED, San Francisco. 1A with Joshua Johnson will debut January 2nd and can be heard hear on WITF.

Smart Talk's Scott LaMar will speak with Johnson about the new show, the pressures of hosting a national program and what the future of news reporting will look like.

"A day that will live in infamy." That's how President Franklin Roosevelt described December 7, 1941 when he asked Congress to declare war on Japan the next day.

It was 75 years ago today that Japan attacked the American Naval Fleet at Pearl Harbor and airfields on the island of Oahu. It brought America into World War II and must be considered one of the most significant events in American and maybe even world history.

More than 2,400 Americans died at Pearl Harbor. Many survived the attack but 75 years later, only a few hundred are still living today.

As Smart Talk commemorates the anniversary on Wednesday's show, we talk with one of those survivors. James Downing is 103 years old and is the second oldest Pearl Harbor survivor. He was stationed on the USS West Virginia but was at home getting ready for his Sunday breakfast when the bombing started. Then Lt. Downing sprang into action only to find the West Virginia sinking. Dodging Japanese bullets, he helped to rescue survivors.

Mr. Downing speaks to us from Hawaii where he is attending the 75th anniversary commemoration.

On Wednesday's program, we'll also learn about two exhibits tied to Pearl Harbor. The Gettysburg Museum of History is honoring Lee Fox, a New Cumberland man, who was one of the first people killed during the attack. Also, the State Museum of Pennsylvania has just opened an exhibit called Pennsylvania at War: The Saga of the USS Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania was in dry dock at Pearl Harbor and suffered damage during the bombing. Twenty-four crewmen were killed and 29 wounded. The Pennsylvania was repaired but torpedoed two days before Japan surrendered making it the last major Navy vessel to be damaged during World War II.

Smart Talk also features a conversation with retired Major Charles Redding of Ephrata who piloted a bomber. Maj. Redding flew 69 combat missions in the Pacific Theatre. In August 1945, he flew over Hiroshima, Japan and saw the mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb blast that destroyed that city.