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When questions began to arise about former San Diego Unified board trustee Marne Foster after a series of reports by VOSD education reporter Mario Koran, the rest of the board opened an investigation into them. They capped the probe at $40,000 and said they'd provide a public report within 30 days of the investigation's launch. Neither of those things happened, though, and as Koran uncovered, the cost ballooned to $228,000 and the district says there's no report. Koran joined the podcast this week to walk hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts through all the wacky details he unraveled in his reporting. "There's a lot of stuff going on in this story," Koran said. "But there are three issues that I see that are really kind of weird. They made promises they didn't keep to ... There were some questions about the way the contract was approved ... and then you have to take a step back and say, what was this all for? Why did we pay $228,000 and we have nothing? The public has absolutely nothing to show for that." Also on this week's podcast, Lewis explained that a beard-trimming snafu forced him to shave the whole thing off, which made him unrecognizable and freaked out his kids and pretty much everyone else who has to look at his rarely seen jaw and chin. Hero of the Week The attorneys at the San Diego law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP get the honor this week for waiving their attorney fees in the fraud lawsuits against Trump University. President-elect Donald Trump agreed to settle the lawsuit for $25 million. Lawyers don't often waive their fees, but when they do it means the millions of settlement dollars go directly toward the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuits rather than paying legal costs. Goat of the Week FM 94.9 morning show host Chris Cantore called in to name the goat this week. Long story short, he caught a team of vandals who stole about $12 from a tip jar at a busy frozen yogurt shop in Mission Valley. The thieves ultimately got away, but at least they'll be feeling the wrath of getting publicly goated on the VOSD podcast.

Barbara Bry is ready to put some of her campaign promises into policy. The councilwoman-elect will officially represent San Diego City Council District 1 after she's inaugurated in December. She joined hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to talk about what she plans to do. Bry said right out of the gate she'll be focusing on public safety, small business support and the short-term vacation rental war that continues to rage in her district, which includes communities like La Jolla, University City and Carmel Valley. She said she's been consistent throughout her campaign about where she stands when it comes to residents who want to rent out their homes via sites like Airbnb. "I'm fine if you rent out a room in your house as much as you want as long as you're on site to supervise," she said. "I'm also fine if you rent out your house when you're on vacation or during Comic-Con as long as it's your primary residence where you live most of the year. What I'm against is when houses essentially become mini hotels in residential neighborhoods." She also said she's still solidly against providing public funds to build a new stadium for the Chargers and shared other thoughts on long-running city controversies. And yes, the never-ending Children's Pool saga gets brought up. Also on this week's podcast, Lewis and Keatts discuss the city's forward momentum on the revamp of Balboa Park's Plaza de Panama and some of the hurdles still standing in its way. They also parse the city's long-awaited approval of the Uptown community plan and question why it doesn't allow for more housing and development. The two also review Ashly McGlone's stunning four-part series this week on a Canadian company that installed defective turf fields at schools across the county and used the crisis as an opportunity to persuade schools pay more money for a sturdier replacement. And they skip back to a recent finding by VOSD education reporter Mario Koran, who dug in to San Diego Unified School District's unusually high graduation rate. Also, FWIW, Lewis is tired of people talking about the coastal elites – 'cause some people who happen to live near the ocean are hardworking and not as well-off as people think.

San Diego’s election results didn’t look much like the rest of the country. Democrats in the county won a bunch of races and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beat President-elect Donald Trump by 17 points among county voters. We dissected those results on the show this week, with two political operatives who played a key role in local races. Carol Kim, political director for the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council, and Jason Roe, a local Republican political consultant who was an outspoken Trump critic throughout the election, helped us break down what the results taught us about San Diego’s political direction. We skipped handing out our usual hero and goat of the week so we could concentrate instead on a full analysis of the election results.

Residents packed a City Council meeting this week where the city considered a broad ban on short-term vacation rentals. In the end, it was a wasted trip, as the only Council members who supported the aggressive move were the two who proposed it, Sherri Lightner and Lorie Zapf. Everyone else voted against it. On the podcast this week, we broke down the odd, failed political gambit and took a closer look at the neighborhood discontent that drove their decision. The biggest topic in the short-term vacation rental debate is what to do about neighbors who suddenly find themselves living next door to loud, regular parties from different visitors every weekend. But that isn’t the only issue on the table. The city is also being asked to regulate a new type of behavior – neighborliness – and policymakers are finding it a tough job. We also invited local pollster John Nienstedt, of Competitive Edge Research & Communication, to tell us a bit about what he expects Tuesday’s electorate to look like, and what that might mean for the results of the many, many measures facing us on the ballot.

Effective learning strategies can vary from child to child — but youth brain studies reveal new clues that can help educators improve students' academic achievement. On this week’s podcast, , assistant professor of...

In our final episode before Election Day, we talk about the death penalty, which California voters will have a chance to end this year or reform. Proposition 62 would end the death penalty in California. Proposition 66 would try to speed up appeals of death penalty verdicts, which could result in quicker executions or exonerations. (If both pass, the one with the most votes takes effect.) First Sara Libby and I talk with Mike and Penny Moreau, whose son Tim was murdered in Oregon in 1990. They discuss that horrible case and the moral dilemma they faced before they cast their votes this year on the two death penalty measures. On the one hand, philosophically, they think it’s wrong to kill somebody else. On the other, they have seen the criminal justice system up close and found there is some value in the death penalty. They talk about a practical benefit of the death penalty: It can provide leverage for prosecutors. Their son’s killers took plea deals to avoid a death penalty trial. As part of those deals, they agreed to help authorities look for Tim’s body, which they had buried in the woods. (They were unsuccessful; Tim has not yet been found.) “That’s when we got interested in what impact hanging over someone’s head the threat of a death penalty – how it can help victims find out what happened,” Mike Moreau said. The Moreaus have also shepherded other parents of murdered children through the justice system and they’ve seen people with life sentences get out of jail. Before they’d vote to end the death penalty, they said they want to make sure the justice system doesn’t ignore victims. We also talk with Kelly Davis, a freelance journalist who focuses on criminal justice issues. She walks us through some of the other policy implications of both death penalty ballot measures. To end on a lighter note, we also talked about our favorite things from the week. Libby enjoyed the many Vine videos people reposted after the video-sharing service announced it would discontinue its mobile phone app, effectively ending the service. Particular favorites include this and this. I enjoyed Saturday Night Live’s “Black Jeopardy” skit because it highlighted the similarities between black and white working class Americans –  their shared “disempowerment, suspicion of authority, and working-class identity,” as Jamelle Bouie at Slate put it – without papering over fundamental disagreements that still divide us.

This week on the podcast, Andrew Keatts and I grappled with the news that the Chargers' vision for a new convadium downtown now includes "the region’s first diversity-focused start-up incubator and accelerator." That's right, the convadium is now the "innovadium." We may or may not have come up with other things they might try to include in the project as we hit the home stretch to Election Day. We also discussed Keatts' boffo story this week that SANDAG's projections about how much money a previous tax increase would generate are coming out wildly inaccurate, threatening some of the transportation projects the agency has pledged to voters. The same forecasting assumptions are being used to project that Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot, will generate $18 billion in revenue for use on transportation and open-space projects. That number is now highly questionable after Keatts' reporting. Finally, we also had Mason Herron on the show. The East County political consultant pulls together a daily report in the days leading up to Election Day on how early voting is proceeding. He had some interesting insights and pointed out this portal, where you can see just how early voting is going in San Diego and other parts of California.

There are a whopping 12 citywide measures and two countywide measures on this year's totally bananas ballot. On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts go through the local measures one by one, presenting the arguments for and against each proposal and explaining everything as clearly as they can. For folks looking for help with the rest of this year's massive two-card ballot; Ry Rivard and Sara Libby tackled the 17 statewide measures in their elections podcast, San Diego Decides. Lewis and Keatts also break down the etymology of the term "convadium," the word that's come to represent the Chargers' proposed joint-use stadium and convention center annex. It's an important piece of local lore now that the word made it on the national stage via sports columnist Bill Simmons' weekly HBO show, "Any Given Wednesday." Simmons' segment urges people to vote no on Measure C, and in laying out an argument it makes one big mistake: The Chargers are credited with coining "convadium." But Lewis actually conjured up the word back in 2011, and it's since been adopted by just about everyone in San Diego, including the Chargers themselves. Lewis says he's conflicted because, while he's proud of inventing convadium, the HBO segment mocks the word and makes it a big punchline — Simmons even recruited famed skateboarder and San Diego native Tony Hawk to trash-talk the term. So, really, that whole portion of the critique should have been directed at Lewis, which is why he's kinda sad, but also pretty happy that the word is now officially famous. Also on the podcast, Keatts and Lewis do a lot of laughing as they revisit a recent press conference supporting Measure C. Mayor Kevin Faulconer said some things at the event that Lewis and Keatts poke fun at, including this cheesy football metaphor: "I'm happy to be here today, of course, with Luis Castillo and Philip Rivers encouraging people to turn in their ballots so we can move the ball down the field, keeping the Bolts right here in San Diego." Hero of the Week Jin-Quan Yu, a researcher at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, was named one of this year's MacArthur Fellows, winning $625,000 of no-strings-attached grant money to continue his work  breaking the connections between carbon and hydrogen atoms, which could uultimately make the manufacturing of drugs cheaper and easier. Goat of the Week National City gets the goat this week for the weird drama that ensued after a small business owner applied for a permit to sell alcohol.

It's almost Election Day, and thousands of students are counting on voters to make good decisions. On this week’s podcast, co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn discuss state and local ballot measures connected to education. Locally, , for...

Unlike presidential debates that are watched by millions, local political debates are rarely televised, yet they offer some of the only chances for voters to hear city and county candidates who will have direct say over so much of their lives. This week we talk about those debates. Local debates happen more than you’d think. Podcast co-host Sara Libby, for instance, moderated a city attorney debate last Monday between Mara Elliott and Robert Hickey. Then Hickey and Elliott met again two days later for another candidate forum in City Heights. As a result, there’s a debate circuit that forms, as our colleague and frequent debate host Andrew Keatts explains. Opposing candidates who see each other night after night become familiar with each other’s talking points and maintain collegial bonds. Unless they don’t: Keatts talks about one of the wilder local debates he’s hosted, our Politifest debate over a ballot measure that will change city election law. We also talk about the U.S. Senate “dabate” between state Attorney General Kamela Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, and share other observations about the history of debating in San Diego. Favorite Things Andy’s favorite thing is the new HBO series “Westworld.” My favorite thing is normal people who far outnumber reporters even though reporters often end up fetishizing working-class Americans, like Ken Bone, the accidental star of the recent presidential debate. Sara’s is Sutter Brown, California’s first dog, as well as a touching Sacramento Bee editorial on mortality and our pets.