Your Call

On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the power of Ticketmaster. Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged during the Obama administration in 2010. They now control over 70 percent of the ticketing and live events market.

Experts say they use their power to hike up ticket prices and charge exorbitant service fees while exploiting artists, independent venues, and fans. Senators are calling on the Justice Department to continue examining what they call the "anticompetitive conduct" of Ticketmaster.

Should Ticketmaster be broken up?

On this edition of Your Call’s Planet Series, we discuss an executive order by California Governor Gavin Newsom that curbs water flow from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the San Francisco Bay.

Environmentalists and tribal leaders say Newsom’s order will harm Chinook salmon and Delta smelt by sending more water to California farms.

Randy Fiorini, a Merced County farmer, told CalMatters that farmers are deprived of water to protect environmental resources. Now, he said, the governor is tipping the balance in the other direction.

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we discuss a recent study led by an Oxford University team of scientists that has detected alarming levels of PFAS compounds in Norwegian Arctic ice, threatening the entire food web and wildlife, including caribous, seals, plankton, and polar bears.

PFAS is a class of about 12,000 chemicals used to make hundreds of products that are resistant to stains, heat and water. The problem is, they don’t break down naturally in the environment. That is why they are called 'forever chemicals.'

On this edition of Your Call's media roundtable, we discuss Matthew Kacsmaryk, the far-right federal judge in Texas who could ban mifepristone, a key abortion drug. How are states and advocates preparing?

Yesterday, Walgreen's confirmed that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal, according to Politico.

Nearly 200 human rights organizations and experts are calling on the UN to intervene over the destruction of abortion rights in the US, according to The Guardian.

On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we discuss coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine. At least 8,000 non-combatants have been confirmed killed – with nearly 13,300 injured - since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, according to the UN.

On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the big donors funding the lawsuits challenging President Biden's plan to eliminate up to $20,000 in student debt.

One case was brought by an extreme right-wing donor network named the “Job Creators Network,” according to the Debt Collective. Former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus, who is worth $8.8 billion, organized the JCN in 2010. He gave the group $3.9 million over the past decade. Other donors include the Federalist Society, the Mercer family, the Koch network, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and the National Restaurant Association. The Cato Institute has its own lawsuit against student debt relief.

Why do these billionaires and groups oppose student debt relief?

On this edition of Your Call, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts discusses her new book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

Drawing on decades of research, she argues the child welfare system can better be understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. She says the only way to stop the destruction is to abolish the system.

On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the end of California’s COVID state of emergency nearly three years after stay-at-home orders began. The federal government is also ending expanded relief programs, which will further restrict resources.

What are the consequences for low-income and uninsured people? What will it take to make universal healthcare and a robust social safety net a priority?

On this edition of Your Call, historian Dan Berger discusses his new book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey.

The book is a new history of Black Liberation, told through the story of Zoharah and Michael Simmons, two activists who fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South in the mid 1960s. Berger shows how, in their lives, Black Power drives a global struggle for freedom and justice.

Berger writes, "I hope that readers use each deepening revelation to ask new questions of themselves and each other about the world we live in and the one we would like to inhabit."

Journalist Jake Bittle discusses his new book, which focuses on how the human induced climate crisis is forcing millions of Americans to flee from their homes.