The Conversation with Abby Hamblin

Clovis Honoré is president of the San Diego branch of the NAACP. The San Diego branch of the NAACP is celebrating 100 years this year and we wanted to get to know the man leading it in this era. Clovis is also San Diego State University grad. We talked about his leadership locally and how the NAACP maintained its relevance all these years.

Lemon Grove native Lalo Alcaraz has long been an advocate for better representation of Latinos in America. Now, it's his day job. He got his start as an editorial cartoonist at San Diego State University's student newspaper The Daily Aztec before going on to create the first nationally-syndicated, politically-themed Latino daily comic strip, "La Cucaracha." More recently, he’s worked as a cultural consultant on the Pixar film “Coco” and the upcoming animated Nickelodeon show, “The...

Last November, editorial cartoonist Steve Breen began a series of trips to Tijuana, Mexico, to meet the migrants at the center of national debates on immigration and the asylum process. His drawings became an illustrated and animated series called "Drawn to America." Watch all 10 episodes of "Drawn to America," here: https://bit.ly/2ltWYZt

Emily Skrutskie is a Los Angeles-based author of “The Abyss Surrounds Us” and its sequel, “The Edge of the Abyss,” and the stand-alone novel “Hull Metal Girls.” Her next novel, “Bonds of Brass,” will be published in the spring of 2020. Kiersten White is local to San Diego. She’s The New York Times best-selling author of numerous books for young readers, including the “And I Darken” trilogy, “The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein,” the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels “Slayer” and...

Edith Eger was 16 when her family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. At age 90 she wrote 'The Choice' to tell her story and help others.

Dr. Eric Topol is a the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. He’s easily one of the most pioneering visionaries in San Diego but also around the world. In his new book, "Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again," he argues that artificial intelligence can actually make healthcare more human.

From growing up in Scripps Ranch to premiering 'Brigsby Bear' at Sundance Film Festival, Kyle Mooney talks about his journey with comedy starting in San Diego.

From humble beginnings with just a few hundred people gathering to celebrate comics to more than 100,000 fans from all over the world nerding out together. Comic-Con International has been an annual pop culture paradise for 50 years and it starts again in San Diego this week. To mark the occasion, we join forces with San Diego News Fix — a daily news podcast at the Union-Tribune — for a special episode that will play on both podcasts. First up, reporters Phil Molnar and Charlie Clark discuss...

San Diego Comic-Con is back for its 50th anniversary in America's Finest City. Kerry Dixon, editor of the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog, joined us again to talk about what's new at this year's Comic-Con and how to survive the 4-day conference.

On June 18, California Gov. Gavin Newsom offered an official apology to the state's Native Americans whose ancestors endured violence and wrongdoing by the state. An official with one tribe in San Diego County, the Jamul Indian Village of California, said the apology is long overdue but it's a step in the right direction. And no, she says, Native Americans are not seeking reparations.

What is June gloom? And what causes it, anyway? For this episode of The Conversation we talk to a NOAA meteorologist who explains why we have overcast weather in June. And a few San Diegans tell us what it's really like to live in this weather.

Rep. Scott Peters is a Democrat representing the 52nd District in the House of Representatives: a district that covers downtown San Diego and part of North San Diego County including La Jolla, Carmel Valley. A former San Diego City Council member and its first City Council president, he was first elected to Congress in 2012 and briefly considered running for mayor in 2020.

Pardeep Singh Kaleka is the author of “The Gift of Our Wounds" and helped found the organization Serve 2 Unite, which bring together young people from different religious and cultural backgrounds. His father was among the victims killed at the 2012 Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

The 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, marked a pivotal moment in police race relations in America and for Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery. Five years since, Lowery has made fatal police shootings a central focus of his work as a national correspondent for the newspaper to the point where he's published a book on the subject matter and has won a Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to The Washington Post's "Fatal Force" project, a database of all fatal...

A photo of San Diego State University graduate Érica Alfaro standing with her parents in a strawberry field where they worked as she pursued her education has gone viral. On this episode, she tells her story of being a young mother fighting for a degree, the message she hoped the photo would send and why she dedicated her new master's degree to her parents.

Have you ever wondered who answers on the other end of the line of a crisis phone line? In this episode, we talk to one veteran counselor who gives us a behind-the-scenes look at one phone number in San Diego County that, for some, can make a difference between life and death.

Dave Maass, a researcher for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains why the city passed the first major ban on facial recognition technology and what's next in the surveillance debate.

Uber and Lyft drivers in eight U.S. cities, including San Diego and Los Angeles, participated in an organized strike on Wednesday in an effort to call attention to their working conditions and demand better pay and job security. To better understand what it's like to be a rideshare driver, we spoke to two San Diego drivers who spend a lot of time behind the wheel and have had their share of experiences with passengers and the companies themselves.

The synagogue shooting in Poway, California, left many to wrestle with an attack on a local Jewish congregation just sixth months after an even-worse shooting in Pittsburgh. So we talked to an expert about modern anti-Semitism, its historic roots and what can be done to educate young people when anti-Semitism is surging around the globe, especially online.

If you've been to a Padres, Gulls or Sockers game, you may have already heard Bobby Cressey playing the organ. You may have also heard him in various gigs around Southern California playing all kinds of genres including ska, raggae and jazz. On this episode of The Conversation, we get to know the man behind the organ.