Today on Stateside, a rundown of the major issues voters across the state will see on their ballot in Tuesday's election. Plus, an urgent care center designed for mental health needs.
Listen to the full show above or find individual segments below.
Local cannabis ordinances, school millages among major issues on Tuesday’s ballot
- There's been a lot of attention paid to Election Day 2020 and the presidential race. But there's an election much closer at hand. We talk to Zach Gorchow of Gongwer News Service about what voters will see on Tuesday's ballot, including major school bond asks in Ann Arbor and Dearborn.
A close race for Flint mayor may hinge on voter trust in government
- Incumbent Flint Mayor Karen Weaver was elected in 2015 during the early days of the water crisis. She promised to clean the water and restore broken trust in government. Two years later, she survived a recall election. This year, she's being challenged by Democratic State Representative Sheldon Neeley, who is serving his third and final term in the state House. Michigan Radio’s Steve Carmody joined us to talk about how the residents’ distrust towards their government may influence the outcome of Tuesday's election.
Beep! Bop! Boop! Robots soon could deliver bibimbap to your door
- You are probably used to ordering food delivery from humans. But a new company in Ann Arbor is testing out a little robot to bring you your pizza, pad thai, and burgers. Its name is REV-1, and it's an autonomous food delivery vehicle being tested by the tech start-up Refraction AI. Matthew Johnson-Roberson is the co-founder and CEO of Refraction AI, and a robotics professor at the University of Michigan. He explained how REV-1 works, and its potential for commercial use.
Urgent care centers are common for physical ailments. Could they work for mental health issues, too?
- The idea of urgent care is a familiar one to us: a less-expensive, more accessible way to see a doctor for illness or injuries. Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services has taken that idea and applied it to mental health crises. Its Psychiatric Urgent Care Center opened last spring, and has helped around 3,000 people in its first six months. We talked to Megan Zambiasi, the director of Pine Rest's urgent care center about the gap in mental health care that the urgent care model could help fill.
Life on the Inside: What is prison for?
- Michigan prisons cost taxpayers $2 billion a year. Yet what happens behind prison walls is out of sight and often out of mind. All this week, we're going to take a closer look at Michigan's prisons in a series we're calling "Life on the Inside." Last month, the Stateside team gained unprecedented access to one of those prisons: Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater.
- We kick off our series by asking a fundamental question: Just what are prisons for? To answer that question, Stateside’s Lester Graham spoke with University of Michigan historian Heather Ann Thompson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.
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