EP 850 Black Literacy in the South a Powerful Tool for Progress and Repression

EP 850 Black Literacy in the South a Powerful Tool for Progress and Repression

The pen is mightier than the sword and the ability to read opens up an entirely new world to someone who lacked that ability before.  That’s why the issue of Black literacy in the South has such an important history.  For Black citizens, it was a weapon of empowerment and rebellion, while for whites, it …

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EP 848 Not Again! U.S. Veterans Exposed to Toxins Having to Fight for Just Compensation

EP 848 Not Again! U.S. Veterans Exposed to Toxins Having to Fight for Just Compensation

  Whether it was Agent Orange in the Vietnam era, burn pits in Iraq, contaminated water at many bases across the country or 9-11 first responders, why do we, as a nation, make it so hard for these heroes to collect just compensation when we have subjected veterans and first responders to risks unimaginable to …

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EP 847 The Red Scare to This Moment in U.S. History

EP 847 The Red Scare to This Moment in U.S. History

The Red Scare, after World War II, gave birth to the New Right in America and what we see today in the second Administration of Donald Trump.  That, according to historian and New York Times editor, Clay Risen, the author of “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America.”  In his account of …

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EP 846 Policing in America: Is the Treatment of White Supremacists Equal to the Threat?

EP 846 Policing in America: Is the Treatment of White Supremacists Equal to the Threat?

Back in 2021, then FBI Director, Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, said that white supremacy is a “persistent, evolving threat” and the “biggest chunk” of racially motivated violent extremism in the U.S. To Mike German who served sixteen years as an FBI special agent  and the author of “Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within”, that’s …

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EP 845 We Live in the Age of Choice

EP 845 We Live in the Age of Choice

Choice dominates every sphere of modern life, almost to a point where it becomes overwhelming.  Which type of jelly should I buy?  Which insurance policy is right?  What should I watch on my 5 streaming services?  And yet in the political realm often we have two choices and our understanding of what they offer may …

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EP 844 We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby–Or Have We?

EP 844 We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby–Or Have We?

 “We the People” is the opening salvo of the Constitution.  However, the definition of the people was very limited at the time.  And women, among others, were not part of the equation.  The Constitution was aspirational and later amended to include the previously excluded and while women fought, alongside many men, to take their rightful …

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EP 842 America Is in Decline but Competitors are Declining, Too–and Faster

EP 842 America Is in Decline but Competitors are Declining, Too–and Faster

 Robert Kaplan’s erudite take on the world’s geopolitical situation can be summed up in the manner described in our headline, but there is so much more nuance in his book “Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis” that you must read it for yourself to grasp the complexities of our fast-changing world in these illegible …

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