EP 982 Harvard Law Professors Weigh in on America’s Unfinished Business

EP 982 Harvard Law Professors Weigh in on America’s Unfinished Business

In an unprecedented compilation, half of the faculty at Harvard Law School contributed essays, short and readable, about the work America has to do to build on the dreams and aspirations of our Founders as set out in our seminal documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Both of them commit our nation to …

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EP 981 Is Donald Trump Presiding Over a Manufacturing Boom or Bust?

EP 981 Is Donald Trump Presiding Over a Manufacturing Boom or Bust?

 President Trump’s most prized word is ‘tariffs’ and on Liberation Day he extolled their virtues and told us that this would usher in a new era of reshoring and renewal of the manufacturing sector. He has also touted $18 trillion dollars in manufacturing investments here in the United States, but according to our guest that …

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EP 980 Data Centers Unite the Nation in Opposition

EP 980 Data Centers Unite the Nation in Opposition

Underpinning the growing use of AI is the need for state-of-the-art data centers. These data centers host a large number of file servers and networking equipment that can store, process, and analyze text, images, code, and other information sources.  While data centers have been around throughout the computer, internet and cloud eras none so big …

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EP 979 Is the World Prepared to Address the Triple Crises Confronting It?

EP 979 Is the World Prepared to Address the Triple Crises Confronting It?

 Professor Dani Rodrik, of Harvard University, and the author of “Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World: A New Economics for the Middle Class, the Global Poor, and Our Climate”, joins us today to discuss the three, five-alarm issues facing the globe: fighting climate change, saving democracy, and eradicating poverty.  Assuming that there is generally global …

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EP 977 Macho Men and Bro Culture Dominate Military Education

EP 977 Macho Men and Bro Culture Dominate Military Education

Secretary of Defense (or ‘War’, as he prefers) Pete Hegseth is a poster child for the way military education likes to inculcate recruits and students into a macho culture of masculinity.  The Pentagon has a vast educational network through which to teach these lessons.  It includes basic training, service academies like West Point, JROTC, ROTC …

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EP 976 Does America Have Too Many Free Speech Pessimists?

EP 976 Does America Have Too Many Free Speech Pessimists?

 America’s First Amendment is a model of free speech protection unparalleled across the globe.  Yet, the United States saw the third largest decline in free speech between 2021 and 2024.  And 2024 marked the 19th consecutive year in which civil and political rights declined globally.  While it may seem paradoxical that while the new voices …

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EP 975 Rifkin’s Songwriting Takes on New Colors on Third Album

EP 975 Rifkin’s Songwriting Takes on New Colors on Third Album

The host of America Trends, Larry Rifkin, has in the later stages of life taken up keyboards and songwriting.  He is putting out his third album of originals, in collaboration with Alasdair MacKenzie, as part of the music project he calls Rockaway.  The album, titled “Wrong Side of Love”, contains 16 songs that still offer …

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EP 974 Pardon Me is the New White House Mantra

EP 974 Pardon Me is the New White House Mantra

The pardon power that the President has is, as Constitutional prerogatives go, about as absolute as it can be.  Coupled with the friendly majority Donald Trump has on the United States Supreme Court, which gave him immunity from prosecution for many crimes charged in connection with his pardons, and you have what some call a …

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EP 973 Medical Insurance Claims Are Being Denied at Astounding Rates–and With a Human Toll

EP 973 Medical Insurance Claims Are Being Denied at Astounding Rates–and With a Human Toll

 Deborah Schwartz, a healthcare attorney, saw how medical insurance companies put profit over patient and the impacts it had.  While inside the health insurance industry, she tried to change the practices she saw which were antithetical to better health outcomes, but since leaving the field, she’s writing about in her new novel, “EmmaCare” and sounding …

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