EP 968 Are Corporate Disclosures Meant to Reveal or Hide Their Employment Practices?
The 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests that pushed many institutions, including corporations, to confront racial inequality. Looking back at 2020 to 2024, companies issued public statements embracing racial justice causes in the hopes of protecting their reputations from claims that their practices perpetuate inequality, particularly in regard to race. In response to a furious conservative backlash, many began to withdraw those commitments. The pendulum of retraction has swung quickly. Our guest, Fordham Law Professor, Atinuke Adediran, author of “Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress,” notes that even when companies pledge to hire and promote people of color or fund racial equity causes, those pledges often serve to narrow the scope of social responsibility. Often, these public pronouncements are put in place to preserve corporate financial interests while appearing responsive. It’s an interesting discussion in these times of pushback against DEI practices in America.
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Much has been written about the ill effects of our over-reliance on our on-life life with endless content, algorithm-driven polarization and pressure to publicly present oneself. In this podcast, our guest, Patricia Martin, author of “Will the Future Like You: Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Reinvention,” argues that the damage goes even deeper. It is eroding the ability to form and sustain one’s identity. Are we hyper-focused on presenting a version of ourselves that will get likes and friends in a virtual world or have we done the hard work to figure out who we are at our core? What makes all this more difficult is the fact that many of the institutions designed to help us foster that growth and understanding of our identity are crumbling. We’re reminded that identity is formed in three ways–how we see ourselves, how others see us, and our will to shape ourselves. The balance in this triad is now skewed and leading to a host of issues for the generations growing up in a digital world.
I ran a few small state house and senate races in Connecticut back in the day. It was an era of news releases, radio ads, bumper stickers and small events in the district. To be honest, I cannot imagine the pressures of running campaigns today given the fractured and interactive media of this era, constant need to raise funds and to respond to incoming attacks every hour on the hour. Early in our conversation with Eva Posner, the CEO and Founder of Evinco Strategies, who does this for a living, she admitted that it’s exhausting. Messaging strategies today have to be so targeted that your approach has to be pinpoint and not shotgun, as in my day. She describes her reluctant use of AI as part of her toolbox but needing to do it so as not to give an important advantage to her political opponent. We get to the issues of 2026 and the overall political climate, and she said something quite interesting as we went along about her team’s inability to out organize voter suppression. Listen in while she explains what that means. It’s a good listen.
The Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965, and considered to be the most important civil rights legislation in American history, was effectively jettisoned by the ruling of the United States Supreme Court last week, according to our guest, David Daley, one of the leading experts in the country on the Act itself, and partisan and racial gerrymandering. The majority opinion in the case was written by Justice Samuel Alito and while he calls it an updating of the statute, others like Professor of law Richard Hasan, an elections law expert, begged to differ calling it an “earthquake” decision which sharply erodes the Voting Rights Act. With Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act already scrapped years back by the Roberts Court, and on the heels of the Louisiana vs. Callais decision last week, one is left to wonder what is left of protections for Black citizens across the South to ensure that their voices will count. I have had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Daley several times in the past. Never have I heard his words as impassioned and compelling as those he brings to this podcast. You will walk away with history surrounding this vitally important legislation, the immediate real- world impacts of this decision, and what the road ahead looks like for gerrymandering and voting rights. He is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic,” his latest book.
Greek mythology. Greek tragedy. Greek philosophy. Any of us who took a course or two on Western civilization remembers the name John Davies Homer, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. We may not revisit them, but they revisit us in many of the traditions that are woven through to our modern- day concept of the world. And for anyone who wants to grasp where they still stand today in time, place and in Western traditions of thought, may I recommend a book? It’s John Davie’s “Greek to Us: The Fascinating Ancient Greek That Shapes Our World.” He is our guest today and to some it will feel like a primer, others a refresher, but altogether a fascinating step back in time that connects to our present day.
Whistleblowers in our society our either considered heroes or traitors. In any event they have a massive impact in our history. For those who compile such lists of modern-day whistleblowers often Mark Felt, Deep Throat from Watergate is number two and Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who revealed the Pentagon Papers, is number one. Ellsberg’s son, Michael Ellsberg, and Daniel Ellsberg’s long-time assistant, Jan Thomas edited Daniel Ellsberg’s unpublished works into a new book, entitled “Truth and Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope.” Daniel Ellsberg is best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers regarding the truths behind our ill-fated involvement in Vietnam. However, as a perusal of this new book demonstrates, he was a man with a curious mind who devoted much of his long lifetime to raising concerns about nuclear annihilation and the ways that the human species may indeed bring on its own demise. My discussion with his son, Michael, will explore the depth of his thinking and what we can all learn from a man I consider to be a hero for what he did and the warnings he tried to convey throughout his life.
Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope, has been seen as a stabilizing force in the Catholic Church after a tumultuous papacy of Pope Francis. And while he is disciplined, thoughtful, and measured in his words and deeds, perhaps more traditional than Pope Francis, he has also been very vocal about his concerns about the actions of political leaders in the United State and elsewhere, as evidenced by his back and forth recently with President Trump. His watchword as Pope seems to be to spread the Jesus’s gospel of peace in an era of conflict. How he combines his traditional liturgical leanings with a willingness to comment on the negative effects of war over diplomacy, his concern about the ravaging of the environment, and the plight of immigrants here and abroad, will be an interesting juxtaposition as the years go on. With us today to discuss what to expect from this Pope is Paul Kengor, Ph.D., author of “American Pontiff: Pope Leo XIV and His Plan to Heal the Church.”
There is a largely invisible pricing structure in the American health care system that dictates the types of medical procedures that are most valued and therefore best compensated. It affects the way you interact with the system day after day. In her short, but clear-eyed, dissection of why specialists and surgery are often the weapon of choice to fight disease, as opposed to front end interventions focused on prevention, Dr. Robin Blackstone, author of “American Health: Who Gets Paid” unwraps how the process works. In it she shows how the system rewards procedural intervention and late rescue, while undervaluing early judgment, longitudinal care, prevention, and accountability at the time. The result is a system that incentivizes volume over health, fragmentation over continuity, and crisis response over risk reduction. Dr. Blackstone, herself a surgeon, is now writing on medical topics that are vital and little understood. Her newest book, touched upon as well in the conversation, is “Doctor AI: Reimagining Health Rebuilding Trust Delivering Health 4.0.”
If you’re paying attention these days, and in the wake of the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s hard not to notice how legalized gambling has crept into every facet of American life. You see it during sports games and with the full involvement of the leagues. You pass signs on the highway daily about games of chance being run by your state. And you see the proliferation of Native American and other gambling facilities sprouting up far from Las Vegas. And the bookie on the street corner is still there. What you may not see is the pernicious impact legalized gambling is having on young people, some of legal age and others not, as online gambling begins to ramp up across the country. Joining us today to discuss it is Les Bernal, the National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a 501(c)3 network built to reveal the truth behind gambling operators to prevent more victims. He will open your eyes to the devastation caused by gambling for so many in our society.