Section 230 is part of a set of policies passed in 1996 to protect the internet and encourage innovation within its developing framework.  These 26 words of the Communications Decency Act paved the way for Facebook, Google and Twitter.  Section 230 states that internet platforms–considered ‘interactive computer services’ in the law-cannot be considered publishers or speakers of content provided by their users.  In plain English this means that just about anything a user posts on a platform’s website will not create legal liability for the platform.  Thus, we have politicians wanting imagined behemoths, like Facebook and Twitter, when this law was written to do something about defamatory and false information on their sites.  Most concerning of late has been misinformation about the 2020 election and the pandemic.  But is content moderation really the answer?  Or have these networks just gotten too big and that is the issue that must be addressed?  It’s complicated stuff that has the right and the left railing against the sites and Section 230 for different reasons.  Donald Trump, as president, threatened not to sign a defense authorization bill until Section 230 was repealed.  His hope was to see no content moderating, which this portion of the bill allows, too, without legal pushback.  The fact that he has been thrown off Twitter for good and Facebook for a period of time demonstrates he did not win the argument.  Let’s walk through it all with Cameron Kerry of the Brookings Institution.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In 1492, Columbus landed in…Cuba. Surprised?  There’s much about the island 90 miles to our south that ties its history to ours.  In recent years, we have been at odds with Cuba over its Communist regime.  In defiance of that regime we give Cuban immigrants the fastest track the government provides to citizenship status. We have occupied Cuba militarily in the past and controlled one of its key industries in sugar production.  Our greatest foreign policy challenge of the 20th century, and perhaps ever, is remembered as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  There is much to learn about this relationship.  To help us understand it, we call upon NYU professor, Ada Ferrer, author of the remarkable new book with the compelling title, ‘Cuba: An American History’.  Just as President Obama’s visit to Cuba during his presidency was meant to ease trade restrictions and provide new avenues of cooperation, President Trump reverted to the policies we adopted in response to the Cuban revolution in 1959 led by Fidel Castro.  It’s post Castro in Cuba and post Trump in America.  Has anything changed?  Be prepared to take a history lesson and a brief peek into the future on today’s podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

While science denial is a precursor to reality denial on many fronts in our society, it can result in impacts as serious as life and death.  For instance, if enough people don’t get the COVID vaccine, allow it to hang around and mutate, even the vaccinated may be at great risk.  So, while philosopher of science, Lee Mcintyre begins his book, ‘How to Talk to a Science Denier’, at a relatively harmless, yet otherwordly, flat earth convention, he later gets to the serious issue of climate denial, which can’t go on much longer without having even more dreadful impacts than those we are presently experiencing.  And, yet, he tells us it is worth the discomfort of having these conversations, even if we are not scientists ourselves, lest we let misinformation run rampant.  He tells us that science denialism spreads through five techniques.  Most commonly, deniers cherry-pick data and rely on fake experts.  He walks us through these common approaches and encourages us to refute them, respectfully.  It is an important conversation on a subject that will persist in what has become a society distrustful of expertise.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Since 9/11, America has found itself embroiled in endless war, little discussed and rarely debated, either in barrooms or Congress.  We just are.  It is interesting how little attention conflicts of various forms get given the trillions of dollars we spend on defense and the fact that we have Special Forces in more than three quarters of the countries on the planet.  While we eschew the role of the world’s policeman, it’s hard to imagine that we are patrolling the world and surveilling it with drones and other gadgets for no reason.  Perhaps, one reason we pay less attention to our offensive defensive posture is that most of it relates to what we are doing in places far away, with a volunteer force, able to accomplish its missions with fewer casualties on either side.  According to Yale University legal scholar and historian, Samuel Moyn, in his book, ‘Humane’, we have made a clear choice to make war more humane, but placed little emphasis on avoiding war.  Swords have not been beaten into plowshares, rather they’ve been melted down for drones that are capable of conducting war from over the horizon using a joystick.  It’s a fascinating topic and we have one of the leading authorities to present it on this podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Will over the horizon technological responses cut it in places, like Afghanistan, where American boots on the ground have been replaced with eyes in the skies?  That’s the gist of the conversation we have with Ben Coes, author of ‘The Island’, a story of terror in Manhattan as seen through the imagination of a novelist who has had real world experience in the political realm.  I turned to a novelist because often their vision has a wider aperture than intelligence experts. Coes’ vivid imagination was put to the test in this interview where we went around the globe to assess threats, real and imagined.  There is a question as to whether the greatest threats really emanate from the Middle East, from Sunni or Shi’a, or whether staging areas have morphed into many other territories, most particularly in parts of Africa. America has been distracted with Covid concerns, our own domestic terror threats, but in a world in which America and its Afghan pull-out seems to be saying goodbye to the vestiges of 9-11, have the roots of terror said goodbye to us?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

America is country that values hard work, almost above all else.  When you meet a stranger, one of the first questions is ‘so what do you do’?  Our occupation is often how we are defined and our value established in this culture.  It then makes it all the more difficult and painful to find yourself out of work in America.  Whether it’s from a mass layoff or a singular event, you’re left trying to explain to yourself and others what happened.  In her book, ‘The Tolls of Uncertainty’, Sarah Damaske explains how privilege and the guilt gap shape unemployment in America.  She will give definition to much of what can prove to be one of the most painful experiences of your life as search for work and meaning in the process.  This period of ‘unexpected transitions’ is traversed in different ways depending upon many factors, including social status and sex.  She also argues that unemployment is an institution–like workplaces and families–and produces its own inequalities.  Over 60 percent of us will experience a period of unemployment in our lifetimes and we explore the process today.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Over 60 court challenges were dismissed relating to voter fraud and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, but that has not deterred former President Trump in mounting a crusade to undo many ballot access initiatives that came about in the wake of the hotly contest 2000 presidential campaign.  No excuse absentee ballot, early voting, mail-in ballots and the number of secure drop boxes are among the initiatives being rolled back in many states controlled by Republicans.  Two other efforts are even more problematic.  One is to run candidates for secretary of the state who will not have put up the resistance to manipulation in the way that the Georgia Secretary of the State, a Republican, did in 2020.  The second, and more insidious, is the ability for a legislature to overturn the results of a count in their states for specious cause.  Robert Brandon, the president and CEO of the Fair Elections Center, breaks down what is happening across America and how the proposed Freedom to Vote federal legislation would blunt those efforts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

America has a nursing shortage’ scream the headlines.  And that’s true and will be for the foreseeable future.  Is the reason all to do with COVID?  No, but clearly it has had a dampening impact on the numbers of nurses and their perception of whether they want to stay in the field going forward.  Given that the average age of a nurse in America today is 50, for older nurses retirement has never looked so good.  Like most issues when you dig a little you find many subtleties that have far reaching implications for a beleaguered medical delivery system in a society with an aging population.  Patients who end up in hospitals today are often older, sicker and require more sophisticated care, taxing the fulcrum of the medical delivery system, the nurse, to an even greater degree.  There is no one more able in America to explain what’s happening to nursing than Professor Peter Buerhaus, himself a nurse, a Ph.D. and an expert in the economics of the nursing workforce.  By the end of this podcast you will understand the many facets of a problem that can result in care deficiencies, medication errors and fatalities if we cannot figure out a way to get more registered nurses into the field in the coming decade.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In most states, the Department of Motor Vehicles is the poster child for government inefficiency.  New systems are touted and yet the lines and the bureaucracy often grind down the citizen interacting with it.  This is especially notable in a society where private companies know so much about us that the interaction with them is seamless and, at times, astonishing.  Order an item today and have it arrive that same day. It became obvious to us that government had a problem during the pandemic when there were basic challenges like tracking testing data, allowing residents to schedule vaccination appointments and getting cash assistance to individuals and businesses.  Some governments around the world are stepping up their technology game, but America has a way to go.  For that reason Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank, our guest, have written the book, ‘Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology’.  Let’s start with the premise that government is important to our daily lives and that since we only have one we should all be invested in making it better at delivering services.  That’s the essence of this podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Conservatism has been the prevailing political ideology in America since the 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan’s brand came to dominate America’s political culture.  It was a rather pragmatic version, often cutting deals with Democrats to get 80 percent of what he wanted.  His belief that winning elections was for the purpose of governing.  Much of what he was trying to do was a reaction to activist liberal initiatives from the New Deal to the Great Society.  And while Reagan’s sunny side up form of conservatism gave way Donald Trump’s carnage in America pronouncements as part of his Inaugural Address in 2017, we wanted to explore the lineage of conservatism from Reagan to Trump–what they shared and where they departed in approach and substance.  H. W Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas-Austin, and author of ‘Reagan: A Life’ joins us.  He brings much historical perspective to this issue.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download