The topic we are bringing you on this podcast startled me.  My concept was that we, the medical consumer, gain protections year after year.  In fact, Harriet Washington’s chilling expose, ‘Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent’, reveals just the opposite.  It is becoming harder to avoid being part of risky medical research as the matter of consent is often not sought.  Medical consent is a right you and I take for granted, but rather than being enhanced it has been eroding over the last twenty five years.  How can this be?  Ms. Washington makes disturbing comparisons between practices in present day United States to some egregious abuses by the Nazis in WWII. It’s a comparison she was reluctant to make but felt the parallels demanded she do so.  She will explain her thinking and ways to reform a broken system of medical research overreach.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Much of the attention drawn to QAnon of late has common from the mainstream media and not the dark corners of the internet.  The election of an adherent to Congress and a rebuke of her utterances has also shone light on a movement with some very unusual beliefs and indeterminate motives and goals.  According to a study by political scientists, Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders, while QAnon supporters are extreme they are not so in the ideological sense.  QAnon support is best explained by conspiratorial world views, dark triad personality traits and a predisposition toward other anti-social behavior.  In this podcast, Professor Enders summarizes their findings and takes a trip with me down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and discusses the type of people drawn to them.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It is a head scratcher to many of us that the anti-vaccination movement has taken hold in the way that it has in the 21st century given the unassailable fact that vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives.  The achievements are astounding. Vaccines have eradicated small pox, virtually eliminated polio, brought measles transmission down by 90 percent and basically wiped meningitis off the books.  And the new technology vaccines against COVID-19, the scourge of this era, show remarkable early results turning a killer disease into a mildly annoying one for those who are stricken. And yet anti-science and other social and political factors are aiding previously conquered afflications to rise again.  In his book, ‘Preventing the Next Pandemic’. Dr. Peter Hotez, a mainstay authority on cable news throughout the pandemic, describes the forces allied to make medical and vaccine diplomacy a must in the period ahead. It’s a critical topic to discuss as the world struggles with challenges that weaken public health in this moment of crisis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  For many of us we still scratch our heads as to how Donald Trump made it to the White House in the first place.  We have all had our theories which range from the wrong candidate opposing him, a strong reaction to the Obama presidency from disgruntled white voters in rural communities and those in the economic despair or Russian interference, or, perhaps, some combination of all the three.  Little dicussed are the large number of towns, cities and counties that flipped from twice Obama voters to Trump voters.  What is that about?  Political scientist Jon Shields and historian Stephanie Muravchik did not feel that the answers had been clear enough about that trend because no one spent the time on the ground to really study the reasons.  They did and put their findings in a book titled ‘Trump’s Democrats’, an ethnographic study of the factors involved.  Surprisingly, Trump won in those communities not primarily for reasons often put forward, but because he looked and sounded much like the Democratic party bosses who have served their local communities well for decades.  It’s a fascinating argument put forward by Ms. Muravchik in this podcast.  It’s likely this is the first time you have heard much of what she is about to say.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Presidential races are covered more like a horse race than a contest of ideas.  What impact does that have both on crowding out more important news about the candidates, like positions on issues, and on how we feel about the race depending on how our preferred candidate is doing?  Then there’s the growing concern that depending on the representativeness of the sample, whether the respondent will actually vote and the technology used to reach them, that the results may not mean much.  After all, we are reminded it is not a prediction, but rather a snapshot in time.  Polling and surveys have more value to our diverse society when used to determine what our fellow Americans think about a range of issues, according to our guest, Daniel Cox, a research fellow in polling and public opinion for the American Enterprise Institute.  He also is the director of their Survey Center on American Life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

While the title to this episode is not original, it does state something that has become more real year in and year out.  The U.S. Senate’s deliberative nature has become sclerotic and impediments to popular legislation never see the light of day.  Senator Mitch McConnell, a master of Senate rules, in the Trump years recognized that it would be easier to get judicial appointments through the process than legislation, because the filibuster was not standing in the way for appointments to the lower federal courts.  McConnell then expanded former Democratic Senator Harry Reid’s removal of the filibuster from judicial appintments to include the U.S. Supreme Court. It was his master stroke and a large part of President Trump’s legacy. Adam Jentleson, a former deputy chief of staff to Sen. Reid and author of ‘Killswitch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy’ opines in his book that the end of the filibuster, barely a Senate rule, more a procedure, will be critical to passing major legislation once again.  His book meticulously details the history of the filibuster, which started as a tool of Southern senators upholding slavery and then later became a device to block civil rights legislation.  Today, it makes legislating near impossible.  Find out how and why.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The pandemic has locked us in our homes and unlocked the delivery economy.  Many times a day we can look out our windows and see delivery trucks stopping to deliver all manner of goods from groceries to toiletries, from a cooked meal to a new pair of jeans.  Now that we are growing accustomed to the convenience, and the infrastructure to deliver essentials has been put in place, will we get back in our cars and troll the brick and mortar stores that have survived the pandemic?  It’s an open question.  More intriguing to our guest, Michael Mandel, the Chief Economic Strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, is how productively we will use the time afforded us not having to tool around town now that companies, like Amazon, are geared up to more conveniently attend to our every need.  He acknowledges that we might want to get out and about again with a pent up demand to sense the aliveness of the experience.  It’s an intriguing question we posed in our title of this podcast and we explore it in depth with him.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

 You must have read about the recent cyberattack.  Which one you ask?  Take your pick.  There seems to be a new one daily.  It could be your hospital system, your bank or one level or another of your government.  What’s amazing is how many ways hackers have of slipping through the digital back door or any opening in your computer defenses.  The recent hack of 18,000 U.S. companies and key federal government agencies really got our attention. It went undetected for a long period of time and was brazen as the perpetrator attached a computer virus to software updates a private contractor, SolarWinds, pushed out to its clients. To understand what we must do to limit and diminish the impact of these attacks we turn to Frederick Scholl, the Cybersecurity Program Director at Quinnipiac University.  I ask him how life seems to go on after these many attacks and those of us affected never sense that we have been violated.  He said the impact may be down the road.  Take a listen.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

 Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order to end the sale of new gas-burning cars by 2035. That is a big deal because California’s impact on climate matters set the standard for 14 others states that follow their lead and automakers who will adapt to the market established by America’s country within a country, with its 40 million residents.  Are you ready for electric cars?  Can our electrical grid handle the increased demand on it?  Will the price point for these vehicles come into line with the budgets of most Americans?  Will Elon Musk dominate the market or will established automakers became major players or, perhaps, a start up we have yet to become aware of?  Jonn Axsen, associate professor at Simon Fraser University and Director of the Sustainable Transportation Research Team at the University, studies all these questions and senses none will be a major challenge to the growth of electric cars as we move along.  Much more important will be the impetus given to the industry by policy makers hastening the change.  Buckle up for major changes as to what’s under the hood.  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

 After the debacle of the Vietnam War, astute observers of our failed attempt at counterinsurgency said let us not do this again.  Yet, we went into Afghanistan following the attack on 9-11-2001 and have found ourselves in a similar quagmire ever since.  There was a more strategic approach to rooting out Al Qaeda, but we did not take it and the failed attempt at nation building has gone on since that point.  While most troops will be drawn down completely in the period ahead, it is hard to imagine that any agreement will do anything but leave the Taliban as the strongest force in the country.  One of our most astute writers and observers of defense policy, Bing West joins us as he promotes his new book , ‘The Last Platoon’: A Novel of the Afghanistan War’.  As a Marine veteran from the Vietnam era and a former assistant secretary of defense, his insights about this war and defense policy are critical to hear.  He does not hold back on this podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download