No matter the effort we say is being put behind the movement for more diversity in the workplace, the sad reality is that the numbers are dismal.  In the Fortune 500 companies where diversity numbers are compiled, fewer than 4 percent of their workforce is racially and ethnically diverse.  Additionally, a study of 279 companies found that White workers occupied 86 percent of C-suite positions.  And yet in America we are approaching a moment when forty percent of the workforce is non-white.  In the period of the pandemic, that percentage seems low as we see so many people of color populating the front line workforce keeping America operating in this tremulous moment.  Michelle Silverthorn, author of ‘Authentic Diversity: How to Change the Workplace for Good’ takes us to school in her informed and reassuring way that there is a path but it will require an honest discussion of race, admitting that we are a mosaic, not a melting pot, and at times stepping out of our comfort zones into a place of discomfort and new discovery.  We move beyond EEO speak into an honest conversation very quickly.  You may want to listen twice to gain new insights.

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In the introduction to the book we base this podcast on, Tim Egan describes the response to the coronavirus as ‘perhaps the greatest collapse of American society in so short a time, ever.’  Why did a confluence of unmet concerns coalesce around this health crisis, including economic suffering, disparities in care, inability to mobilize and marshal government resources and racial inequities that have been knawing at our society for years?  Historians will have a field day trying to unpack why it happened on this scale at a time that the sitting President said he had made ‘America great again’.  A dubious claim, indeed.  Jon Sternfeld who compiled and edited ‘Unprepared’ joins me for a great conversation about how democracies respond to crisis, the hollowing out of our federal governmental infrastructure over decades and the abject failure of leadership throughout the pandemic.  America’s reputation as the can-do nation in the world has suffered a mighty blow from which it may never recover and Americans must ask themselves hard questions about the responses needed and the wherewithal to provide them.  There will be the next crisis.  Will we be better prepared to address it or unprepared–again?

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Does the title sound like science fiction?  Then you haven’t been paying attention when heat besieged California this summer in ways unseen in generations.  Or that a surge in air-conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid.  Or that in Death Valley the 130 degree temperature was possibly the hottest ever measured on Earth.  Not to mention the wildfires, intense hurricanes, floods and drought impacting various areas of our country.  It’s the elixir of climate change meeting indifference on many levels in our society.  If it’s going to take more convincing on the part of many people that this phenomenon is real and helped along by our own actions, perhaps your inability to get a mortgage because banks won’t secure it or insurance companies not writing you a policy for your dream home that will convince you we have a serious problem. At the moment, people are still rushing toward the danger looking to re-locate to shoreline communities and hot zones, like Arizona and Florida.  Jesse Keenan is an urban planning and climate-change specialist who advises the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission on market hazards from climate change and is an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University  He joins us to discuss where to when where we are becomes uninhabitable.

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Most people are aware that the elderly are vulnerable and that this population is often targeted by scammers and abusers.  Elder abuse, whether it is physical, emotional or financial, is a real concern for family members of seniors.  However, there is a growing threat that receives less attention: self-neglect.  That concept may be new to many, but given that there are more seniors than ever, many of them living alone, with relatives long distances away, it’s harder for family members to know if their loved is fully capable of taking care of their many needs.  Imagine walking into the home of an elderly loved one and being greeted by a foul-smelling odor that has no identifiable sourse.  The house is in disarray and there are papers, dirty dishes and pills not taken strewn around the living quarters.  The stories are heartbreaking.  How America is going to address the needs of an aging population is soon to become a national crisis. Lori Delagrammatikas, Executive Director, of the National Adult Protective Services Association, joins us to discuss the nature of the problem and ways we might address it.  If you have an aging parent or grandparent, please take a close listen.

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Imaginations have run wild over the years as to what technology can do to change education. Some had predicted that half or more of courses by now would be offered on line at a lower cost and with great results. It turns out that in this fevered moment, as the pandemic descended upon the nation, much of our children’s educations did go on-line with little of the planning and intent required to maximize its impact. In the best case scenario, Justin Reich, author of ‘Failure to Disrupt’ and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT, tells us our expectations for ‘EdTech’, as its called, have been outsized. He looks at the complex nature of schooling and believes that while there is a place for technology in the classroom it will be as an adjunct to the work done in a classroom and school building, not a replacement for it. EdTech is complex and he breaks it down in three different buckets: instructor-guided online courses, algorithm-guided adapative tools and peer-guided networked learning communities.Each has a place depending upon the age of the student and the subjects being taught. Again, none is a panacea that will lift socially and educationally disadvantaged students to a place imagined by what Reich calls the ‘charismatic initiatives’ that we often read about in which a philanthropist puts computers in the hands of all children in an urban area. It’s a timely and important discussion at a moment of disruption in the educational system.

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Faced with proof that they were harming people or the environment, corporations have long denied evidence, blamed victims complained of witch hunts, attacked their critics and found other rationale for their harmful activities.  No denial campaign was more insipid than that of the tobacco industry.  That effort set the standard for establishing doubt in the public’s mind where none should exist.  In her book, ‘Industrial-Strength Denial’, attorney Barbara Freese lays out eight stories of corporations defending the indefensible, from slave trade to climate change.  Corporations can be checked by law, regulation, and public outcry but it’s often after serious damage has been done as corporate lawyers and inestimable dollars are thrown at the efforts to blunt these unscrupulous practices.  The corporate structure is a perfect one in which to make anonymous an individual’s role in carrying out practices harmful to others.  We explore the history and the current attack on the science of climate change by the fossil fuel industry. 

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In his book ‘The Box’ Marc Levinson explained how shipping containers were essential in the growth of international trade.  Now as he looks at the new wave of globalization, he sees a changing landscape.  Countries have begun to recognize, even before the recent pandemic, that supply chains can be precarious and unreliable.  And while there was an explosion in world trade involving manufactured goods from 2001 to 2008, rising 120 percent, it has fallen off since.  That is a concept you may find interesting since concerns about trade, and its imbalances, have fueled political discord in America, the United Kingdom and other countries.  Mind you, it is not apparent that countries are retreating to their borders, but there is a shift to greater reliance on suppliers and partners on a more regionalized basis and much of the trade today, and into the future, is trending toward services.  In large part this is due to the aging of populations worldwide and the need for more medicine, entertainment and other services, as opposed to hard goods, in the trading process. Thus, Mr. Levinson’s latest book is titled ‘Outside the Box’: How Globalization Changed Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas’.  We discuss these evolving changes with him on this podcast. 

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The concept of true friendship has been challenged by the notion that someone who friends you on Facebook really can be counted on when you’re in need. You can be well-connected in the digital sphere and find yourself isolated and alone when the chips are down. Val Walker, a rehabilitation consultant, grief counselor and author of ‘The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for Others in Distress’ found herself in the ironic situation of having no one to pick her up after a surgery and realized that she needed to build new connections to others in the physical world. In the process, she moved from a pristine, but lonely, spot in Maine to bustling Boston and wrote her latest book, ‘400 Friends and No One to Call’. She shares valuable information about the growing problem of social isolation in America and ways to re-connect in ways that do not require a personality make-over. Many of us are introverts or have social anxiety, or have experienced loss and grief which affect the way we interact with others, but we can find soulmates and friends who share many of the same characteristics. It’s an important conversation and may offer you a way forward if you find that this topic resonates. Given that loneliness is a health epidemic in the United States, and many of us have been in self-isolation because of the pandemic, it will provide new ways of thinking about connection for this unique moment in time.

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All good things must come to an end, as the song goes. It’s no less true for the universe than it is for love stories. It’s not something we spend much time thinking about because a)it’s too depressing and b)it’s likely billions of years into the future. Please don’t confuse the universe with the earth. We have the power to obliterate ourselves today. Why wait for natural forces? Of course, we all hope that our better angels prevail and the scenarios that Dr. Katie Mack posits in her book, ‘The End of Everything(Astrophysically Speaking)’ are so removed from our reality that they never give us a moment’s pause. However, the end is going to happen according to the scientific community, whose sophistication in this area is accelerating at a rapid pace. So how will it come about? Will it be the ‘big crunch’ or ‘dark energy’ or ‘heat death’? You’ll have to tune in to find out. And you will have to then decide what it means, most importantly, to the way you live your life today knowing that little, if anything, we do here will remain as a permanent record. It will all vanish in time. Theologians explore the meaning of this and scientists put a clock on it. What are we to do with this information?

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One wag called it a ‘conservationist rom-com’, when the big personality of Theordore Roosevelt came into contact with the big hole, The Grand Canyon. It was there that he spoke the words which became the title of David Gessner’s new book, ‘Leave It As It Is’. Yet, it seems that Americans can’t leave well enough alone. As tourists, we want a closer look and amenities that take it from its natural state to something more tame(illustration: Niagara Falls)and as policymakers we are susceptible to the pressures and money provided by special interests to turn back protected lands for commercial purposes. Thankfully, places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were protected as parks and it took TR to do the same for the Grand Canyon. His passage of the Antiquities Act put in place one of the most important tools possible to protect our natural environment and yet there are constant challenges to its scope and intent up until this very moment. Mr. Gessner set out to re-create TR’s travels in the West and re-capture the beauty of the land, while also focusing on the challenges to keep it that way and the complex character of the man, who may have been the last president to truly love the outdoors and want to make its preservation his lasting legacy. In this podcast, we discuss the pressures on public lands, including the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

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