What shocked us in the past has somehow become the the new normal in our politics, workplaces and overwrought interest in a celebrity culture.  In fact, through social media, we aspire to join that culture, at least for fifteen minutes, by some reckless, attention-seeking behavior.  The reward structure for living life out loud, in a less than virtuous way, seems to place value on all the wrong things.  The presidency of Donald Trump, an out of control personality, all tangled up in his own whims and ambition, is a striking example of this formula working on an individual level.  If that’s the nation’s chief executive, just imagine what Big Pharma does in doling out opioids like candy, banks issuing credit cards no one ordered and religious institutions covering up the misdeeds of men of the clergy.  All of this speaks to America’s need for ‘The New Honor Code’, offered up by cultural anthropologist, Grant McCracken, in his new book.  In this podcast, we explore whether our moral compass, as a society, can ever point true north, in the wake of such a torrent of bad behavior or as a popular series on Showtime suggests, we are ‘shameless’.

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Once America declares you part of the axis of evil or decides that your behavior require heavy economic sanctions, it’s tough to escape the impact our actions can bring.  That’s why the notion of the Iran nuclear deal pursued by the Obama Administration was such a risky political move.  Yet, by the strict reporting requirements of the deal, struck with America and its European allies, the Iranians were in compliance with the deal when the Trump Administration pulled America out and imposed sanctions that clearly have had an impact on the lives of the Iranian people.  Ironically, Iranians, generally younger or more well educated than others in the Middle East, have a fondness for America and our culture.  Now we can go back to the 1950’s and our overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in order to prop up the Shah or we can go back to the Ayotollah Khomeini and the taking American hostages in 1979, but either way we have had flashpoints with the Iranians for decades now.  So where do current relations stand at the early stages of the Biden Administration?  David Barsamian has edited a collection of thinking on the topic in the new book, ‘Retargeting Iran’.  The history is complicated and news accounts will not unpack the issues we do on this podcast.

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If we’re honest, most of us love sweets.  And while talking about my love of chocolate on a radio program, my guest, a nutritionist, admonished me by saying ‘no you love sugar’.  Indeed, I do.  What surprised me is how much of it we consume in a day without knowing or thinking about it.  The fact is that it is added to virtually ever manufactured food product we consume, even those we consider good for us.  And that’s aside from the candy, sugary beverages and the number of teaspoonful we put in our coffee ever day.  Recently, a federal committee recommended that Americans limit our consumption of added sugars to 6 percent of our daily calories, down from the current guideline of 10 percent.  News flash: most of us cannot hit the 10 percent mark, let alone the new, lower standard.  Given the impact on our health that processed and sugary foods have on us, it is surprising that they have not come in for more regulation than they have.  Even fuzzy children’s ad limits are often circumvented using different marketing slogans.  We know what happens when government, at any level, attempts to limit the size of colas.  Yet, type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart conditions are prevalent in our society.  According to our guest, Lindsey Smith Taillie, a nutrition epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, perhaps, we can learn from what some other countries are doing to affect behavior.  It seems to me if we ever hope to get health care costs down in this country, we are going to have a better national diet.  Sugar is at the heart of this issue.

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The twenty first century has been nothing, if not, eventful.  From man-made disasters like 9-11 to an economic collapse affecting the United States and Europe to a pandemic traveling the superhighway of viruses and touching nearly all quarters of the globe.  If you imagine that the world will now settle in to a more gentle, less tumultuous period, then call yourself an optimist.  It’s more likely that given biothreats, climate change, infrastructure deterioration, cyberthreats and the nuclear cloud still hovering overhead, there is a long and challenging road for us ahead.  In his book, ‘Rethinking Readiness’, Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Diasaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute walks us through various threats and vulnerabilities and the growing science of disaster research.  Planning to fight the last war, such as the pandemic, may well leave us vulnerable to realities we cannot begin to imagine today.  Hang on. It could be a bumpy ride.

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American politics is loud, angry and bristling, so what else is new?  Well, the make-up of the two major parties, cut more neatly along ideological lines than any point in our past, seem unable to be the vehicle for the design and acceptance of consensus policies. Perhaps, that’s because it’s not so much policy disputes that define us as much as it is cultural differences over the question ‘who are we’.  These issues have long been at the heart of the American debate as they deal with race, immigration and women’s rights.  It’s just that in the past many of those disputes were intra-party squabbles that had both parties finding some common ground in the center of our politics.  That space has been vacated for the moment, particularly as a large segment of white America ponders life in a generation which puts them in the minority.  In his book, ‘Republic of Wrath’, Brown University professor James Morone walks us through our history to show us how are current day politics tracks with our history and how it diverges.  He also offers us ideas and hope that where we are today, in this uncomfortable moment, is not where we will be in a decade or so.  Let’s listen and hope he’s right.

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Given the partisan battles over recent Supreme Court nominations, and the Democrats frustration over Mitch McConnell’s fixation for affecting American politics through the federal courts for a generation to come, President Biden was asked during the campaign if he would expand the size of the Court.  It’s been done a number of times before in our history.  He said that was not something he was intent on doing, but he did want to set up an independent commission to determine ways to reform the Supreme Court, as the debate over its extension as just another partisan branch of government have grown louder.  There are other measures that can be pursued to do this including term limits, a lottery system of rotating judges and others.  We called upon David Kaplan, a long-time Court journalist and author of ‘The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court in the Era of Trump’, to help us understand the history what we may see happen in the period ahead.  He is a return guest because on his first podcast with us he was insightful, energetic and very funny.  Here;s more of the same and it’s a great listen.

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In the aftermath of the presidential election of 2020, we seem to be more polarized than ever before–fully retreated into political camps and tossing verbal grenades at the opposition.  Our guest, Kevin Vallier, a political philosopher from Bowling Green University argues in his new book, ‘Trust in a Polzarized Age’, that as polarization is rising, Americans trust each other and our institutions less now than any point since measurement began in the 1960’s.  Through the thicket of political haze and misinformation that abounds on social media, he still argues that there is a way back to a rebuild of social and political trust.  We have to resist the urge to think about political life as fundamentally good versus bad and reinvest in liberal political and economic institutions and reforming our electoral process as a way to rebuild trust.  With all that’s gone on in this recent period, will that be enough?  One disturbing sign is that the least trusting generation is made up of young people.  Those concerns are likely to harden in adulthood, leading to a low-trust future.  We discuss whether this cold war among American citizens could turn hotter.

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Man has never before had as much potential to affect the future as we do today.  We can cure diseases in ways never imagined, develop technology to solve problems using algorithms that would have taken countless man hours and apply modern practices to the way we live to insure plenty for all.  On the flip side, this age of the anthropocene has caused environmental damage to the planet which requires us to use that genius to put the brake on climate change. It is a precious gift that  humanity has gained the ability to not only imagine the future, but to design and engineer it.  Dr. Andrew Maynard, an expert on socially responsible development of technology, in his new book, ‘Future Rising’, reminds us of all the human potential that gives us this unique opportunity to progress.  As you read this description, and by virtue of you listening to this podcast, in some sense you are making a commitment to know what responsibility you have in shaping a future that can far exceed our expectations.  In my own way, I like to think about when I arrived here in 1952 and all the work that had been done to make my world more liveable than someone born fifty years prior.  Now, let’s pass it on.

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  Matthew Desmond’s acclaimed book, ‘Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City’ drew attention to the eviction crisis in America.  Estimates suggest upwards of 900,000 renters were being evicted every year in America.  And that was before the pandemic forced a policy change putting a moratorium on evictions.  Without it, those numbers would have been in the millions as families would have been forced into shelters or onto the streets.  When you consider the fact that there is nothing more elemental than a roof over your head for safety, stability and health of your family, you can play out the many implications of the eviction crisis. While anyone in personal finance will tell you that housing should not take up more than 30 percent of your household budget in major urban areas with skyrocketing rents, gentrification and the lack of affordable housing often those numbers careen toward 50 percent for low income households.  That crowds out many other essentials for a family.  As Desmond’s book illustrated the rights of tenants are marginalized in our court system and thus landlords, particularly those that own multiple units, hold the upper hand in court proceedings.  John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for A Civil Right to Counsel, joins us to discuss the movement to insure legal representation for tenants and the growing number of cities supporting the effort and ways in which it actually saves urban centers money in the long run.  His movement is under the umbrella of the Public Justice Center(publicjustice.org).

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The young people who survived the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 became daily visitors in our home through their articulate expression of grief and the millions they attracted to their cause, which involved the rallying cry of ‘stop killing kids’.  As a nation, we sensed this time would be different.  What other senseless ramages had not accomplished, even the killing of elementary school students at Sandy Hook in Connecticut years earlier, we thought this expression of outrage, by teenagers, might be able to do.  Has it?  Did you even hear a whisper about gun safety in the course of the 2020 election?  Did we let another teaching moment go unadressed?  We turn to Jeff Foster an advanced placement government teacher at Stoneman Douglas High and an advisor to the students as they sought redress. He has just written a book about how our government works and why it matters, called ‘For Which We Stand’.  The content is intended for ages 8-14.  It’s one thing to teach about how government works and another to see how ‘a bill really becomes a law’.  Or why new laws aren’t enacted when the cause seems so just.  It’s a candid conversation with a man in the middle of an American tragedy.

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