That’s a concise one word explanation for the presidential campaign of 2016. It’s also the name of the new book by Dr. Gary Rose, a professor and Chair of the Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. He provides a chronology of events leading up to the astonishing victory by Donald Trump. We will discuss the campaign and its aftermath and consequences going forward on this podcast.
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Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he loves. And he’s not alone. Many recent columns and stories attest to the concern that many fans are having with the brutal residual effects of the game which leaves so many players with brain damage in addition to severe ambulatory problems. Will the love and profitability of the sport succumb to its ravages? Or will the forces involved–team owners, media, advertisers–aggressively defend a sport which daily becomes more untenable to many former fans.
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During the 2016 campaign and in the early days of his presidency, President Donald Trump made ‘defeating radical Islamic terrorism’ a key part of his counterterrorism strategy. He also said that he would step up efforts to blunt other terrorist groups. At the same time, he vowed to be successful without deploying large numbers of United States soldiers. Dr. Anne Speckhard, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, joins us to discuss how this strategy is working out.
Learn more about The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism at http://www.icsve.org/
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In America, we’ve experienced four decades of progress against preventable deaths. We’ve cut death rates for motor vehicle accidents, homicides and smoking. That was before the opioid epidemic, which has driven the national death rate from overdoses to 9.3 per 100,000 in 2015, up from 0.4 in 1975. What once was rarely seen is now commonplace. Money is being spent, commissions formed, media attention growing, but have we tackled the issue in a meaningful way? Dr. Jon Zibbell, a senior public health analyst at RTI International, who formerly worked at the CDC, will detail the nature of the problem and how difficult it will be to combat.
https://www.rti.org/expert/jon-e-zibbell
THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC AND THE SOUTHERN BORDER
Sam Quinones, author of ‘Dreamland’, tackles a number of topics pertinent to our nation.
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Did you ever look around your cities and towns and wonder why so many folks look alike? In cities, often we see a preponderance of people of color and in suburbs and rural communities just the opposite. An accident, you wonder? Just the way things happened…birds of a feather? Not quite. In fact, finally, thanks to Richard Rothstein, author of ‘The Color of Law’, we can lay out definitively the fact that our government, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, consciously, relentlessly and with intent, used government policy to segregate America. Housing discrimination has led to many of the social ills we bemoan today. We’ll lay out the case today with Mr. Rothstein
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https://www.conventionofstates.com/
This effort is described as a project of citizens for self governance. The rallying cry of those who want to use Article V of The Constitution as a tool to amend it is that the federal government has grown to big, too unwieldy and overly intrusive in our lives. This they say is driving us into debt which is unsustainable and taking away our liberties. Mark Meckler is a co-founder of this movement and describes its plan, goals and the importance of your participation.
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Was the period of corporate loyalty to workers simply an aberration? In the modern era, generous salaries and benefits packages were most commonly doled out from the mid-1940’s into the early 1980’s. Through the prism of four corporate behemoths, Rick Wartzman, director of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society at the Drucker Institute, describes how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits in his book, ‘The End of Loyalty’. The rise and fall of good jobs and security will certainly lead to the question–what’s next for employees? Find out on this compelling episode.
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One of the joys of my broadcast career has been the opportunity to interview Jimmy Webb on more than one occasion. He is known for his power ballads which tells stories about people and places that are unforgettable. And for his remarkable collaboration with the late Glen Campbell, having written for him, ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’, ‘Witchita Lineman’ and ‘Galveston’, among others. And, of course, no one cannot have a reaction to the multi-layered, ‘Macarthur Park’. In fact, Jimmy’s recently published autobiography, the one that the ‘Wall Street Journal’ said was the best of any written in the pop music era, is titled ‘The Cake and the Rain’. He was the youngest man ever inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and was named by ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine as one of the top fifty songwriters of all time. And you owe it to yourself to pick up or download Jimmy doing his own songs as in the recording ‘Ten Easy Pieces’ or his most recent CD’s doing duets of his songs. I hope you’ll take a listen to a vintage conversation.
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Rex Fowler, along with his duo mate, Neal Shulman, have spent a lifetime making music together as the folk/rock duo, Aztec Two-Step. After taking their name from a poem by beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, they have written love song and songs of conscience. Rex Fowler reflects on the protest songs that have inspired him and the impact they have had as the soundtrack for various movements such as anti-nukes, civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war and now in ‘the resistance’, as its called. We sprinkle music into this podcast in order to demonstrate their power and form.
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They don’t buy napkins. They don’t play golf. They aren’t buying cars or homes. And they’re not even eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. So, how will this generation, which is like no other before it, continue to leave its imprint on our culture and business climate? Pavlina Jaine Osta is a millennial pop culture commentator who likes to ‘keep it real’ when talking about her generation. The future belongs to them, but will affect us all.
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