What can bottled water tell us about America? When you stop to think about it, an awful lot. The pervasiveness of bottled water and its dramatic sales increases is a clear sign that people have lost trust in basic services. The well- publicized cases of unsafe drinking water in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi …
For many people today saying who you work for as opposed to where you work is a lot simpler question to answer. There were many problems emerging with the traditional office before the pandemic, but its fate was further cast in doubt when people and technology adapted to work anywhere, anytime. Now this revolution is …
Political polarization and extremism have reached dangerous levels and the country’s economic and social disparities, coupled with a toxic social media environment, exacerbate tensions and make compromise, a staple of a healthy democracy, near impossible. We must break down the systemic causes of current threats to our democracy, including restricting access to voting, anti majoritarian …
We watched it on television. He lived it daily for years as an Afghanistan military interpreter and as a desperate husband and father trying to board a flight out of the country with is family as Kabul fell into a sea of panic and chaos. We are still shaken by what we saw. He found …
In your mind have you placed the fracturing of America’s politics at the entrance way to America’s college system? It takes some mental gymnastics to get there but if you trace the trajectory of American higher education from the postwar boom of the GI bill after World War II and the optimism for all to …
President Biden recently announced a college loan forgiveness program. It provides forgiving up to $10,000 of student debt for up to 43 million low to middle income borrowers. That is single borrowers with incomes of up to $125,000 and couples with incomes up to $250,000. It will also forgive as much as $20,000 for the …
Dictatorships do not come about in all the same way. The origin story, it turns out, is more than something interesting to read in a history book. Revolutionary autocracies, those born of violent social revolution, are extraordinarily durable. China, Cuba, Iran and Vietnam could be counted among this number. The record indicates that over …
While rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate might make us feel better, diplomacy is not enough to fix our growing problems. On this podcast, David Victor of the University of California, San Diego joins us. He, along with Charles Sabel, of Columbia Law School, have written the book, “Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain …
Given that COVID-19 has been with us for a relatively short period of time, as viruses go, it’s hard to say whether the after effects that some people experience are short term or will become chronic. That’s why many scientists around the world are studying it now. The conditions related to it are as diverse …
How you heard of the field of bio mimicry? It’s a relatively new scientific field in which innovations inspired by the natural world enrich our lives every day and, in some cases, help save them. Let’s take one example among the many described on the podcast. Take kingfishers for example: the design of …