We are Americans, First
I saw a Tweet this week that made me laugh a little. Someone had shared a video of the flooding in downtown DC on Monday when that deluge of rain came through. The National Archives had tweeted the footage and pointed out that you could see their building beyond the waves of the flood waters. An historian at Georgetown said he hoped the Constitution had been kept dry because “we … Read More
Living with Neurological Disease with Lisa Genova
Air Dates: July 8-14, 2019 An estimated 5.6 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s today. Another 100,000 are living with ALS—or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lisa Genova is a brain scientist whose best-selling novels describe not what it’s like to die from these diseases, but what it means to live with them. Dr. Genova is a Harvard trained neuroscientist who broke into the public’s consciousness with her novel, Still Alice. Likened to … Read More
Native American History with Philip Deloria
Air Dates: July 1-7, 2019 The British colonies in the New World, and later the United States, were built on land taken from native populations. Philip Deloria explores the interplay of Native Americans and the development of America’s national identity. Deloria is the first tenured professor of Native American history in the long history of Harvard University. His first book, Playing Indian (1998), explores the tradition of white Americans dressing … Read More
The Impact of Technology on Modern Relationships with Helen Schulman
Air Dates: June 24-30, 2019 It is almost taken for granted that technology is changing America. Whether we’re talking about job losses, election meddling, or the role of big-data in healthcare, technology is everywhere. Helen Schulman, through her remarkable fiction, warns that technology is changing our personal relationships and our families, too. Schulman, a novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and non-fiction author, is the chair of Fiction for the MFA Creative … Read More
Democracy is America’s Most Potent Asset
The next American president should get back to celebrating the moral power of democracy. This was standard fare for President Ronald Reagan—in fact it was pretty standard throughout the Cold War. The fact that democracy promotion is little more than a slogan and not a centerpiece of American foreign policy is a mistake. We are leaving our most powerful asset unused in the global competition that will shape the 21st … Read More
Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War with William Taubman
Air Dates: June 17-23, 2019 Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the most important figures of the 20th century. A child of the Soviet Union, and a fast rising star in the Communist Party, Gorbachev was also a democratizer whose reforms led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. William Taubman has authored the definitive biography of the last Soviet leader. William Taubman is … Read More
Immigration and America’s Dairy Farms with Julie Keller
Air Dates: June 10-16, 2019 The super-heated rhetoric over immigration and border security in the United States today is part of a long tradition of anti-immigration hysteria. Julie Keller puts our recent panic in a sociological context—exploring changes in who works on American dairy farms, and how they traveled from Latin America to farms in the upper-Mid-West. Julie C. Keller is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of … Read More
Remembering D-Day and Tiananmen Square
This week, we mark two very different milestones: the 75th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the allied invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe; and the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. How these days are marked and remembered tells us a lot about the difference between democracy and autocracy. Earlier this week, a friend pointed out that D-Day is perhaps the most celebrated, fictionalized, and talked … Read More
Local Journalism with Alexandra Watts
Air Dates: June 3-9, 2019 Local journalism is one of the key-stones of American democracy. There’s no substitute for an experienced, local reporter—not just to get a story, but to share it with the insight and perspective that only comes from living in the community in which they report. Alexandra Watts is one of 13 fellows with Report for America, a new effort to put reporters on the ground in … Read More
Democracy in Peril
When I moved back to New England eight years ago, the state of Rhode Island was in tough financial shape and several municipalities were being administered by officials appointed by the governor. Let’s be clear about what this meant: whole communities—and sizable ones at that—had local democracy subverted and replaced by appointed officials. I was troubled by the phenomenon. It struck me as running counter to so many of the … Read More