Alec MacGillis covers politics and government for ProPublica, and he joins us to tell the stories of teenagers in two small towns, one in New Mexico and one in Texas, where governors took very different approaches to public safety.
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Dallas Fed Chair Talks Post-Pandemic Economy
Robert Kaplan, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, joins us to talk about how increased rates of vaccination and the rollback of COVID restrictions will affect the state’s economy the rest of the year.
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A 50-Year Look At American Immigration
Sarah R. Coleman, assistant professor of history at Texas State University, joins us to work through near-term policy options and to talk about ideas for improving the conditions in the countries migrants are fleeing.
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New To America? Here’s Where To Start
Roya Hakakian joins us talk about her instruction manual for newcomers to this country, acting as tour operator for all the wonder of American sights and sounds.
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What Would We Do If There Were No More Nurses?
Theresa Brown is a nurse and author, and she joins us to talk about the nurses charged with healing despite a lack of support and how, even as the demand for care skyrockets, the nation faces a severe nursing shortage.
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The Problem With Creating Our Own Truth
University of Connecticut philosophy professor Michael Patrick Lynch joins us to talk about how people come to believe what they think they know, and why shared foundations of knowledge are crucial to the health of a democracy.
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Your Ancestors Were Not Helicopter Parents
Michaeleen Doucleff, correspondent for NPR’s Science Desk, joins us to discuss her journeys with her daughter, from the Arctic to the Yucatan, to understand parenting best practices around the world and why American parents may be getting it all wrong.
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What It Means To Be Asexual
Journalist and writer Angela Chen joins us to discuss her book – part-reporting, part-memoir – on the spectrum of human sexuality and the categories that often go ignored.
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Making Sense Of The World As A Black Queer Kid
Hari Ziyad, the editor-in-chief of the website RaceBaitr and a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow, joins us to discuss their personal history of a queer and Black childhood, and about breaking down structures of institutionalized racism and violence.
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A Case For Rebuilding The Voting Rights Act
Vann R. Newkirk II, senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of the podcast Floodlines, joins us to talk about how the bill was originally perceived and passed, and what might happen if it again lands at the Supreme Court’s door.
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Why Is It Taking So Long To Get Your Covid Shot?
Kaiser Health News correspondent Rachana Pradhan joins us to explain the very complicated process of producing these vaccines – a process money or even executive orders can only do so much to speed up.
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How The Medical Research System Gets Around Informed Consent
Harriet A. Washington, a lecturer in bioethics at Columbia University, joins us to talk about her research into a patient’s right to decline a procedure and the ethics of forcing experiments or new treatments in the name of research.
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