The Open Mind, Hosted by Alexander Heffner: Recent Episodes
WNET
The Open Mind is a thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas across media, politics, technology, the arts and all realms of civic life.
On the "Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Henriette Reker.
On the "Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Stephan Keller
MS NOW host and “The West Wing” executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell interviews Alexander Heffner about the history of "The Open Mind."
PBS correspondent and anchor emerita Judy Woodruff interviews Alexander Heffner about the history of "The Open Mind."
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Mike Duggan.
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Francis Suarez.
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Mario Desbordes.
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Olivia Chow.
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Andre Dickens.
On the “Mayors of the World" special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Haris Doukas.
In the premiere of “Mayors of the World,” a 70th anniversary Open Mind special, host Alexander Heffner visits with Mayor Carlos Moedas of Lisbon, Portugal.
Behavioral neuroscientist Eduardo Mercado discusses his discovery of whale songs and their social implications.
Taos's Harwood Museum executive director Juniper Leherissey discusses the legacy and future of art.
Yale University political scientist Hélène Landemore discusses her groundbreaking new book "Politics Without Politicians."
Climate experts Ellen Prager and Dave Jones discuss perceptions and realities about the weather.
"Collisions" author Alec Nevala-Lee discusses his landmark biography of physicist Luis Alvarez.
MIT scholar Yasheng Huang discusses the inflation landscape in China versus the United States and the Needham Question.
"The Stronger Sex" author Starre Vartan discusses the latest research on women's mental and physical capacities.
In a special series recorded at the One Young World conference in Munich, Germany, financier and human rights advocate Bill Browder discusses the future of Russia and Putin. One Young World is a global community of young leaders whose annual summit maps solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.
In a special series recorded at the One Young World conference in Munich, Germany, South Africa Public Protector Thuli Madonsela discusses the nation's constitution and economy. One Young World is a global community of young leaders whose annual summit maps solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.
In a special series recorded at the One Young World conference in Munich, Germany, Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa discusses digital disinformation networks. One Young World is a global community of young leaders whose annual summit maps solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.
"The Jailhouse Lawyer" coauthors Sophie Cull and Calvin Duncan discuss the campaign for justice reform.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper discusses the future of the crypto industry and currencies.
FAMM senior counsel Mary Price discusses one of the most salient issues in American justice reform.
Investigative journalist Ross Halperin discusses his debut book "Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land."
St. John's College president J. Walter Sterling discusses the meaning and nomenclature of the liberal arts.
Civil Rights Corps executive director Alec Karakatsanis discusses his book "Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News."
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas president emeritus Robert Kaplan discusses the historical and contemporary U.S. economy.
"The Vagina Business" author Marina Gerner discusses long overdue innovation in women's reproductive health.
Investigative reporter Jake Adelstein discusses the Japanese government, yakuza, and fight against corruption.
"Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop" author Lee Drutman discusses the urgency of electoral reform.
GWU president emeritus Stephen Trachtenberg discusses the future of American education.
Science journalist Dan Levitt discusses his book "What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner."
University of Wisconsin Institute for Discovery director Jo Handelsman discusses threats to scientific research.
Investigative journalist Charles Piller discusses his new book "Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s.”
Science writer Lynne Peeples discusses her book "The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms."
Full Citizens Coalition James Jeter discusses the voting rights of system-impacted people.
Redemption Project of Washington legal counsel Jeffrey Ellis discusses sentencing reform.
Texas Defender Service executive director Burke Butler discusses the legal system in the second most populous state.
New York Times bestselling author Leigh Ann Henion discusses her book "Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark."
Worth Rises founder Bianca Tylek discusses the campaign to demonetize the prison industrial complex.
Science journalist Jaime Green discusses her book "The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos."
Chicago Project on Security & Threats founder Robert Pape discusses January 6th's legacy.
TYT Network CEO Cenk Uygur discusses the second Trump administration, Democratic Party, and future of populism.
Author Abrahm Lustgarten discusses how future environmental conditions will impact U.S. states and cities.
Counterproliferation leader Emma Belcher discusses reversing the likelihood of nuclear war.
Illinois Prison Project Jennifer Soble discusses opportunities for back-end justice reform.
Civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger discusses the state of public defenders in America.
Louisiana Parole Project founder Andrew Hundley discusses his personal journey in the justice system.
Sentencing Project research director Nazgol Ghandnoosh discusses mass incarceration data.
Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson discusses his prescriptions for reform.
“The West Wing” actress Melissa Fitzgerald discusses President Bartlet-inspired activism.
Gastropod host Nicola Twilley discusses her new book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves.”
Win Without War director Sara Haghdoosti discusses strategies for counterproliferation.
Carnegie Endowment fellow Tong Zhao discusses central and rogue nuclear powers of Asia.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists CEO Rachel Bronson discusses a potential nuclear event.
Arms Control Association nonproliferation policy director Kelsey Davenport discusses Iran.
In his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock and Alexander break bread over chicken and waffles (and crab cake benedict); then visit his childhood home.
In Hays, Kansas, Senator Jerry Moran and Alexander break bread over chili and milkshakes; then visit the local library.
At her favorite local restaurant, Senator Mazie Hirono and Alexander break bread over Japanese fare; then visit the Honolulu high school from which she graduated.
At the first-ever food hall in Pueblo, Colorado, Governor Jared Polis and Alexander break bread over a smorgasbord of hot chicken, roast beef, and ramen.
Project on Managing the Atom researcher Mariana Budjeryn discusses the Russia-Ukraine war.
At Pillen Family Farms, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen and Alexander break bread over pork sandwiches; then practice skeet shooting.
Oppenheimer Project founder Charles Oppenheimer discusses his grandfather's legacy and nuclear counterproliferation.
At Marieke Gouda farm in rural Wisconsin, Senator Tammy Baldwin and Alexander break bread over fondue and curds; then tour the plant.
At Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland, Governor Wes Moore and Alexander break bread over stadium concessions at a baseball game.
Neuroscientist Kelly Clancy discusses her new book "Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World."
Planet Word founder Ann Friedman and executive director Nikki Sertsu discuss their Washington DC museum.
University of Oregon sociologist Krystale Littlejohn discusses the post-Roe climate in the United States.
University of Denver chancellor Jeremy Haefner and Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway discuss speech and protest.
In downtown Buffalo, Wyoming, Governor Mark Gordon and Alexander break bread over steak and potatoes at The Historic Occidental Hotel.
At the annual renewable energy fair in Chena Hot Springs, Senator Lisa Murkowski and Alexander break bread over salmon burgers, halibut, and scallops; then take a nature walk.
In Tucson, Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly and Alexander break bread over Sonoran hot dogs and then fly over the desert.
In Fayetteville, West Virginia, Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Alexander break bread over flapjacks and then visit America's newest national park.
At her annual maple tapping, Maine Governor Janet Mills and Alexander break bread over homemade chicken a l'orange.
At Tomasita’s restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Alexander break bread over red and green chile enchiladas and then hike a trail.
In his boyhood home of Nashville, North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper and Alexander break bread over pulled pork plates and banana pudding.
At Sara Thai Kitchen in Salt Lake City, Governor Spencer Cox and Alexander break bread over spicy seafood and vegetables.
At Blueprint Cafe in Newark, Senator Cory Booker and Alexander break bread over vegan chicken and waffles and then toss a football.
In the North Dakota badlands, Governor Doug Burgum and Alexander break bread over homegrown bison, potatoes, and strawberries.
At the Elena Gallegos Open Space in Albuquerque, Senator Martin Heinrich and Alexander break bread over homemade elk fajitas.
At San Marcos restaurant in Oklahoma City, Governor Kevin Stitt and Alexander break bread over carne asada tacos.
At the Harold Thune Auditorium in Murdo, South Dakota, Senator John Thune and Alexander play basketball and then break bread over cheeseburgers.
University of Arizona economist Ronald Trosper discusses the Native American tradition.
Civic leader David McCullough III discusses the mission of the American Exchange Project.
Mathematician Coco Krumme discusses her book "Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization"
Science writer Benjamin Ehrlich discusses his new book "The Brain in Search of Itself.”
Author Chris Miller talks about the intersection of chipmakers and geopolitical crises.
Tech journalist Robert Buderi discusses his new book "Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub."
Knight Science Journalism @MIT director Deborah Blum discusses the challenges and tactics of contemporary science journalism.
Mathematician Manil Suri discusses why the objectivity of math is essential to preserving civil society.
University of Minnesota neuroscientist David Redish discusses the science of our choices.
Raj Vinnakota of Institute for Citizens & Scholars discusses how rejuvenate American citizenship.
University of Nebraska sociologist Kelsy Burke discusses pornography in American society.
Army National Guard veteran Joseph Earl Thomas discusses his new book "Sink: A Memoir."
University of Oklahoma bestselling author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers discusses free speech and book banning.
Hear Foundation cofounders Leon Ford and Ret. Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert discuss public safety.
Stanford Graduate School of Education's Geoffrey Cohen discusses how to bridge ideological and political differences.
"The Myth of Left and Right" coauthors Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis discuss U.S. political ideologies.
American University scholar Elizabeth Suhay discusses "The Politics of Truth in Polarized America."
Institute for Political Innovation founder Katherine Gehl discusses the key to fixing a politics industry.
Oxford University Press "Democracies in America" coauthor Bert Emerson discusses disparate and shared understandings of democratic rule
USC Center for Inclusive Democracy director Mindy Romero and Voters of Tomorrow director Santiago Mayer discuss youth turnout in the 2022 elections and the future of representative government.
Bestselling novelist Xochitl Gonzalez discusses rights to fairness amid gentrification.
Violinist Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch discusses her new book Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music.
British-Congolese filmmaker Kiosa Sukami discusses his new film “A Letter to Black Men” and representation of Blackness in the press and film.
Historian Nicole Hemmer and columnist Will Bunch discuss the politicization of the U.S. education system.
Science journalist Madeline Ostrander discusses her new book "At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth."
Practically Christian Podcast
Practically Christian Podcast is part of Mission Media. Here at PCP we are looking to...
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Georgetown international health lawyer Alexandra Phelan, USC psychologist Gale Sinatra, and RAND security analyst Brian Michael Jenkins discuss the triple threat of COVID-19, monkeypox, and polio.
Hey Jane founder Kiki Freedman discusses her company’s mission to provide medication abortion in the most restrictive climate in U.S history.
Soraya -Be Convinced! Sharing Lifechanging Stories of Hope
Host Soraya Coffelt shares lifechanging stories of hope to encourage and motivate you.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
National Whistleblower Center executive director Siri Nelson discusses the historical and contemporary role of the whistleblower.
Stevens Institute of Technology science historian Gregory Morgan discusses his new book Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology.
Soraya -Be Convinced! Sharing Lifechanging Stories of Hope
Host Soraya Coffelt shares lifechanging stories of hope to encourage and motivate you.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
United States Postal Service governor Amber McReynolds discusses the future of vote by mail.
The Art Coaching Club Podcast
Each week Hayley gives tangible tips to help grow your creative business.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
United States Postal Service governor Amber McReynolds discusses the future of vote by mail.
The Art Coaching Club Podcast
Each week Hayley gives tangible tips to help grow your creative business.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
University of Washington neuroscientist Chantel Prat discusses her new book The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours.
The Art Coaching Club Podcast
Each week Hayley gives tangible tips to help grow your creative business.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
University of Washington neuroscientist Chantel Prat discusses her new book The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours.
The Art Coaching Club Podcast
Each week Hayley gives tangible tips to help grow your creative business.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
UC Irvine historian and Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink author Jeff Wasserstrom discusses U.S.-China relations.
UC Irvine historian and Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink author Jeff Wasserstrom discusses U.S.-China relations.
Campaign operative and Any Given Tuesday author Lis Smith discusses the future of American politics.
Smells Like Humans
Like spending time with funny friends talking about curious human behavior.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Mother Jones magazine journalist Mark Follman discusses his new book “Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America.”
Smells Like Humans
Like spending time with funny friends talking about curious human behavior.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin and political strategist Canyon Woodward discuss their new book "Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It."
Halfwit History
Let's talk about the upcoming week, but a long time ago (and sometimes not so long ago)!
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Women’s March Executive Director Rachel O'Leary Carmona discusses tactics to restore women’s rights.
The Podcast for Men's Mental & Physical Health
Simple lifestyle advice to help men and their families take action for better well-being.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director and CEO Maryana Iskander discusses freedom of information and literacy.
Smells Like Humans
Like spending time with funny friends talking about curious human behavior.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Digital privacy leader Danielle Citron discusses her forthcoming book "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age."
University of Connecticut historian Melanie Newport discusses the contemporary prison and jail system.
Idaho State University scholar Zac Gershberg discusses the future of democracy and illiberalism in America.
KEEPS ME FREE with host Myron Myel
KEEPS ME FREE Is a podcast dedicated to the continuous healing and freedom of the...
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Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Robert Mahoney discusses the pandemic-era Fourth Estate.
Ways to Change the Workplace with Prina Shah + Guests
For those who stand against crappy work cultures, lousy leaders and toxic teams!
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National Coalition Against Censorship executive director Christopher Finan discusses bans of books and reproductive choice.
THEY'RE NOT SHADOWS
Spooky stories of the paranormal, the supernatural and the unexplained with no...
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U.S. military veterans Michael Robillard, and Bradley Strawser discuss their new book "Outsourcing Duty: The Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier."
Between Two Mics: The Remote Recording Podcast
SquadCast founders, Zach & Rock, share remote recording tips, software updates, and more!
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Wake Forest University psychologist John Petrocelli discusses the importance of fact- and nonsense-checking.
Tulane Law scholar Amy Gajda discusses her new book "Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy."
Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century coauthors and scientists Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki discuss the potential for nuclear annihilation.
North Carolina State historian Blair Kelley discusses the present and historical conditions of segregation in the United States.
Author Virginia Postrel discusses the history of fabric and contemporary mask-wearing practices to protect public health.
Columbia University president Lee Bollinger and University of Chicago scholar Geoffrey Stone discuss their book “Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy."
Author Azar Nafisi discusses her new book “Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times.”
"In Silico” documentarian Noah Hutton discusses the project to simulate the human brain on a supercomputer.
University of Minnesota sociologist Michael Walker discusses his new book "Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail."
UC San Diego political scientist Barbara Walter discusses American political tribalism and civil unrest.
"Punishment Without Trial" author Carissa Byrne Hessick discusses a culture of plea bargaining in the U.S. legal system.
Author Steve Olson discusses the Manhattan Project and the future of nuclear weapons, and their relevance to the pandemic.
Digital ethicist Carissa Véliz discusses corporate invasion of personal data and the continued U.S. failure to regulate Big Tech.
U.S Army Colonel (Ret.) Robert Cassidy discusses the Biden Administration’s foreign policy challenges and national morale.
Israeli politician Einat Wilf discusses contemporary Western anti-Zionism, the advent of Arab Zionism, and the future of anti-Semitism.
Keene State Holocaust and Genocide Studies scholar Jim Waller discusses the rise of identity-driven violence in the United States.
Science author and historian Brandy Schillace discusses coping with a generation of death.
ER physician Jeremy Faust discusses the state of the pandemic and disparities between vaccinations and testing.
Emory University medical ethnobotanist Cassandra Quave discusses potential coronavirus cures and her new book “The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature's Next Medicines.”
Louisville Association for Community Economics president Cassia Herron discusses grassroots organizing for food security and innovation.
Center for Rural Strategies national programs director Whitney Kimball Coe discusses the diversity of American rural communities and the aspirations of women.
Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute executive director Anton Dahbura and senior security engineer Joseph Carrigan discuss hacking, ransomware, and vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.
Economic advisor to Gov. Newsom (D-CA) and former Mayor of Stockton Michael Tubbs discusses how to restore economic fairness.
Science journalist Maia Szalavitz discusses substance abuse and her new book “Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction in the Future of Addiction."
Demand Justice cofounder Christopher Kang discusses how to incorporate democratic representation in the law.
Stimson Center fellow Jenny Town discusses Kim Jong-un’s aspirations for North Korea and nuclear build up.
Georgetown Law Professor Kristin Henning discusses her new book “The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.”
Florida State University College of Law historian Mary Ziegler discusses the outlook for reproductive rights in state and federal law.
Harvard scholar Sandra Susan Smith discusses the next phase of criminal justice reform and public perceptions of mass incarceration.
Biological anthropologist Agustin Fuentes discusses the future of the pandemic and how culture must evolve.
MIT Professor of Nuclear Security Vipin Narang discusses the global buildup of nuclear weapons and the future of deterrence and mutual assured destruction.
Johns Hopkins University Center for Safe and Healthy Schools executive director Odis Johnson discusses educating during the pandemic.
UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy executive director and former White House advisor Melody Barnes discusses U.S. domestic policy challenges.
Neuroscientist Rebecca Schwarzlose discusses her new book “Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain—And How They Guide You.”
U.S. Naval War College scholar Tom Nichols discusses his new book “Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy.”
Science journalist Lauren Aguirre discusses her new book “The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind How We Remember."
Cornell University trade economist Eswar Prasad discusses how cryptocurrencies are impacting the future of markets and global stability.
Terrorism expert and Georgia State University professor Mia Bloom discusses QAnon and contemporary U.S. domestic fundamentalism.
Labor journalist Sarah Jaffe discusses the pandemic’s exacerbation of an exploited and exhausted workforce and prescriptions to improve the well-being of workers.
Diplomat Severine Autesserre discusses her new book “The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World” and the process of peacemaking from Congo tribal wars to U.S. gun violence.
Wall Street Journal bestselling "Unspoken Rules" author Gorick Ng discusses the first generation American workforce and job market.
Bioethicist Nir Eyal discusses the ethics of research for vaccines and therapeutics and how equity should be applied to the future of medicine.
Saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings discusses his newest visionary album, racial justice, and the cosmos of music.
Power Coalition CEO Ashley Shelton discusses grassroots organizing in Louisiana in the current pandemic and political landscape.
New York Times COVID-19 correspondent Emma Goldberg discusses the experience of Millennial doctors reported in her new book “Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic.”
University of Alabama professor and US Attorney (retired) Joyce Vance discusses the Department of Justice and protecting democratic norms in the Biden era.
Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab Resident Fellow Jared Holt discusses Facebook's ban on Donald Trump and the post-Insurrection domestic terrorism climate.
Investigative reporter Katherine Eban discusses her documentation of the factual basis for evaluating COVID-19 lab leak pandemic origin.
Gun safety advocate and "Find the Helpers" author Fred Guttenberg discusses his mission to prevent more American murders.
Author Shane Burley discusses his new book "Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse."
Mississippi Today managing editor Kayleigh Skinner discusses the contemporary political and cultural climate in Mississippi in 2021.
Virologist Angela Rasmussen discusses the CDC's new guidance and breakthrough infections.
Microsoft's Civic Engagement director Sid Espinosa discusses how civic tech, corporations, and governments need to fix systemic inequities.
Together for Safer Roads CEO David Braunstein discusses the high stakes for infrastructure reform.
Foreign Policy editor James Palmer discusses China's global position and the Biden administration's foreign policy beyond the first one hundred days.
Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini discusses legislation to ban and redress the harm from weaponized data systems.
Washington Monthly and RealClearPolitics contributor Bill Scher discusses Joe Manchin's impact on lawmaking in the Biden era.
End Citizens United executive director Tiffany Muller discusses the path forward for voting rights and electoral reform.
University of Chicago Department of Surgery chairman Dr. Jeffrey Matthews discusses how the pandemic has – and has not – transformed the U.S. medical practice and how to tackle vaccine resistance.
Duke University Polarization Lab director Chris Bail discusses his new book "Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make our Platforms Less Polarizing."
UC Berkeley Law’s Bertrall Ross discusses how to reform the inequities of an unrepresentative U.S. government.
SeaBear Smokehouse CEO Mike Mondello discusses the impact of the pandemic on American seafood and stewardship of the oceans.
4 Rivers Smokehouse founder John Rivers discusses his brisket pilgrimage and feeding hungry Floridians during the pandemic.
Annenberg School for Communication scholar Jessa Lingel discusses her new book "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom."
American jazz musician Madeleine Peyroux discusses what the pandemic has taught America and the plight of the artist.
MeidasTouch cofounder Ben Meiselas discusses how to fight (dishonest) fire with (honest) fire.
Center for Transnational Law director Jorge Contesse discusses the pandemic’s global human rights fallout and the future of democracy in Chile.
Attorney Rabia Chaudry discusses the Floyd verdict, the politics of police reform, and the latest on the case of Adnan Syed.
Coyuchi CEO Eileen Mockus discusses sustainable entrepreneurial practices and agriculture policy during the Biden Administration.
President Biden's former director of strategic communications Kamau Marshall discusses how to activate the new consciousness of racial equity in America.
"Hiding in Plain Sight" author Sarah Kendzior discusses if and when the American people will enact an anti-corruption and pro-democracy agenda.
Bluesman Guy Davis discusses the legacy of the Kokomo Kidd and singing the truth in his forthcoming new CD "Be Ready When I Call You."
Penn State climatologist Michael Mann discusses the Biden-Harris administration’s actions on climate and how to increase global accountability.
James Beard Award winning chef Donald Link discusses the heritage of cajun cuisine and equity inside the restaurant.
Ugly Drum chef/proprietor Erik Black discusses the successful pop-up model in the pandemic and the secret to his best-in-flavor pastrami.
In this three-peat (third winning appearance) on The Open Mind, 9th Wonder discusses how we need "to empathize to change" and cultivating soul and soulfulness in music, education, and civil society.
Adult actress Valerica Steele discusses the stigmatization of body art and when, if ever, the rights of sex workers will be codified.
Academic Freedom Alliance chair Keith Whittington discusses how to preserve freedom of speech and humane discourse.
University of Florida political scientist and election expert Michael McDonald discusses how voter enthusiasm, restrictions, and suppression will influence the 2022 midterm elections.
Axios China correspondent Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian discusses her latest reporting on China and forthcoming book "Capitalism, The Coronavirus, and China's Quest for Global Influence."
Epidemiologist and former New Zealand Ministry of Health chief science advisor John Potter discusses the vaccine passport debate and the prospect for global COVID elimination.
University of Washington computer scientist Kate Starbird discusses the state of disinformation.
Univision's Leon Krauze discusses the failures of López Obrador, Mexico's pandemic economy, and the future of U.S.-Mexico relations.
Duke University scholar Mark Anthony Neal discusses the Third Reconstruction, Civil Rights legacy, and contemporary culture of movement making.
Alidoro's Jonathan Streep discusses the culinary business, revitalizing New York, and his authentic Italian sandwiches.
American Constitution Society president and former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold discusses reparations for crimes against U.S. democracy.
LBJ School of Public Affairs scholar Sheena Chestnut Greitens discusses the future of U.S.-China relations.
Associated Press investigative reporter Jason Dearen discusses his new book “Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease.”
Constitutional scholar Leah Litman discusses a 6-3 Supreme Court majority whose opinions are not representative of the American people.
Curry Up Now's Akash Kapoor discusses entrepreneurial innovation in the culinary industry.
Johns Hopkins University political scientist Hahrie Han discusses how to rebirth American civic life and democracy.
McLoons Lobster's Bree Burns discusses lobstermen and women during the pandemic and recovering the culinary industry.
MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt discusses the biology of the pandemic and how gain-of-function research jeopardizes public safety.
Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali discusses a culture of false equivalence that has normalized domestic terrorism and disinformation.
Atlanta-based Antico's founder Giovanni di Palma discusses the frozen pizza boom during the pandemic and the artistry and science of a renowned Neapolitan.
Survivor Corps founder Diana Berrent discusses the policy needs of COVID long-haulers, victims, and their families.
"The Lab-Leak Hypothesis" author Nicholson Baker discusses whether high-risk experimental research might have created the global COVID-19 catastrophe.
The Atlantic's Michelle Nijhuis discusses her new book, "Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction" and environmental policy during the pandemic.
Economic Strategy Institute president Clyde Prestowitz discusses his new book "The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership."
Physicians for a National Health Program president Dr. Susan Rogers discusses health inequity in America and potential reform.
Historian Brian Rosenwald discusses Rush Limbaugh's legacy and the future of bigotry and disinformation in media.
Scholars Mark Robert Rank and Lawrence M. Eppard discuss their new Oxford University Press book "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty."
American scientist Eric Feigl-Ding discusses cultivating an equitable and prepared health infrastructure in the United States.
Brown University medical leader Dr. Megan Ranney discusses how the one-shot J&J vaccine could alter the forecast for U.S. immunity.
Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina discusses the FDA's inexplicable refusal to approve testing technologies that would have saved American lives.
Popular Information editor Judd Legum discusses defunding the vast lobbying complex that has supported anti-democratic politicians and media.
Parkway Bakery chef and proprietor discusses the history, legacy, and future of the New Orleans born creation.
Constitutional scholar Kimberly Wehle discusses how Chief Justice Roberts and Republican Senators effectively nullified the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump and prevented conviction.
“Hiding in Plain Sight” author Sarah Kendzior discusses how to reverse U.S. authoritarianism and prosecute treason.
Columbia University Emergency Medicine Dr. Tsion Firew discusses the factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and how to address them.
UpGuard director Chris Vickery discusses the state of cyber security, the failure to establish global virtual governance, and the future of money-equalizing hacks.
Ithaca College evolutionary ecologist Brooks Miner discusses his project tracking the COVID variants and the race to advance U.S. genomic sequencing.
Sloop Brewing Co. cofounder Adam Watson discusses the craft of beer, operating during the pandemic, and the disconnect between Governor Cuomo and boots-on-the-ground realities.
GrassrootsLab partner Mike Madrid discusses what will animate the Latino vote in 2021 and beyond, the potential for post-impeachment legislation to save the American democracy and economy.
New Consensus president and former AOC chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti discusses the omissions of the American Recovery Plan.
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project director Albert Fox Cahn discusses the national and state privacy law landscape and digital regulatory frameworks to protect citizens.
Science journalist and author Maryn McKenna discusses the disparate outcomes of state vaccination rollouts and what to expect from the national expansion of pharmacy supply.
Politico correspondent Marc Caputo discusses the 2022 campaigns for Florida Governor and U.S. Senate.
Drug discovery chemist and Science Magazine blogger Derek Lowe discusses COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing.
Public Defender and Manhattan DA Candidate Eliza Orlins discusses her agenda for justice and decarceration.
Niko Niko's Dimitri Fetokakis discusses his Greek heritage and inspired Houston-based restaurant chain and keeping alive restaurants during the pandemic in Texas and beyond.
Constitutional scholar Stephen Vladeck discusses the possible reform recommendations of the Biden Administration's Supreme Court Commission and the upcoming second Trump impeachment trial.
Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams founder Jeni Britton Bauer discusses her ice cream as national healer, entrepreneurial philosophy. and American sourcing of ingredients.
QAnon Anonymous cohost Jake Rockatansky discusses what motivates and how to deradicalize contemporary domestic fundamentalism.
Political scientist Rachel “The Doc” Bitecofer discusses nationalizing the argument for democracy and economic relief.
Political scientist Patricio Navia discusses Chile's ongoing process to write a new constitution, campaign to secure economic rights, and transformation from authoritarianism to democracy.
Columbia Law's Center for Japanese Legal Studies director Nobuhisa Ishizuka discusses the prospects for reforming Japan's constitution and future of U.S.-Japan relations.
Lincoln Project cofounder Rick Wilson discusses the strategy to beat the Jim Crow Caucus in 2022.
Romano's Stromboli's Peter Romano discusses his family's creation of the stromboli, its inter-generational heritage, and labor challenges during the pandemic.
Scientist Hilda Bastian discusses how well—or not—the various disparate vaccines will work together to eradicate the global pandemic.
Chef Arnaldo Richards discusses his Houston-based Picos Restaurant, the Mexican heritage of his culinary artistry, and American unity.
First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn discusses the legal and political significance of Section 230 and the campaign to reform or abolish it.
QAnon Anonymous founding producer Julian Feeld discusses the future of domestic terrorism and conspiracy theories.
MeidasTouch cofounders Ben Meiselas and Brett Meiselas discuss the digital messaging and grassroots organizing to save democracy.
Russia and KGB expert Amy Knight discusses opposition leader Navalny's courage and political calculus, the forming protest movement, and possibility of regime change.
The American Prospect executive editor David Dayen discusses the Democratic majority's strategy and the inevitability of abolishing the filibuster to advance an agenda.
Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt discusses how to save our democracy from conservatives-turned-fascistic autocrats.
Juice Joint cofounders Lanice Wilson and Renee Sellers discuss opening and operating a distinctive health service during the pandemic and their recommendations for the new administration.
Constitutional Accountability Center president Elizabeth Wydra discusses how the Biden administration and Congress can protect the rule of law.
Pietisserie founder Jaynelle St. Jean discusses the craft of pie-making and urgency of new PPP relief for small businesses.
Consumer Reports CEO Marta Tellado discusses how to make Big Tech more accountable, transparent, and protective of democracy.
Politico correspondent Kyle Cheney discusses the new Congress's unprecedented 24 hours impeachment and the outlook for its first 100 days.
Renowned constitutional scholar Larry Tribe discusses the unprecedented second impeachment of Donald Trump and how conviction can be most effectively prosecuted in a trial.
Disinformation researcher Claudia Flores-Saviaga discusses whether bad actors can continue to hold hostage social media despite recent account bans and suspensions.
QAnon Anonymous cohost Travis View discusses the convergence of extremist groups in the Capitol insurrection.
Diplomatic editor and Just Security editorial board member Laura Rozen discusses how the Biden-Harris administration can restore America's image in the world after a coup attempt and domestic terrorist attack.
Atlanta Journal Constitution political reporter Greg Bluestein discusses pro-democracy conservatives of Georgia, Stacey Abrams's galvanizing power, an anticipated gubernatorial rematch of 2022, and state electoral practices in 2020 vs. 2018.
2020 Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir discusses recovering from the Trump era and the transition to the Biden-Harris administration.
American pastry chef and PieCaken owner Zac Young discusses the culinary arts and business during the pandemic.
Former Homeland Security and Pence advisor Olivia Troye discusses whether Trump's authoritarian takeover of the GOP will be permanent, and if so, when Senator Romney and conservatives disaffiliate from an autocratic party.
UNC professor of law Carissa Byrne Hessick explains how and why the authoritarian incitement of domestic terrorism to overturn the election is different from violent episodes during the BLM protests.
University of Massachusetts philosopher Nicholas Evans discusses why Australia’s COVID-19 response succeeded while the U.S. failed, and the bioethical, geopolitical, and psychological impact of the pandemic on nations and their citizens.
University of California San Francisco Medicine chair Dr. Robert Wachter discusses the impact of emerging COVID-19 vaccines.
Hudson Institute researcher Casey Michel discusses his forthcoming book “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History."
University of Michigan chief health officer Dr. Preeti Malani discusses ICU capacities and what systemic change the pandemic should induce.
Medical University of South Carolina physician Dr. Krutika Kuppalli discusses the deployment of the first COVID-19 vaccines.
Penn State scientist and author Michael Mann discusses the new administration’s climate initiatives.
Wired editor-in-chief and incoming Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson discusses contemporary tech and policy issues, including companies too monopolized to fail and American social media used to plot and (dis)inform a coup.
American University in Cairo International Student Body Representative Lindsey Edwards discusses her journey from Arkansas to Cairo and generational change.
Nanoelectronics and Devices Center director Yehea Ismail discusses cancer-detecting biochips, 5G networks, and next generation AI-powered electronics.
Educator James Ketterer discusses the role of lifelong learning in nurturing citizenship and protecting those studying abroad.
Playwright Jillian Campana discusses how theatre can adapt to achieve social and gender equity during the pandemic.
U.S. Ambassador (Ret.) to Egypt, Turkey, and The Philippines Francis Ricciardone discusses the pursuit of international diplomacy and his tenure as president of the American University in Cairo.
Adult actress Blake Blossom discusses contemporary realities of the industry and the current Pornhub controversy.
UC Davis constitutional scholar Carlton Larson discusses the future of the Supreme Court and the American Republic.
Adult film star, artist, and social critic Daisy Ducati discusses the lack of equity for sex workers.
Scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam discusses the successful (Australia and Asia) vs. unsuccessful (U.S. and European) COVID strategies.
BuzzFeed legal correspondent Zoe Tillman discusses Trump's campaign to overturn the election results.
Science writer Fred Nadis discusses his book, "Star Settlers: The Billionaires, Geniuses, and Crazed Visionaries Out to Conquer the Universe."
Historian Lindsay Chervinsky discusses Washington's conception of the Cabinet, the Trump years, and future into the Biden Administration.
Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist David Linden discusses his new book “Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality.”
Atlanta-based journalist, organizer, and Really American advisor Benjamin Dixon discusses the salient policy issues in Georgia and the run-off election that will determine U.S. Senate party control.
National Popular Vote advocate and Vermont State Senator Christopher Pearson discusses the movement to guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
Huffington Post White House correspondent and USEFUL IDIOT author S.V. Dáte discusses Trump's election denial, covering four years of deception, and a return to normalcy for the WH Press Corps.
Lincoln Project powerhouse trio Chip Felkel, Fred Wellman, and Jeff Timmer discuss the increasingly Autocratic Old Party and how Democrats can be more competitive in the 2022 midterms.
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses Trump’s defiance of the 2020 election results and authoritarian playbook.
Author David Rothkopf discusses how to address traitorous presidential conduct, its enablers and those who condone it.
Lincoln Project cofounder Mike Madrid discusses Georgia’s Senate run-off elections and the operation to defeat Trumpism.
NYC Special Pathogens director Dr. Syra Madad discusses the steps for communities to avoid becoming COVID clusters amid a national resurgence.
Anti-monopoly evangelist and GOLIATH author Matt Stoller discusses the potential for bipartisan modern-day trust-busting in 2021 and the Democrats' failed economic message.
Vaccinologist Florian Krammer discusses the deployment of vaccines and the timetable for eradicating the pandemic.
Political strategist Matt McDermott discusses the failure of media to cover Biden voters, his suburban base in the red-turned-blue states of Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and the Democratic down-ballot struggles across the country.
Northeastern University neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses her new book “Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain."
Yale Law scholar Taisu Zhang discusses the impact of the pandemic of Chinese law and the future of U.S.-China relations.
Michael Mina of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics discusses unanswered questions about the Pfizer mRNA vaccine and other potential vaccine candidates.
Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow Jon Hillman discusses his new book “The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century.”
University of Arizona scholars Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos discuss their new book “Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight.”
The Nib publisher Matt Bors discusses satirizing and recovering from the catastrophic reality show presidency of Donald Trump.
"The Folly and the Glory" author Tim Weiner discusses the integrity of the U.S. election and if, when, and how we will determine if Trump was an agent of the Russian government.
Author Grace Blakeley discusses her new book, "The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism."
Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha discusses how the U.S. and Europe have failed and clear warning signs of a devastating fall and winter surge.
Strong Economy for All Coalition director Michael Kink discusses Cuomo's refusal to govern boldly, provide economic relief, and improve NY election infrastructure in response to the pandemic.
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law president Kristen Clarke discusses how to confront suppression and ensure racial justice at the polls.
Scholars Norman Ornstein, Jennifer Mercieca, and Jason Stanley discuss the final debate and existential autocratic threat to the American Republic.
Lincoln Project legal counsel Mario Nicolais discusses protection for voters and democracy during Election Month and a potential presidential transition.
Veteran Courthouse News correspondent Adam Klasfeld discusses the novel disrespect for U.S. legal traditions and norms.
MIT scholar Sinan Aral discusses how to regulate social media to have a constructive impact on our elections, economy, and health.
National Task Force on Election Crises member and former Congressman Tom Coleman discusses Election 2020 worst-case scenarios, including if the Supreme Court stops the vote count in states and municipalities.
Oregon Health & Science University emergency physician and professor Dr. Esther Choo discusses the required transformation of medical care during the pandemic to improve American public health.
University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck discusses the legitimacy crisis of an extremist Supreme Court out of step with the public and longstanding precedent.
Civil Rights leader and MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton discusses the mobilization of Black voters and systemic inequity as a closing campaign argument.
New York NOW host Dan Clark discusses the failure of election reform to ensure early absentee/mail vote counting and the looming election chaos, pandemic resurgence, and economic disaster.
Democracy Journal editor Michael Tomasky discusses Trump's violation of democratic values and the potential civil unrest during the vote counting and presidential transition.
People's Action director George Goehl discusses the convictions and economic conditions of rural voters in Michigan, Iowa, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Indiana.
University of Pittsburgh professor and doctor Utibe Essien discusses inequity in the pandemic.
Axios White House correspondent Alayna Treene discusses covering a pandemic-infected White House.
The New Yorker's Masha Gessen discusses the decline of American democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
CNN’s Brian Stelter discusses the danger of disinformation on Election Night, Week, and Month.
National Popular Vote founder and chair Dr. John Koza discusses NPV's campaigns in states around the country and how to avoid the undemocratic outcomes of 2016 and 2000 in the future.
Portland State University Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science dean Richard Corsi discusses the newest developments in our understanding of airborne COVID transmission.
Physician-scientist and author Eric Topol discusses the radical steps required to contain and eliminate the pandemic in the United States.
Kent State University epidemiologist Tara Smith discusses the pandemic and the condition of the public's scientific illiteracy and distrust.
BallotTrax president Steve Olsen discusses his service to help authenticate, track, and confirm receipt of absentee ballots.
Sarah Kendzior and Harry Siegel discuss the first Biden-Trump presidential debate and whether democratic norms can be restored in the United States.
Resolve to Save Lives CEO Dr. Tom Frieden discusses the short and long-term measures required to defeat the pandemic and enhance the U.S. public health infrastructure.
Yale University immunologist Akiko Iwasaki discusses the science of antibodies and creating an efficacious COVID vaccine.
The Nevada Independent editor Jon Ralston discusses the 2020 race, the campaign for its six Electoral College votes, and the attempt to delegitimize its voting process.
Georgetown University McCourt Chair Donald Moynihan discusses Trump's refusal to unblock Twitter users, the repercussions of anti-fact policymaking in the judiciary, and the future of truth and reconciliation for the United States.
COVID tracker Rebekah Jones discusses Florida's manipulation of pandemic data and the exhaustion of the public.
Doctor and medical leader Ranu Dhillon discusses responding to the pandemic in its current phase as we anticipate flu season.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières executive director Avril Benoit discusses the role of her organization in confronting a worldwide pandemic.
Former Senate staffer Adam Jentleson discusses how to preserve equilibrium on the Supreme Court and American Democracy.
Election security advocate Jennifer Cohn discusses the importance of a handmarked paper trail, independent election oversight, and being watchful of an authoritarian president and corrupt companies that would steal votes.
Trump Administration Accountability Project founder Robert DeNault discusses ensuring democratic representation on the Supreme Court.
PBS special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky discusses the decline of electoral integrity in Belarus and the protests for democratic rule.
Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor discusses whether Republicans will embolden a sham election and illegitimate Trump victory declaration.
U.S. House Impeachment Prosecutor and A CASE FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE author Norm Eisen discusses if and when Trump will face legal accountability for lawbreaking.
Indiana University American Democracy Project director Elizabeth Bennion discusses historical and contemporary electoral trends in Indiana politics.
University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom discusses how to dismantle disinformation and his new book "Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World."
Belarus-based journalist Franak Viačorka discusses the next phase of protests and civil disobedience to undo a sham election.
Epidemiologist and former chief science advisor to New Zealand Ministry of Health John Potter discusses the country's extraordinary example of public health leadership and how it can be applied to eliminate COVID globally.
Geneticist Adam Rutherford discusses the scientific foundations of racism and discourse as a means to confront bigotry.
Congresswoman (Ret.) Katie Hill discusses her new book “She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality.
Veteran strategist and Jones for Senate advisor Joe Trippi discusses the state of the 2020 campaign.
Virginia Tech environmental engineer Linsey Marr discusses the very real airborne transmission of COVID-19 and how to stop it.
Lt. Governor John Fetterman discusses the campaign for Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes and state of electoral play in the Rust Belt.
Minister, activist, and Princeton University scholar Nyle Fort discusses reimagining a post-pandemic America.
Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project co-director and political scientist Charles Stewart III discusses how to vote by mail or in person in 2020 and request an absentee ballot even if you plan to vote on Election Day.
Veteran political strategist Mark McKinnon discusses the state of the 2020 campaign and the new season of THE CIRCUS on SHOWTIME.
Russia media analyst Julia Davis discusses Putin's U.S. disinformation campaign in 2020, his objective to incite American civil war, and authoritarian aggression in a potential second Trump term.
Educator, activist, and Twitter documentarian Joshua Potash discusses a new generation of protest and civil disobedience in the United States and around the world.
Really American PAC founder and director Justin Horwitz discusses his pro-democracy digital viral video campaign.
Lincoln Project advisor Kurt Bardella discusses the state of the 2020 campaign and potential for Trump re-election.
"Election Meltdown" author and legal scholar RIck Hasen discusses the obstacles to a fair and free election in November.
Republican presidential campaign veteran and Lincoln Project advisor Stuart Stevens discusses his new book “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”
Marked by COVID founder Kristin Urquiza discusses losing a loved one to the pandemic and advocating to reverse the negligence resulting in many times the death toll of 9/11.
Quibi news executive Shawna Thomas discusses the unconventionally successful DNC and Democratic nominee Biden's path forward for the general election campaign.
Investigative reporter Jean Guerrero discusses her new book "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda"
Veteran tech reporter Walt Mossberg discusses whether social media platforms finally understand the dis/misinformation crisis, how guardianship of literacy could be enacted, and why users need to take more responsibility.
University of Colorado professor of chemistry Jose-Luis Jimenez discusses the study of aerosol transmission of COVID and the pandemic's long-term implications for indoor and outdoor air pollution.
University of Florida biostatistician Natalie Dean discusses what numbers to look for when designing and deploying an effective vaccine.
University of Chicago psychologist Katherine Kinzler discusses her new book “How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do – And What it Says About You."
Democratic Coalition founder Scott Dworkin discusses the Biden-Harris ticket and the GOP campaign to ratfuck and sabotage a legitimate election.
Sabato's Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik discusses surveying the American people and projecting 2020 outcomes during the pandemic.
Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security researcher and infectious disease specialist Dr. Amesh Adalja discusses the American state of health insecurity.
1 Day Sooner founder Josh Morrison discusses the potential effectiveness and legal status of and ethical challenges to Human Challenge Trials.
Atlantic Magazine staff writer Adam Harris discusses the legacy of John Lewis, The Big Six, and how Americans can pave the path of a new Civil Rights Movement.
Award-winning Brazilian journalist Patricia Campos Mello discusses what links the two countries, Brazil and the United States, with the worst pandemic responses.
University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee discusses the realities of a COVID plagued economy and how to recover beyond the pandemic.
Minister, activist, and Princeton University scholar Nyle Fort discusses the pursuit of economic justice as civil rights and previews his upcoming broadcast episode on The Open Mind.
Director of the Epidemic Intelligence Dr. Cyrus Shahpar discusses how to recover from the American failures and his work at Resolve to Save Lives.
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing discusses her exclusive reporting on mail delays, suspended postal services, and the apparent targeting of voters in a Democratic-majority city.
Public health leader Eric Feigl-Ding of the Federation of American Scientists discusses why his alarms fell on deaf ears and pandemic defeatism in America.
THE DRUDGE REVOLUTION author Matthew Lysiak discusses Matt Drudge's impeccable news instincts and calling it as it is from political scandal to pandemic body counts.
New York Magazine contributor and ex-Guardian political correspondent Ben Jacobs discusses the upcoming state presidential filing deadlines and the third party campaign of Kanye West.
Stop Funding Hate founder Richard Wilson discusses the campaign to persuade advertisers to pull their support for bigoted media.
Georgia Southern University professor Jared Yates Sexton discusses the anti-democratic forces corrupting the United States and his forthcoming book AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE.
Whitman College political scientist Jack Jackson discusses his book “Law Without Future: Anti-Constitutional Politics and the American Right."
Mad Dog PAC and Room Rater's Claude Taylor discusses his roadside and truck billboards.
The Meiselas Brothers discuss Meidas Touch and their innovative multimedia presentations to educate and persuade the electorate.
Historian Claire Potter discusses her new book "Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy."
Oregon Public Broadcasting editor Ryan Haas discusses an authoritarian and extrajudicial federal deployment in the Pacific Northwest.
ESPN's senior NFL insider Adam Schefter discusses the reality of sports during the pandemic and the psychological value of the NFL to Americans' well-being.
Miami political operative Fernand Amandi discusses a political path to end the death and destruction in Florida.
Dr. Jeffrey Matthews, Dept. of Surgery Chair at University of Chicago Medicine, discusses how hospitals have responded to the pandemic.
Lincoln Project cofounder Reed Galen of Park City, UT discusses the trajectory of the campaign and the next watersheds of VP selection and the debates.
Legal scholar and author of forthcoming BIG DIRTY MONEY Jennifer Taub discusses if and when the legal process will require public scrutiny of Trump records.
Knight First Amendment Institute Writer-in-Residence Cristian Farias discusses whether the Supreme Court is preserving the rule of law, constitutional crises, and comparisons to Chile's liberation from authoritarianism.
Mother Jones voting rights correspondent Ari Berman discusses the pandemic’s consequences for voter registration and turnout.
American virologist Angela Rasmussen of the Immunity at the Columbia University School of Public Health discusses researching medical advances to end the pandemic.
Kentucky radio host and “Mitch, Please!” author Matt Jones discusses the McConnell-McGrath election and Bluegrass State's political landscape.
Community Veterans Project president, former Missouri Secretary of State, and voting rights advocate Jason Kanderdiscusses his work.
Quinnipiac University scholar and author Khalilah Brown-Dean discusses 2020’s grassroots mobilization for racial justice and economic reform.
Former Congressman Joe Walsh discusses all contingencies to defeat Trump and Trumpism on Election Day.
Garry Kasparov and Uriel Epshtein of the Renew Democracy Initiative discuss authoritarian regimes usurping democracy across the globe.
North Carolina-based DJ, producer, and educator 9th Wonder discusses the movement for Black Lives from the studio to the streets to the ballot box.
Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security for Free Speech For People, discusses the vetting of election machinery and tabulations.
Guardian voting rights correspondent Sam Levine discusses the nation’s hotspots of voter suppression, including in Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
U.S. Congressional nominee Mondaire Jones (NY-17) discusses his winning primary campaign, the legislative goals of a new government, and how to organize during the pandemic.
Lincoln Project advisor and political strategist Tara Setmayer discusses a return to decency in 2020.
HUMANKIND author and historian Rutger Bregman discusses hope for a prosocial society amid simultaneous American and global crises.
Arizona-based infectious disease epidemiologist Saskia Popescu discusses the illiterate and incoherent American response to the pandemic.
Andrea Hailey of Vote.org and Amber McReynolds of VOTE at HOME discuss how to ensure you can register and vote safely during the pandemic.
The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell discusses communicating the stories of Republican voters against Trump and for the Rule of Law.
Lincoln Project cofounder Jennifer Horn discusses escaping the human carnage, suffering, and death count of the Trump-Pence administration.
Ohio Democrats chair David Pepper discusses the campaign for The Buckeye State's 18 electoral votes and his new book THE VOTER FILE.
Lincoln Project founder John Weaver discusses holding accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and put others before Americans.
Brooking Institution Fellow in Metropolitan Studies Andre Perry discusses his new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America's Black Cities.
ER doctor, Ebola survivor, and global health leader Craig Spencer discusses treating patients during the pandemic and how to correct policy and communication failures.
Lincoln Project founding member Mike Madrid discusses the work of restoring America and the Latino Vote in 2020.
Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist Laurie Garrett discusses predicting COVID-19, its devastating impact on communities of color, and how to resolve the public health crisis.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative-supported scientists Jason Shepherd, Martin Kampmann, and Debora Marks discuss Facebook's current governance as antithetical to the scientific method and their prosocial medical research.
Niskanen Center senior fellow Rachel Bitecofer discusses modeling the 2020 election, negative partisanship, and the importance of Biden's VP choice.
Bloomberg social media reporter and author Sarah Frier discusses how the big socials are addressing disinformation on their platforms.
McLaughlin Group host and Washington Examiner commentary writer Tom Rogan discusses the present and future conservative movement.
BYU political scientist Jeremy Pope discusses the critical electoral questions from the most recent and current presidential cycle.
UVA professor and “Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action” coauthor John Holbein discusses the civic participation of Gen Y and Z.
“Bottle of Lies” author Katherine Eban discusses the shortage of U.S. PPE, the outsourcing of drug manufacturing, and the breakdown of public health infrastructure.
Journalist Ross Barkan discusses Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio’s responses to the pandemic.
Politicalwire.com creator and editor Taegan Goddard discusses the presidential campaign.
Political strategist and NYT bestselling author Rick Wilson discusses defending the Union and restoring America’s better angels to the presidency.
Missouri-based journalist Sarah Kendzior discusses her new book “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America” and the threat of authoritarianism in the United States.
Jazz impresario and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings discusses Shabaka and the Ancestor’s newest album and timely tracks.
Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz discusses social media monopolies of hate and the campaign to make bigotry and sexism less profitable.
Author and COVID-19 news aggregator Rachel Graham discusses how she has tracked the pandemic from its inception and helped inform public health on Twitter.
Texas-based writer, editor of theprepared.com, and lifelong prepper Jon Stokes discusses a country mentally, socially, and politically ill-prepared for a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Researcher Caroline Tervo discusses her new book "Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance”
Ira Shapiro, author of “Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country,” discusses the decline of the "world’s greatest deliberative body” and its potential return to courage and statesmanship.
Materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez discusses her new book “The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another."
Chris Arnade, author of Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, discusses if and how dignity can be salvaged in American life.
Rep. Steve Israel discusses his advocacy of Congressional remote voting and modernizing governing and electoral processes ill prepared for the pandemic.
Online News Association CEO Irving Washington discusses the future of digital news and the impact of paywalls on access to information.
Disinformation expert and Wilson Center fellow Nina Jankowicz discusses her forthcoming book and how to combat disinformation in the pandemic era.
Slate law and Supreme Court correspondent Mark Joseph Stern discusses the deliberations and reconciliation of the nine justices.
Ned Foley, Director of Election Law and Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University, discusses the history of and contingency for disputed American presidential elections.
Nico Gendron of The Wall Street Journal discusses the Instagram Local News Fellowship and her work engaging rural Missouri youth.
New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak discusses the stakes of this term's High Court decisions.
Take Back the Court director Aaron Belkin discusses the historical and contemporary case for adding seats to the Supreme Court and why expanding the judiciary is critical to restoring democracy.
Demand Justice Executive Director Brian Fallon discusses how to improve the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and judicial fairness.
Texas A&M scholar Jennifer Mercieca discusses her new book “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”
Brennan Center director Michael Waldman discusses how to ensure that states provide remote balloting and not endanger the health of voters.
The Nation's Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal discusses the Supreme Court’s recent and future enforcement of voter suppression.
Perkins Coie's Political Law Group chair Marc Elias discusses how to hold Governors accountable for implementing VBM (Vote by Mail) solutions.
QAnon Anonymous host Travis View discusses QAnon conspiracy theorists, what motivates them, and their political goals.
Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer discusses historical analogies to the American pandemic crisis and the 2020 campaign.
Sinocism newsletter author Bill Bishop discusses the pandemic's origins in China, deteriorating U.S.-China relations, and its impact on the 2020 campaign.
U.S. Election Assistance Commission chairman emeritus Paul DeGregorio discusses remote balloting for 2020 and a secure transition to online voting.
NBC News dystopia beat reporter Ben Collins discusses exposing viral deception and the companies that enable it.
Center for Responsive Politics researcher Anna Massoglia discusses the need for campaign finance accountability and transparency.
Information warfare expert Molly McKew discusses foreign interference in U.S. elections and the future of political campaigns.
Mother Jones correspondent Ali Breland discusses combating bigotry online, demonetizing extremism, and breaking up new media monopolies.
NBC News national reporter Brandy Zadrozny on the coronavirus, anti-vaxxers, and conspiracy-mongers.
Wesleyan University political scientist Sonali Chakravarti discusses her new book “Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life.”
University of Texas scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller discusses contemporary demagoguery and its historical origins.
Science journalist Lydia Denworth discusses groundbreaking research on the evolution, biology, and power of friendship.
Salmagundi magazine editor Robert Boyers discusses his new book “The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt For Political Heresies.
Vassar College president Elizabeth Bradley discusses free speech, engaged pluralism, and political inequality.
Yale Law professor Justin Driver discusses constitutional law, the erosion of Brown v. Board of Education, and the struggle to preserve democracy.
Political scientist Nicholas Buccola discusses his new book “The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Russian-American writer Anastasia Edel. She is author of the powerful New York TimesOp-Ed The Tired and Poor Who Make America Great, which contends that as long as the Statue of Liberty stands, it renders Donald Trump an impostor; as well as author of Lightning Guides edition “Russia: Putin's playground: Empire, Revolution, and the new Tsar.” “Like many things in Russian history, privatization was started with good intentions. It ended in rig bids, bribes, violence, and dubious interpretations of the law.” Edel writes. “The dizzying rate at which Russian oligarchs have been amassing wealth is a double edge sword, fearing that their riches might vanish just as swiftly as they appeared. Many have turned to politics.” She has concerned herself most recently with the Trump administration's betrayal of a compassionate American immigration policy. She writes that we should be watchful of what comes next, “Any society that starts down the path of marginalizing certain groups will eventually need new targets.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Sophie Ellman-Golan, a founding organizer for the Women's March. Now she helps lead Never Again Action, a mass mobilization of Jews who are organizing to shut down ICE and hold the political establishment accountable for enabling both the deportation machine that has separated immigrant families across the U.S. for decades and the current crisis at the border. “Conservatives purport to defend Jews even as they embrace policies that most Jews deplore, and infuriating and intolerable,” is how Ellman-Golan describes this climate and the resurgence of white nationalism and anti-Semitism, in part fueled by President Trump's own politics. “It's imperative that we loudly speak for ourselves,” Ellman-Golan told the New York Times, “because if we don't, the loudest voices that claim to speak on behalf of Jews will be right-wing Evangelical Christians.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Malka Older, author of “Infomocracy” named one of the best books of 2016 by the Washington Post and author of sequels, “Null States” and “State Tectonics.” The full trilogy was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award for Science Fiction.
A humanitarian aid worker, an expert, Older was a fellow for technology and risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and has supported global programs in agency wide strategy for disaster risk reduction from Africa and Asia to the United States.
Today's subject is high tech dystopia and our guest is the preeminent writer of science fiction political thrillers.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Lawrence B. Benenson, co-owner and principal of Benenson Capital and founding member of and advisor to the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of Americans with incomes over $1 million dollars who are leading the charge to raise taxes on the rich and to combat political and income inequality. On the most pressing issues facing the American people. Economic fairness, environmental security, and educational access Benenson is admirably on the front lines.
“Charitarian, humanitarian American patriot,” as one leading industry publication profiled, my guest today's altruistic nature makes him a passionate champion of education, equal rights, and improving the lives of others, a moral conscience in an age of degrading moral fiber.
Moreover, he is chiefly determined to uphold fundamental American values that are eroding today: combating the resurgence of bigotry, deescalating the climate crisis and facilitating civically intellectually and democracy revitalizing media options unrigged to the latest tweet, including here on The Open Mind - for which I must disclose, he is a critical benefactor from the next generation, something for which I am eminently grateful.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Julie Salamon, a perceptive critic, prolific author and riveting storyteller. Her newest book is “An Innocent Bystander: The killing of Leon Klinghoffer.”
Daughter of Czech immigrants who were Holocaust survivors, Salamon was raised in Ohio, a rural village of 800 people where her father was a town doctor. A veteran of the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, she has covered business, philanthropy, and the arts.
“’An Innocent Bystander’ recounts the harrowing story of a hijacked voyage at sea, the terrorists and the family of the murder victim, an elderly American thrown overboard” The New York Daily News noted, “It explains how competing governments, complicated treaties and outright lies kept the four attackers, terrorists from ever facing American justice.” And NPR added, “Klinghoffer’s death became a symbol for many of the costs and fears of terrorism.” Indeed, Salamon chronicles that episode and its successive chain reaction to illuminate the present Israeli Palestinian conflict and connected moral and geopolitical questions.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Dan Abrams, the chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News and CEO and founder of Abrams Media. He also hosts Live PD on A & E Network and the Dan Abrams Show Where Politics Meets the Law on Sirius XM.
He is author of the new book “Theodore Roosevelt For The Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy.” As NPR recounts, “It's an absorbing excursion into an epic 1915 libel case against then former President Teddy Roosevelt. In a truth telling sermon, advocating for a would be corruption busting gubernatorial candidate. Roosevelt accused Republican political boss, William Barnes of promoting evil men whose activities so deeply taint and discredit our whole system of government and the maladministration of public offices.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome the brain trust of the newly inaugurated Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim. Trita is cofounder and executive V.P. of the Quincy Institute and founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. Stephen is cofounder and research director of the Quincy Institute and research scholar at Columbia University.
The Quincy Institute was formed to promote ideas that move American foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in pursuit of international peace. Heeding the instruction of John Quincy Adams that “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” the institute’s mission states “The foreign policy of the U.S. has become detached from any defensible conception of American interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind. Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in and of itself.” Our guests today will expound on their mandate and vision.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Karim Amer, Director of The Great Hack.
On his quest for digital justice, Parsons School of Design professor David Carroll joined us last year to discuss his suit against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for violating his right to personal data. As we filmed our episode a Netflix crew surrounded us and trailed Carroll's journey. You can see part of our interview in the groundbreaking documentary directed by my guest today, Karim Amer.
The Great Hack is a tour de force of the digital dystopia, law-breaking and anti-democratic realities of the Internet age. Amir explores how Cambridge Analytica exploited the demons of social media in the Brexit campaign and in the run up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Today we'll discuss the weaponization of the digital economy that preys on an increasingly vulnerable, misinformed; I think we must say too, dis-informed globe and it is exacerbating the greatest inequities society has perhaps witnessed.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Susan Smith Richardson, the newest CEO of the Center for Public Integrity. Our viewers may remember our last conversation on ‘leaks with integrity’ with predecessor Peter Bale, a former CEO as well. Formerly editorial director of newsroom practice change at Solutions Journalism Network, Susan Smith Richardson has edited leading newspapers from Texas and Chicago to Los Angeles and Sacramento.
“The Center has a proud legacy of hard-hitting journalism. I plan to build on that legacy, focusing on making our work more accessible and more relevant to communities across the country,” Richardson said in the announcement of her appointment. She continued, “At a time of disinformation and disaffection with institutions we have to rethink what issues we cover, how we cover them, and whose stories define what is newsworthy, if we are truly to hold power to account.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Frank Bowman III, professor of law at the University of Missouri and visiting professor at Georgetown Law. A constitutional scholar, his new book is “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump,” and it's a Cambridge University Press title.
I wanted to get right to it. We're recording in the heat of summer. Impeachment is at a lull, but we have a lot to discuss.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Ed Lopez-Reyes to continue our discussion of the national popular vote movement with one of its most important grassroots advocates on the eastern seaboard.
A Connecticut-based Republican strategist Lopez is chief consultant of Wolf and King Strategies and served on the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytics Center in imagery and counterterrorism from 2002 through 2010. He also served on Utah Governor Jon Huntsman's 2012 New Hampshire presidential primary campaign steering committee and was National Cochairman of Republicans for Johnson-Weld in 2016. A member of the National Guard in Connecticut, Lopez also returned from a month long training in Louisiana.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Steven Knott, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Knott, co-chair, the presidential oral history program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at U. Va.
Today, we consider the historical and contemporary character of the nation. “The Lost Soul of the American Presidency” is the forthcoming University Press of Kansas book from my next guest. He argues that the American presidency has devolved from the neutral unifying office envisioned by the framers of the constitution into the demagogic partisan entity of the present.
His newest book, as I note is “The Lost Soul of the American Presidency” will be published this November.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Jonathan Metzl, professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University where he also directs the Center for Medicine, Health and Society. He is research director of the Safe Tennessee Project, a nonpartisan volunteer-based organization that's concerned with gun-related injuries and fatalities in America and in Tennessee.
In his new Basic Books, title “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland” my guest reveals how the backlash policies against a multicultural liberal America have mortal consequences even for the people they promise to help.
“Dying of Whiteness” says one of my favorite open mind guests Thomas Frank “is a diagnosis for America. It's not reassuring. Failing health, failing graduation rates, guns everywhere, our fantasies are driving us to an early grave and Metzl is lucid and careful and mercifully clinical in telling us exactly how this public health disaster came to be. Read it today. There is still time before the autopsy.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome two leading organizers in the movement to rebuild and preserve American democracy. Ethan Todras-Whitehill is the cofounder and executive director of Swing Left. Prior to the election of Trump, he was a writer, journalist, and teacher. After the 2016 election, he decided to step off the sidelines and become more politically active. He started Swing Left to make it easier for others to do the same. Last year, Swing Left successfully mobilized a grassroots army to take back the House.
Catherine Vaughan is the chief strategy officer of Swing Left. She was previously the CEO and cofounder of Flippable, an organization to support candidates running for state office. Flippable supported 80 percent of all flips accomplished in their target chambers in 2018 and directed 91 percent of funds toward races decided by less than 10 points. This year Swing Left recently unveiled it's Super State Strategy for 2020 designed to organize progressive victories across the White House, the US Senate and state houses by focusing on 11 so-called Super States, volunteers and donors can multiply their impact up and down the ballot. And I might add that now Flippable is a part of Swing Left. You guys are working together towards those collective goals.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Yale University philosopher Jason Stanley, author of the edifying and essential Random House volume “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” Stanley told Dana Milbank of the Washington Post that the Trump rendition of these tactics “uses emotion to circumvent reason, to overwhelm reason, wanting us to get the situation in which there's such fear and suspicion that the only happiness is winning over his enemies.”
These are Jason Stanley's words and he added in an interview with Vox, “I think of fascism as a method of politics. It's rhetoric, a way of running for power. Of course that's connected to fascist ideology because fascist ideology centers on power. But I really see fascism as a technique to gain power.” At this year's philosophy conference for high school and undergraduate students at Stony Brook University I was so pleased to interview Jason and eager to continue that exchange.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Jon Gertner, science writer for the New York Times Magazine. His first book “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation” chronicled the exploits of a generation of scientists at the world's greatest laboratory.
Gertner is here to discuss his newest book by Random House “The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future.” He explores 150 years of exploration and investigation on the Greenland ice sheet, which he says has led to a profound understanding of our current climate crisis. In his investigation of Greenland, Gertner traveled to the island six times and interviewed scientists in Europe and around the United States. “In the Arctic he slept by glaciers, drank from melt water streams, joined with NASA teams, measuring the ice sheet and cruised through iceberg waters in the strange light of Arctic midnight.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Brenda Wineapple, author of the recently released and critically acclaimed “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation” heralded as a “riveting and absorbing book” by The New York Times and both “a guidebook” and “cautionary tale for our times” by the Boston Globe.
The subject today: impeachment Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and the righteous Republicans and the first ever impeachment in American history. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the first U.S. president to fall victim to assassination the country entrusted it's survival to an accidental president, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee who had forged a unity ticket with Lincoln for reelection. Despite Lincoln's assessment that Johnson was, in his words, “a good man” or at least he thought the new leader abandoned the promise of emancipation and enfranchisement and defied the protection of America's newest citizens. My guest today will analyze this history and its contemporary relevance.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, to discuss sanctions, tariffs, American energy, and national security.
Nephew is the author of “The Art of Sanctions: A View From the Field.” He was previously Principal Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the Department of State and the lead sanctions expert for the U.S. team negotiating with Iran from May 2011 through January 2013; Nephew served as the director for Iran on the National Security staff where he was responsible for managing an expanded array of US sanctions against Iran. He also served in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the State Department and in the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security at the Department of Energy.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome John Bracken. We've been tracking the progress of the Digital Public Library of America since it's genesis: first with its founding visionaries, Robert Darnton and John Palfrey, then with its inaugural executive director Dan Cohen, and today with its second and current leader, John Bracken.
As I described it then, the DPLA is a one-stop portal for primary sources from the nation's archives, libraries and museums, a public option to access the full breadth of human expression and American cultural heritage. DPLA’s aspiration is to be a unifying national library and it could be critical to answering that question of how our democracy can function successfully again in the digital age and how the common civic experience of libraries will help us achieve trust anew.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is the Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, based in the Business and Society program at New York University, a social psychologist whose research examines the intuitive foundations of morality. He’s coauthor of “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure” as well as author of the New York Timesbestseller, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.”
He studies the origins of the human moral sense and their relevance to polarization and dysfunction, American politics, intellectual life, and our everyday lives and debates. Before coming to NYU, Professor Haidt taught for 16 years at U.Va, University of Virginia.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Maura O'Connor, a journalist who writes about the politics and ethics of science, technology and conservation. A former Knight Science MIT journalism fellow, O'Connor's work has appeared online in Slate and Foreign Policy in the New Yorker, Harpers, Undark,with investigations covering the disappearances and Sri Lanka's civil war, global agriculture trade in Haiti and American development enterprises in Afghanistan.
Now her new book is “Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World.” It's an exploration of navigation traditions, neuroscience, and the diversity of human relationships to space, time and memory, and the distinction between our species and other species and how they collectively and respectively navigate our earth and world.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Arien Mack and Kian Tajbakhsh. Mack is a professor of psychology at the New School. She founded the New University in Exile Consortium, described as an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars everywhere and to protect the intellectual capital that is jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault.
One of those scholars in exile is Kian Tajbakhsh, professor of urban planning at Columbia University. He has taught at both American and Iranian institutions. Tajbakhsh’s academic research spans theoretical and policy projects related to the culture of urbanism as well as the governance of cities and metropolitan regions. In 2007 he was one of more than 100 people charged with fomenting the post-June 12 election unrest in a mass show trial before a revolutionary court in Tehran. He was convicted, up to 15 years. He served nearly five years and was released on the implementation day of the Iranian Nuclear Accord.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, vice chair of the Democratic Governors Association who will assume the chairmanship in 2020.
New Jersey became the latest state to raise incrementally it's hourly minimum wage to $15 after the Governor signed into law a measure phasing into action that higher rate over five years. “For far too long, too many of our fellow citizens have been struggling to survive on wages that have not kept up with the cost of living,” Governor Murphy said. He's touting and upbeat, optimistic, always pro growth, progressive agenda, advocating fair taxation, criminal justice reform, and clean energy, environmental stewardship.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Dragana Kaurin, a human rights activist, researcher and founder of the Localization Lab. It's an organization that builds bridges between developers, organizations, end users and communities in need, resulting in more accurate and timely translations and unlocking access to the Internet for users all over the world.
A fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, Kaurin has helped make open source technology available to underrepresented communities in 220 languages, bringing equal access to information, better representation online, and growing our collective user base. Today she works specifically on civic tech for refugees to ensure that the design of technology can better help secure the rights of those seeking freedom.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Charles Graeber, an award winning science journalist and contributor to myriad publications including the New Yorker, National Geographic, MIT Technology Reviewand Wiredfor which he is a contributing editor. His new book, “The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer” probes the treatment that aspires to make cancer chronic instead of fatal and ultimately to beat it forever.
Dr. James Gulley, director of medical oncology, chief of immunology at the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health calls “The Breakthrough” a must read. “It not only provides good background and good understanding for patients, but it's also a wonderful read, easily picked up but not easily put down. I'd recommend it for any patient interested in immunotherapy of cancer.” In Graeber’s own words, “Immunotherapy is the only approach to cancer that could actually curate it: a mutating answer to a mutating problem.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Seth Fletcher, who follows a team of elite scientists on a historic mission to take the first picture of a black hole to help us answer deep questions about space, time, the origins of the universe, and the nature of reality.
Scientific American editor, Seth Fletcher is author of “Einstein’s Shadow, a Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable.” He tracks the progress of assembling Event Horizon Telescope, a virtual radio observatory the size of the earth. “Over about 50 years, black hole studies have gone from obscurity to a thriving industry,” noted Nature's Richard Panek reviewing Fletcher's compelling behind the scenes story. As reported in Science News last year, “A single star careening around the monster black hole and the center of the Milky Way has provided astronomers with new proof that Einstein was right about gravity based on a confirm measurement in the region near a super massive black hole.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome University of California, Irvine professors, Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall.
Disinformation; misinformation, what is the science of how false beliefs spread? This is the critical understanding that my guest today argue is required to correct falsehoods and to ensure that they don't hijack and certainly don't monopolize the public interest.
O'Connor and Weatherall have authored the new Yale University Press volume “The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread.” They argue that throughout history, social factors specifically who you know, your network of friends and family most determined whether false beliefs spread and whether they can be debunked. The authors conclude, “The worry that we can never gain complete certainty about matters of fact is irrelevant.” And as the New York Times reviewed, “O'Connor and Weatherall show how industrial interests have repeatedly exploited any whiff of uncertainty to argue against government regulation.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome author and South Carolina U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel.
In 1957 we introduced the American people to then little known civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had just returned from the Montgomery bus boycott. Along his side was Judge J. Waties Waring of South Carolina, US District Judge for the Eastern District. On the bench, Waring was a forceful defender of equality. His decisions laid the groundwork for desegregation as law, Brown v. Board of education and a constitution capable of protecting the enfranchisement and emancipation of all people. Sixty two years after that broadcast, the native South Carolinian US circuit judge who presides in Waring’s seat has discovered with great historical insight, the horrible crime that stimulated the judge’s commitment to civil rights. In his new book “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of Harry S. Truman and J. Waties Waring” Judge Richard Gergel has penned a moving account of the judge, his conversion from apathetic to the moral conscience of southern jurisprudence.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome author Anna Merlan to discuss the acceleration of lies in the public discourse and their historical and contemporary power.
While fear and paranoia have always animated American politics, there is an unprecedented rush of incentives to deceive the public through monetization, popularization and dissemination. So now we'll try to cover ample ground from the beginning history of the false flag to Hofstadter's critique and McCarthy-era politics to QAnon, birtherism, Pizza-Gate, Seth Rich, trutherism, and of course UFOs.
If you're concerned as I am about the outsize influence of conspiracy theorists, disinformation and willful gullibility in American life, you must read Anna's compelling new book “The Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome long-time corporate communications counselor, Barie Carmichael, Batton Fellow at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, she is coauthor of “Reset: Business and Society in the New Social Landscape.”
Is there a future for a socially conscious capitalism, what Congressman Kennedy recently deemed moral capitalism, when such extraordinary havoc has been wreaked on working people. Will companies respect the dignity of work, high wages, and the diversity of the American people, geographic, racial, cultural differences? Many companies have united in their backlash to the sometimes ignorant and hateful politics of Donald Trump and the global resurgence of nativism: his Muslim ban his withdrawal from the Paris Accord and his and his party's attack on environmental stewardship and even the idea of regulation. But are these symbolic gestures of companies enough when inequity persists and monopolies drive the profit margin at all costs. Misinformation, data theft, political violence, considering these questions and antidotes, business models that do good is my guest today, Barie Carmichael.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Alan Miller, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, founder and CEO of the News Literacy Project. Miller was a reporter at the LA Times for 21 years before leaving in March 2008 to establish NLP. He spent nearly 19 years in the Times Washington bureau, the last 14 as a charter member of its high profile investigative team.
As we experienced the realities, the hemorrhaging of the digital ecosystem, we've covered the misinformation crisis here in our ongoing quest for solutions, and now we presume that all important exchange: what news is real, trustworthy and verifiable. What analysis and opinion are conducive to advancing that trust?
Miller points out in a recent Washington Post interview, “Not all information is equal and some actually isn't information. It's not seeking to inform.” The News Literacy project is a national education nonprofit working with educators and journalists to equip students and middle school and high school with the tools to discern fact from fiction in the digital age.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Pam Wilmot, electoral reform director for Common Cause and executive director of Common Cause, Massachusetts.
In our 2018 state and federal elections by an overwhelming majority in the popular vote the nation sought to restore democratic accountability, but that may not be possible across the Midwest where GOP gerrymandered majority legislatures are removing the powers of newly elected democratic governors. What Republicans are doing in Wisconsin Michigan and North Carolina too is the stuff of third world regimes. There's no mistaking it. Republican leaderships seem intent on executing the very soul of our democracy, negating “We the People.” And let's not forget too that in two presidential elections within the last 20 years, the majority vote were denied representation in the White House. The national popular vote campaign of states pledges to honor the will of the majority in our Electoral College and today to discuss that and other electoral matters is Pam Wilmot.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Christopher Painter, commissioner of The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. When I recorded my first ever program here in 2014, the subject with digital scholar and educator John Palfrey was the very real possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor or 9/11 in our lifetimes. It's clear from our evaluations on The Open Mind that such a crisis played out during the 2016 campaign, but not as we expected. We lacked the imagination foresight and most of all political will to respond as governments, citizens, and corporations, which often were hosts of malignant disinformation and enablers of massive security breaches.
For over two decades, painter has been at the helm of American Internet policy as a prosecutor of high-profile cyber crimes. And then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, FBI, National Security Council, and finally the State Department. In his most recent role as the nation's top cyber diplomat, Painter coordinated and led the diplomatic efforts to advance an open internet and information infrastructure, establishing the office of the coordinator for cyber issues dedicated to advancing the diplomatic aspects of cyber issues ranging from national security to human rights.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Anthony Jack, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a fellow former resident of Mather House. Jack’s research documents the overlooked diversity among lower income undergraduates, the doubly-disadvantaged, those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools, and the privileged poor, his term for those who do so from boarding day and prep schools.
Jack is the author of the new Harvard University Press title, “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Poor Students.” He writes, “The experiences of low-income undergraduates are not just a product of their family background and economic circumstance. Academic life is inherently social. Focusing solely on grades or graduation rates obscures that fact. Imagine the culture shock that some lower income students experience navigating this hidden curriculum.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Sabeel Rahman, the president of Demos a “think and do” tank committed to advancing policy change on issues of racial justice, democracy and inequality, working for an America where we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy.
When perspective 2O20 Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke was asked recently if he considers himself to be a progressive, the response was a surprising, if expedient reset. “I don't know,” he expounded. “I'm not big on labels. I don't get all fired up about party or classifying or defining people based on a label or a group, I’m for everyone.” How does congressmen O’Rourke's politics translate for the 2020 campaign and beyond?
Rahman also an associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and has previously been a visiting professor at Harvard Law, a fellow at the The Roosevelt Institute, and a fellow at New America. He explores the history, values and policy strategies that animate efforts to make our society more inclusive and democratic and our economy more equitable.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome novelist ZZ Packer, the author of a story collection, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and editor of “New Short Stories from the South.” Born in Chicago and raised in Atlanta and Louisville, Packer has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, Tulane, Stanford and Johns Hopkins.
When is stability at duty and when is it a trap? This was the thought provoking and insightful question delivered in the New York Times Magazine last year.
“The reality is that our instability often reveals much more profound ruptures and that the obvious kind of civility, the civility of niceness is only the most superficial marker of much deeper moral obligations,” Packer wrote. “This indeed demands us to differentiate between the civility of manners and that of morals after all,” she so compellingly writes, “Deep down we probably all know it's not just civility we're missing, but decency.”
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome back the foremost expert on American political communication, Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford University Press has published her newest work, “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President - What We Don't, Can't and Do Know.”
The author of 16 books, including this latest forensic examination of Russian digital dirty tricks. Jamison is director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Packard Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Ohio Governor and former 2016 Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, a longtime congressman, chairman of the Budget Committee and member of the Armed Services Committee. Kasich was the chief architect of the 1990s deficit-ending deal that ushered into the new millennium, a clean fiscal bill of health for the nation.
Today of course, Kasich is better known as the two term Governor of Ohio, who's presided over recovery from the great recession, a critic of Donald Trump's hateful rhetoric, nativism, protectionism, and personal conduct unbecoming a president of the United States that have debased the highest office in the land.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we welcome activist Sally Kohn, author of “The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing our Humanity.” One of the last surviving deep political thinking talking heads, if we can be brutally honest, and the host of the podcast State of Resistance, Kohn has penned an illuminating account of our nation's crisis of hatred, which appears more and more to be an epidemic, infecting our politics, our psyches, and our very American creed.
Kohn says, “the opposite of hate isn't love, it's connection.” She writes, “You don't have to love people to not hate them. You have to see that you have something at your core: a fundamental humanity. A fundamental goodness.” She adds, “We have to do something about the way in which our lives and our communities are segregated, increasingly ideological, also racial; economic. It's a very interesting thing about the gay thing. You can have these stealth gay people. I was one of them, where I was dormant in my family the whole time. Then suddenly surprise: I'm gay and they already liked me, so it worked out well, and that's why we had such quick progress on gay rights as a country. That doesn't usually happen, say with black people or Muslims. Your cousin doesn't just suddenly one day come out to be Mexican.”
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini. Her organization's mission is to highlight algorithmic bias through media, art and science, to provide space for people to voice concerns and experiences with coded bias and to develop practices for accountability during the design, development, and deployment of coded systems.
In her efforts to document bias and restore trust to technology, Buolamwini recently delivered a presentation to the Federal Trade Commission with her MIT thesis “Findings on Gender and Racial Bias in Facial Analysis Technology” developed from IBM, Microsoft, and other cognitive service technologies. Their ultimate effect if unchecked can be a cycle of computer-generated discrimination.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome the Justice Democrats’ executive director, Alexandra Rojas. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the improbable and defeated an incumbent party leader and possible successor to the next speaker of the house. It was because of a new movement of dedicated Democratic Party activists. They call themselves the Justice Democrats, their mandate: it's time to usher in a new generation of diverse working class leaders into the Democratic Party, a party that fights for its voters, not corporate donors, it's platform emphasizes popular initiatives that Senator Sanders champion during the ‘16 campaign, ones increasingly adopted across the party today, a Green New Deal, a Living Wage, Medicare for All, Free College Tuition, criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, and a ban on corporate PAC money. Representative Ocasio-Cortez alongside three other newly elected House Justice Democrats are already influencing the trajectory of House leadership, including a proposal for a Green New Deal Select Committee.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Columbia law professor and inaugural Knight Institute Fellow David Pozen. David teaches and writes about constitutional law, national security law, and information law, among other topics.
The future of American law and morality, the jurisprudence that will define America is our topic today. The High Court is reaching a potential crossroads, return to an aspirational consensus or deepen a polarizing divide. Can the court veer from a partisan legitimacy crisis to neutral constitutional arbiter? We invite David Pozen to consider this question, the bruising nomination battle confirming Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and if and how the Court can salvage democracy.
For the 2017-2018 academic year, Pozen is the inaugural visiting scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. From 2010 to 2012, Pozen served as special advisor to Harold Hongju Koh at the Department of State. Previously, Pozen was a law clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and a special assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we consider the human genome, eugenics, the story of science with the author of “She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity.” Carl Zimmer has authored 13 books about science and is the New York Times“Matter” columnist on which he explores the stuff of everything scientific discovery and inquiry.
Zimmer's writing has earned a number of awards including the 2016 Stephen Jay Gould prize and a 2017 Online Journalism Award for his series of articles in which he explored his genome. A professor at Yale University, Zimmer is a familiar voice on programs like Radio Laband we welcome him here today. Thank you for joining us today.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, William Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University, discusses his new book, "The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity Politics, Inequality and Community on Today's College Campuses.”
Sloan Foundation President and Williams College President Emeritus Adam Falk praised Edmonton's book as “an incisive and nuanced diagnosis of the ruptures in our society that so challenge higher education today. His call for a universal experience of the liberal arts as essential to democracy is as compelling as any I have seen.” I likewise applaud Egginton central thesis and illumination of the crisis. As my past guest, William Deresiewicz testified to here on The Open Mind, Egginton rightly concerns himself and us with the expensive, exclusive, elite clubs that lack commitment to community that will better our country. Bill, pleasure to have you here today.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Rob Dunn, author of “Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel, Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live.” Rob Dunn is a professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University and in the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of five previous books including “Never Out of Season” and “Every Living Thing,” Dunn lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. “In the process of sanitizing our own homes,” Dunn reveals in “Never Home Alone,” “we've created a playground of revolution for bacteria and parasites in our not very tranquil homes.”
Rob’s discovery of 200,000 new species living incognito in our bedrooms, kitchens, living areas, bathrooms, basements, attics, astounds. Some can kill. Some are benign and some may actually help us enhance our health, but most of them, if not all of them, until Rob’s investigation, were unknown to us. Together, we discuss these organisms, how we combat them and how we need them.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Duncan served as CEO of Chicago public schools and won praise for uniting the city stakeholders behind a consensus education agenda. Today as managing partner at Emerson Collective, Duncan has returned to Chicago on a mission to improve the livelihoods of young adults in his hometown and create job and life opportunities for disconnected youth. Established by Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective spearheads social justice initiatives. Now, Duncan is author of the new Simon and Schuster book, “How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success From One of the Nation's Longest Serving Secretaries of Education,” an authentic account of these real world struggles, Duncan focuses acutely on the big political lies and crises plaguing American education from the halls of Congress and state houses to the principal's office and classrooms.
Together, we discuss the American education system, where it needs to go, and who is doing it right. We explore topics from expanding our system to include pre-K through 14 to the importance of keeping our children safe in the schools they attend.
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we invite Jean Guerrero, investigative reporter covering immigration for KPBS. Named one of “San Diego's best people” by the San Diego City Beat. Jean Guerrero is author of “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir.” Guerrero’s memoir is a spellbinding account of Mexican American heritage, a daughter's coming of age and to terms with her father's mental health, and the way forward on immigration, political reform and border security in America. Guerrero’s reporting was cited by a congressional inquiry about the Trump Administration's family separations policy, months before they captured the national attention. Prior to joining our ranks in public media, Guerrero was Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswire commodities correspondent in Mexico City.
Together, we discuss Guerrero’s childhood and her father’s experience with paranoid schizophrenia. Guerrero explains that this questioning of reality informed her path to investigative journalism and interest in Mexico and Central America. Guerrero describes her relationship to Mexico throughout her life, and how the long-term effects of the current border and family separation issues.
RAND CEO Michael Rich and political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh discuss their new book “Truth Decay” and the importance of media literacy.
Jeffrey Prescott of the Penn Biden Center and National Security Action talks about an alternative to Trump's foreign policy.
Tiffany Muller, President and Executive Director of End Citizens United, talks about her mission to undo the Supreme Court decision.
Richard Gingras, Vice President of News at Google, talks about journalism, citizenship, and disinformation in the digital age.
Soraya Chemaly Director of the Women's Media Center Speech Project, talks about her new book “Rage Becomes Her” and political equality.
Tom Nichols, U.S. Naval War College professor and author of “The Death of Expertise,” talks about the contemporary political climate.
Patrick Kabanda, musician and consultant to the World Bank, talks about his new book “The Creative Wealth of Nations” and the importance of the arts in development.
Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, discusses informing rural communities, counties, and states.
Joan Donovan of Data & Society on technologies that degrade democracy and civil society