America Trends

Evan Osnos starts his new book, ‘Joe Biden: The Life, The Run and What Matters Now’ by recounting one of the tragedies that has befallen our 46th President on his long and arduous rise to the political pinnacle.  And while he will often talk about the loss of his wife and daughter in a car … Continue reading EP 413 Joe Biden Readies To Move America Forward

No matter the effort we say is being put behind the movement for more diversity in the workplace, the sad reality is that the numbers are dismal.  In the Fortune 500 companies where diversity numbers are compiled, fewer than 4 percent of their workforce is racially and ethnically diverse.  Additionally, a study of 279 companies … Continue reading EP 412 Can We Achieve Authentic Diversity?

In the introduction to the book we base this podcast on, Tim Egan describes the response to the coronavirus as ‘perhaps the greatest collapse of American society in so short a time, ever.’  Why did a confluence of unmet concerns coalesce around this health crisis, including economic suffering, disparities in care, inability to mobilize and … Continue reading EP 411 Unprepared: America in the Time of the Coronavirus

Does the title sound like science fiction?  Then you haven’t been paying attention when heat besieged California this summer in ways unseen in generations.  Or that a surge in air-conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid.  Or that in Death Valley the 130 degree temperature was possibly the hottest ever measured on Earth.  Not to mention … Continue reading EP 410 What Happens When Some States Are No Longer Habitable?

Most people are aware that the elderly are vulnerable and that this population is often targeted by scammers and abusers.  Elder abuse, whether it is physical, emotional or financial, is a real concern for family members of seniors.  However, there is a growing threat that receives less attention: self-neglect.  That concept may be new to … Continue reading EP 409 Self Neglect is Growing Threat Among America’s Elderly

Imaginations have run wild over the years as to what technology can do to change education. Some had predicted that half or more of courses by now would be offered on line at a lower cost and with great results. It turns out that in this fevered moment, as the pandemic descended upon the nation, … Continue reading EP 408 Can Technology Change Education?

Faced with proof that they were harming people or the environment, corporations have long denied evidence, blamed victims complained of witch hunts, attacked their critics and found other rationale for their harmful activities.  No denial campaign was more insipid than that of the tobacco industry.  That effort set the standard for establishing doubt in the … Continue reading EP 407 Corporations In Denial As To Damage Done

In his book ‘The Box’ Marc Levinson explained how shipping containers were essential in the growth of international trade.  Now as he looks at the new wave of globalization, he sees a changing landscape.  Countries have begun to recognize, even before the recent pandemic, that supply chains can be precarious and unreliable.  And while there … Continue reading EP 406 Changing Nature of Global Trade

The concept of true friendship has been challenged by the notion that someone who friends you on Facebook really can be counted on when you’re in need. You can be well-connected in the digital sphere and find yourself isolated and alone when the chips are down. Val Walker, a rehabilitation consultant, grief counselor and author … Continue reading EP 405 400 Friends and No One to Call

All good things must come to an end, as the song goes. It’s no less true for the universe than it is for love stories. It’s not something we spend much time thinking about because a)it’s too depressing and b)it’s likely billions of years into the future. Please don’t confuse the universe with the earth. … Continue reading EP 404 How Will the Universe End?

One wag called it a ‘conservationist rom-com’, when the big personality of Theordore Roosevelt came into contact with the big hole, The Grand Canyon. It was there that he spoke the words which became the title of David Gessner’s new book, ‘Leave It As It Is’. Yet, it seems that Americans can’t leave well enough … Continue reading EP 403 Leave It As It Is: You Can’t Improve It

There is an edible space race on to bring cell cultured meat to market.  What is that, you say?  It’s having your meat and eating it too.  No slaughterhouses, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and sundry new foods derived from stem cells gathered through a biopsy from a living animal, a bioreactor maintaining the temperature, acidity … Continue reading EP 402 A Feast Without the Cruelty: The Promise of Cell Cultured Meat

As the father of two millennials, I am on the side of about half of my baby boom generation in regretting the sorry state of affairs we have left on their doorstep.  Think about it in these terms: after forty years of the arc of American history bending toward individualism, self-reliance and  the desires of … Continue reading EP 401 Have Boomers Left Millennials A Pile to Clean Up?

On the news we’ve heard from exhausted, and often frustrated, front line medical workers who have had so much to deal with during the pandemic–lack of PPE,long hours in suffocating garb, a public skeptical of the seriousness of what they face every day and changing protocols as more information has come to light about the … Continue reading EP 400 The Healthcare Industry as a Career in the Wake of the Pandemic

There have been a number of false starts in American history toward the concept of a more equal, more integrated society. Yet, at each turn, those attempts have been blunted by forces that cannot see America without a power and status differential drawn white and black. It could’ve happened at the onset of the Continental … Continue reading EP 399 Is True Integration Possible in America?

Many of the heroes of the civil rights movement for African-Americans have been in the forefront of public consciousness again in the recent period. Perhaps, it’s fitting that for a group of Americans who often were reticent to share their identity, the name of the leader of their movement, pre-dating the 1969 Stonewall riots, remains … Continue reading EP 398 The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports there are 3,000 food deserts throughout the United States.  Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  While our guest gives a clearer definition of this designation, it basically means where people do not have access to a large format supermarket with healthy and nutritious food choices within walking distance. Most … Continue reading EP 397 In a Nation of Grocery Chains, Why Do We Have So Many ‘Food Deserts’?

In his compelling new book, ‘The Apocalypse Factory’, Steve Olson lays out the road to the Manhattan Project as it wends its way through Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and to some degree forgotten, Hanford, Washington.  He crafts a story of the scientists involved and the discovery of plutonium, which was a true game changer as … Continue reading EP 396 Why Don’t We Talk About Nuclear Weapons Anymore?

Many pundits are fixated on the budget mess in Washington, D.C. and how we are burdening future generations with debt and deficits and that, by virtue of this spending, we are crowding out borrowing that will needed for investments in the private market.  Stephanie Kelton, former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, dares … Continue reading EP 395 Does the Federal Government Really Need to Tax to Spend?

The concept of free trade has gotten a bad name over the recent period as the current occupant of the White House has harpooned recent trade deals made by the United States as stupid and detrimental to the economic fortunes of the country. How can this be so when America wrote a lot of the … Continue reading EP 394 Trade is Not a Four Letter Word