Walter H. Capps Center (Audio)

Scientists describe the climate-havoc wrought on our natural world as the end of ‘stationarity’—a shift of the ecosystem so profound that it is no longer possible to extrapolate into the future from past patterns. Award-winning environmental journalist, Mark Schapiro, takes us on a journey to the tension points where these shifts are vividly underway. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Wal...

Rinaldo S. Brutoco is a successful entrepreneur, executive, author and futurist and the Founding President of the World Business Academy. He looks at the role and responsibility of business in relation to the critical moral, environmental and social concerns of the day especially moving away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capp...

Legendary civil rights advocate Morris Dees addresses how our commitment to justice for all will determine our nation’s success in the next century as America becomes more diverse and economic disparity widens. Drawing upon past and current cases, he also examines the issue of hate crimes and the need to teach tolerance, love and respect for one another. Dees co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Ce...

Unlike the justice system, California’s institutions of higher learning cannot hold perpetrators of sexual violence criminally liable, but they do have the ability to discipline students through their established student code of conduct and under Title IX provisions. But despite federal and state laws that require specific prevention education, reporting, and response activities, there are critica...

The United States military currently views cyberspace as the “fifth domain” of warfare (alongside land, air, sea, and space), and the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and the CIA all field teams of hackers who can, and do, launch computer virus strikes against enemy targets. Shane Harris delves into the frontlines of America’s new cyber war, investigating the recent revelations...

Anna Lappé discusses how the food system impacts so many different aspects of our lives and how recent and diverse social movements motivated by a profound ethic of food are transforming how we feed ourselves. The choices that we make as individuals — and as a society — about food have ripples that affect every aspect of our lives, from the environment to the climate, from social justice to public...

UCLA psychologist Paul Abramson argues that if we want a better world, we need to eliminate sexual harm - not just violent rape, but also sexual coercion, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse of children. However, we need to address these issues in a way that preserves the sexual liberties of adults, adolescents and yes, kids, too. Abramson offers his ideas on how to meet both of these goals. Serie...

Peter Barnes, entrepreneur and former Newsweek correspondent, discusses his new book “With Liberty and Dividends For All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don’t Pay Enough.” He argues that because of globalization, automation, and winner-take-all capitalism, there won’t be enough high-paying jobs to sustain America’s middle class in the future. Therefore, he proposes a supplementary source o...

What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? Walter Isaacson's talk is centered around his latest book, The Innovators, and how the creators of Microsoft, Apple, and others came to be the leaders of the current Digital Revolution. Series: "Ethic...

More than 2 million people die every year in the United States, almost always in the presence of life-sustaining medical technology. Sometimes the choices posed by medical technology make death the least worst alternative. Yet, choosing death, or letting go, is often a painful and contentious business. Bioethicist Dr. Stuart Youngner, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, explores so...

Law professor at Georgetown University’s Law Center, Peter Edelman speaks about the prevalence of poverty in America, focusing on income-level disparities. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 28276]

In “Spying on Democracy,” National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, an...

Are all religions simply different ways up the same mountain? Or is the key to religious tolerance found in better understanding differences? In “God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World,” New York Times best-selling author and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts to portray all religions as different paths to the same God overlook the distinct prob...

The International Labour Organization estimates that 20.9 million people around the world are currently held in forced labor and servitude. Human trafficking is constantly in the headlines in the United States, but it can be hard to separate fact form fiction. Martina Vandenberg debunks the myths and examine concrete case studies compiled in her two decades combating trafficking in the US and abro...

With problems such as the energy crunch, climate change, and dependence on foreign oil, the question reemerges as to whether we need nuclear power — either from new plants, or from relicensing our aging reactors. Rinaldo Brutoco, Founding President of the World Business Academy, discusses the hazards and finances of the nuclear industry from the perspective of a lawyer, business leader, and concer...

Performance of the exorcism rite has been on the rise in recent years. Thomas Csordas endeavors to to understand this development on the level of therapeutic process in terms of how it may genuinely relieve affliction, and on the level of culture as a conservative discourse on evil at large in the contemporary world. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Humani...

Every baby born in the United States is screened for more than fifty genetic disorders. Though the early detection of these abnormalities can potentially save lives, the test also has a high percentage of false positives. Some doctors are questioning whether the benefits of these screenings outweigh the stress and pain they sometimes produce. Stefan Timmermans evaluates the consequences and benefi...

J. Alexander M. Douglas, Jr., Senior Vice President and Global Chief Customer Officer of The Coca-Cola Company, reflects upon current issues involving business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Douglas also shares his ideas on the role of the beverage industry as food preferences are changing and beverage and fast food industries are criticized for their impact on health and obesity. Ser...

Timothy Noah, Senior Editor, The New Republic and author of “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis And What We Can Do About It,” in which he digs into the causes of America's rapidly increasing inequality. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 24898]

As late as the mid-twentieth century science and technology were celebrated as instruments of progress, but by the early twenty-first century they were viewed increasingly as threats to life on Earth. Vivek Wadhwa, Washington Post and Bloomberg Businessweek columnist, and Ahmed Zewail, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, discuss how science and technology may be managed to advance humanit...

Former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma Mickey Edwards argues that American government has become dysfunctional because we've created a political system that rewards intransigence and incivility and punishes cooperation and compromise. We've allowed political parties to manipulate our elections and even our governing systems for their own partisan advantage. He says to fix the problem and get...

Author and columnist Jonathan Alter argues that the question in the 2012 presidential election is whether the country will stay on a centrist course with Obama or make a sharp turn to the right with Romney. He says that because few votes may be won by discussing the poor, the American social contract is rarely discussed but he feels it is on the line. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Wal...

The political fight that has broken out in the US about contraception is both surprising and at the same time traditionally American. Linda Gordon, Professor at New York University, puts today's reproduction control controversies -- foreign aid for family planning, the abortion debates, teenage pregnancy and childbearing, stem-cell research --into historical perspective and argues that reproductio...

Fear of decline is one of the oldest American impulses. When we feel we are in decline, we sense that we have lost our balance. We argue about what history teaches us—and usually disagree about what history actually says. We conclude that behind every crisis related to economics and the global distribution of power lurks a crisis of the soul. In “Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the Ame...

American Catholics blend personal autonomy, skepticism toward the church hierarchy’s teaching authority, and commitment to the Catholic sacramental and communal tradition. Arguing that the Catholic Church is at a critical juncture as it confronts the decline in the number of ordained priests, demographic change, and the need to restore credibility in the wake of the priest sex abuse scandals, Mich...