NewAmerica

Kevin and Libby dissect the Season 4 of The Americans, we continue debating how or if to blow up the federal financial aid system, and Andrew and Libby discuss Trump and the brief ascendency of Political Science.

American attitudes toward marriage have undergone a seismic shift in recent decades. Gay marriage has become mainstream, nearly half of American households have female breadwinners, and gendered expectations of domestic roles have changed as well. Yet our attitudes toward divorce remain surprisingly unchanged. Even as marriage rates overall have fallen and long-term unmarried partnerships are incr...

In 1979, seemingly overnight, Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has largely been a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, according to Laura Secor's Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, a much different picture has unfolded. With traditions drawn as deeply from the West as from t...

Workers lose to automation, investors lose to algorithms, and even tech developers lose their visions to the demands of the startup economy. According to Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, the digital economy has gone wrong, and no one quiet knows how to fix it. The problems lie not with digital technology itself, but in the wa...

Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden joins The Cybersecurity Podcast to talk about his new book, "Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror." Hayden – now a principal at The Chertoff Group – discusses the need to balance national security secrets and the public's right to government transparency, his reaction after Edward Snowden revealed details from mass surveillance...

Kevin and Andrew debate New America's radical proposal to upend federal higher education policy as we know it, with Libby as mixologist / referee.

Within 20 years, we’ll see robot suits that allow paraplegics to walk and new drugs able to melt away most cancers. But we’ll also see definitions of money blur the line between corporation and citizen and computer code being used as a weapon to destroy physical infrastructures halfway around the world. Those are some of the predictions leading innovation expert Alec Ross, author of The Industries...

Exactly a century ago the first woman was elected to national office; 32 years ago we got the first female Supreme Court justice; and 23 years ago women got their own bathroom off the Senate floor. With more than 100 women serving in Congress today, they make up more than 20 percent of the Senate body and have finally achieved a "critical mass" of representation in American politics. Representatio...

Creativity and ingenuity aren't spread evenly. Throughout history, certain locations have become hubs for artistic, business, and technological innovation, for reasons that aren't always readily apparent. Why Silicon Valley right now? Why Florence during the Renaissance? In search of answers, acclaimed travel writer and former NPR correspondent Eric Weiner traveled the world to investigate the rel...

In his most light-hearted and optimistic effort yet, filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore becomes a one-man American army and sets out to "invade" several foreign nations to steal their good ideas. Where to Invade Next comedically pursues the serious mission of challenging the conventions and inequities of U.S. social policy and the mythology of the American Dream. On his global tour, he looks...

Since 9/11, more than three hundred Americans – born and raised in Minnesota, Alabama, New Jersey, and elsewhere – have been indicted or convicted of terrorism charges. Among the perpetrators are Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born radical cleric who became the first American citizen killed by a CIA drone, and Omar Hammami, an Alabama native and hip hop fan who became a fixture in al Shabaab's pr...

Kevin, Libby, and Andrew debate the spate of recent campus tenure controversies, plus Jeb Bush's innovative little-discussed higher education agenda.

What's beyond happy? Seeking work-life balance, writes Beth Cabrera, is a trap that keeps parents running in circles. We should focus instead on well-being at home and at work, says Cabrera - an organizational psychologist and senior scholar at George Mason University's Center for the Advancement of Well-Being. On this podcast Cabrera shares insights from her book, Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and W...

A Social Cinema Screening with The Marshall Project For 33 years, Mark DeFriest has struggled against what he considers to be unjust imprisonment: he has escaped seven times and accrued hundreds of disciplinary write-ups, turning his original four-year sentence into one of life in prison. Known as the "Houdini of Florida" for his multiple and improbable jailbreaks, DeFriest was condemned to Florid...

Chris Wysopal a.k.a Weld Pond, chief technology officer of application security firm Veracode, joins The Cybersecurity Podcast to discuss the suspected cyberattack on the Ukrainian power grid, ways to increase transparency about cybersecurity expertise at publicly-traded companies, and why the L0pht hacking collective he once belonged to didn't want to shut down the Internet back in the 1990s just...

In collaboration with ChinaFile When Communist Party leaders adopted a one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birth rates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China moves to a nationwide two-child policy, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong's latest book, O...

Kevin, Libby, and Andrew debate the best and worst of 2015, including affirmative action, free speech, ratings, and Love, Actually

Please join us as we welcome the CORE Club and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General for a discussion on corporate board quotas. What do gender roles mean for business? What effect does the increasing visibility of women on boards have on women in the earlier stages of their careers? Do women leaders lead differently? When, in 2002, Norwegian trade minister Ansgar Gabrielsen unveiled a radical new...

Angela McKay, who runs Microsoft's public policy work on cybersecurity, joins The Cybersecurity Podcast to talk about the importance of developing international norms for cyberspace, European privacy concerns, why she's disappointed women comprise only 10 percent of the cybersecurity workforce, and how Microsoft's own attitude – and reputation – for security has evolved over the years. New America...

Kevin, Libby, and Andrew devote the podcast to ongoing controversies over campus racism, free speech, and alleged political correctness, with a side conversation on why "Love, Actually" is terrible.

The question of whether to regulate soda consumption has become a major political issue. Rising rates of obesity and diabetes, as well as the omnipresence of soda marketing and advertisements, have raised the powerful profiles of soda corporations and soda's impact on our national health. From the fight over New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's unsuccessful 2013 attempt to restrict soda sizes t...

As calls for criminal justice reform in the U.S. are becoming all the more urgent, and the toll of gun violence mounts daily, Abigail Disney's The Armor of Light turns to the unlikely journey of Evangelical minister Reverend Rob Schenk to explore the intersection of religion and the politics of gun control. Faced with a national epidemic of mass shootings and his own personal moral convictions, Sc...

The U.S. workforce, which has been one of the wealthiest and most productive in the world, is undergoing an alarming transformation. Increasing numbers of workers find themselves on shaky ground, turned into freelancers, temps and contractors. Even many full-time and professional jobs are experiencing similar shifts. Add to that the steamroller of automation, robots and artificial intelligence alr...

New York's economic dynamism has long been a hallmark of the city; for centuries, jobs and opportunity have attracted people to New York from across the nation and around the globe. Yet today, many New Yorkers find themselves unemployed or working in unsafe conditions for unsustainably low wages. At a moment of impassioned debate about the right to a "living wage," join New America NYC and the Mus...

Today we carry around an almost infinite amount of information in our pockets, allowing us to instantaneously search for answers to almost any question. We hardly ever feel in the dark anymore, and we naturally tend to think that is a good thing. But is it always? In his provocative new book, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, Future Tense Fellow Jamie Holmes argues that our informational instant...