NewAmerica

Andrew and Kevin debate the merits of the Democratic higher education platforms as well as the Obama Administration's trove of new "College Scorecard" data.

For October's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, The Cybersecurity Podcast team is bringing you an hour-long special episode featuring White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel, and John McAfee, the security pioneer who just founded his own political party – the Cyber Party – and is running for President of the United States. New America's Peter Singer and Passcode's Sara Sorcher c...

We text, tweet, snap, and chat all day but are we ever engaging in meaningful conversation that surpasses 140 characters? Our constant social digital engagement can prevent us from feeling alone, but are we truly connected? In her new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age, media scholar Sherry Turkle deplores the consequences of our excessive reliance on tech devices...

In collaboration with The GroundTruth Project The media landscape in America these days looks like it's been hit by an earthquake. Indeed, the shifting tectonic plates of media have left legacy print and broadcast outlets in crisis – cutting columns, staff, and even entire bureaus. International reporting has been acutely impacted amid all this disruption. But the picture isn't entirely one of des...

A real-life thriller, (T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during a live FBI counterterrorism sting operation of a suspected jihadist. With unprecedented access to an active informant – Saeed "Shariff" Torres, a 63 year old former Black Panther – viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them. (...

Prospective students often start their college searches with high expectations, and soon into their exploration, high anxiety. Both students fresh out of high school and older adults returning to school are making crucial choices about their educations without key information and resources and with misconceptions about everything from application requirements to financial aid and sound student loa...

Cybersecurity pro and undercover CIA officer-turned-Republican Rep. Will Hurd joins New America’s Peter Singer and Passcode’s Sara Sorcher to talk about what it's like to be the rare cybersecurity expert in Congress; why he went to DEF CON this summer; and why he's disappointed the Office of Personnel Management never apologized for allowing his personal information to fall into the hands of hacke...

The next Steve Jobs is just as likely to come from Lagos, Lahore, Monterrey or Mumbai as from Silicon Valley. According to Elmira Bayrasli's From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, high-growth entrepreneurs are overcoming vexing obstacles to not only build businesses and jobs and contribute to economic growth, but also to change mindsets. Whether in Mexico,...

I wish I could stop the world for a moment. - Puran Bhat, puppeteer Puran the Puppeteer, Rahman the Magician, and Maya the Acrobat are just three of the talented residents of India's Kathputli Colony of street performers who, for more than sixty years, have built their tiny, patched shacks and workshops and a vital, tight-knit community in the alleyways of western Delhi. The colorful, clamorous Ra...

Leading privacy and cyberlaw scholar Peter Swire joins New America’s Peter Singer and Passcode’s Sara Sorcher to talk about the difficulty of keeping secrets in the Digital Age, the differences between the East and West Coast's views on the Edward Snowden leaks, and what's still needed to reform US surveillance practices. Swire, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who also served on Pre...

The Voting Rights Act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. The historic march from Selma to Montgomery, grassroots demonstrations across the South, and legislative pressures in both Congress and the courts radically transformed American politics. And yet fifty years later we're still fighting heated battles over race, r...

"I am intrigued by this strange collision of people from around the globe in Africa. What interests me is how fantastic, horrific, and how transparent, human stories unfold in this beautiful place from which we humans originate." - Hubert Sauper Six years in the making, Hubert Sauper's We Come As Friends observes the precarious start of South Sudan, the African continent's newest country. With an...

You can't win; if you tell lies people will distrust you. If you tell the truth people will dislike you. - Oscar Wilde From little white lies to criminal deceit and global deceptions, dishonesty is a universal constant of the world we live in. Commonplace acts of make clear cheating isn't just happening on a newsworthy scale, but in smaller, more mundane ways everywhere. (Dis)Honesty - The Truth A...

Libby, Andrew, and Kevin debate what a potential K12 bargain in Congress augers for the Higher Education Act, Kevin and Andrew foolishly debate the meaning of Trump.

Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer for HackerOne, joins New America's Peter Singer and Passcode's Sara Sorcher to talk about bug bounty programs and how to incentivize hackers to help the private sector solve cybersecurity problems. They also chat about controversial proposed changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement, an arms export agreement, which have incensed major cybersecurity companies, rese...

Kevin, Andrew, and Libby autopsy the Obama administration's doomed college ratings plan.

What will World War III look like? A new book from P. W. Singer and August Cole answers this by smashing together the technothriller with nonfiction. Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War explores what would happen if the brewing cold war between the US and China/Russia were ever to turn hot. It is a fictional scenario, but a real risk in the years ahead. Amid escalating tensions over Ukraine...

In 2009, photographer Gillian Laub went to rural Georgia to document Montgomery County's two segregated high school proms. Her New York Times essay that followed stirred a powerful outcry and forced the school district to bring the longstanding tradition to an end. Back a year later to photograph the school's first integrated proms, her welcome had run out and, despite the school district gains, s...

Peter W. Singer talks about his upcoming novel, Ghost Fleet, out June 30, and the importance of fiction in discussions about cyber security.

Cory Doctorow – science fiction author, journalist and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing – joins New America's Peter Singer and Passcode's Sara Sorcher to talk about society's "peak indifference" to the Surveillance State, what policies could stand in the way of a future Internet utopia, whether young people actually care about their privacy online, and what a future world war might look like in t...

Inside the secretive and mysterious world of North Korea, Joseph Kim lived a young boy's normal life. But when he was five, disaster struck: the first wave of the Great Famine killed millions, including his father, and forced the rest of his family to desperate escape routes into China. Alone in the streets, he had nothing but his street-hardened instincts for survival. But through the eventual su...

Andrew, Libby, and Kevin debate the larger meaning of the LaCour academic fraud case and discuss the Laura Kipnis imbroglio at Libby'a alma mater.

What does the financial health of Millennials have to do with buying vegetables at the grocery store? Rachel Black of New America's Asset Building Program talks with Terri Friedline about her new research exploring why Millennials are having such a tough time and ways financial capability could help them do better.

In the wake of the formation of the new Israeli government and as the Vatican formally recognizes the the state of Palestine, the debate about Israel/Palestine in the United States is shifting. As many look past a two state solution that seems increasingly difficult to achieve, more fundamental debates about Zionism, partition and equality are gaining greater prominence. Join New America NYC for a...

Less than a month after it first appeared, Sarah Maslin Nir's two-part report on systemic wage theft, rights violations, and dangerous working conditions in New York City nail salons already looks like a journalistic parable for the ages. Within hours, the exposé had sparked thousands of conversations, in news broadcasts and on social media, about how best to help the vulnerable employees Maslin N...