TWO REPORTERS

Use music! Protest songs in the 1960s galvanized a generation - although singer-songwriter Anya Rose and the group Ants on a Log write social action songs to help children in primary school learn about problems from environmental pollution to racist and sexist behavior. Anya says she was inspired in part by satirist Tom Lehrer, remember him? Warning: After hearing these tunes, the 9-year-olds in y...

They're speaking African American English, according to linguist Lisa Green at the University of Massachusetts Amherst - in other words, "it's not mainstream English with mistakes." Lisa grew up speaking AAE in Louisiana, and since then, her ground-breaking research has found that AAE is based on a system of consistent grammatical rules, pronunciations and definitions. Some cal...

Yes! (Danny's writing this) - especially when the author is my co-host, David K. Shipler.  Dave's novel, The Interpreter - now out in paperback - takes us into the rice paddies and twisting alleys of Vietnam, right after US troops fled the war there in 1973. But Dave explores provocative issues that would resonate in Iran or China or any country where interpreters play a crucial role for...

Since Trump returned to the White House, more than 1750 potential  whistleblowers have asked for help from the Government Accountability Project, says GAP -  a leading group that gives legal advice to whistleblowers and tries to protect them. That's more than triple the number during the last year of the Biden administration, which is even more remarkable when you consider how Trump and his e...

As astonishing as it might seem - among all the astonishing changes in today’s America - it turns out that there is no legal way to stop Trump from profiteering from his presidency, even when it damages the nation's interests. We're learning that laws have always been important, but the main reason that America's democracy endured was because most people - from the president on down...

Trump is calling on Congressional Republicans to "nationalize" elections. His Justice Department is suing states to get their voter rolls. Trump's FBI has raided election centers. Trump's allies are installing election deniers on state voting boards. And now Trump supporters are floating a draft plan for him to declare a national emergency before the elections and seize control...

The US government outlawed debtors' prisons in the 1830s, the Supreme Court ruled they're unconstitutional more than 40 years ago, and you'll find sentences like this on the internet: "Today it is illegal to put someone in prison because of a debt." So how is it that courts across the country lock up thousands of low-income people each year, according to estimates, because...

So much for the "greatest country on earth." Recent studies show that if Americans died at the same rate as people do in average European countries, which Trump derides, at least half a million Americans who die each year would likely have lived. And the biggest difference is among people younger than 65. Our guests - epidemiologist Jacob Bor at Boston University and Katherine Newman, ex...

America's prisons house a "staggering number" of convicts who didn't commit the crime but said under duress that they did - so says our guest, lawyer Alan Hirsch, who testifies in trials across the country as one of the leading expert witnesses on false confessions. He took the stand not long ago in the chilling case of teenager Brooke Skylar Richardson, who was pressured by po...

When you learned ​in school about the fabled drama of Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook​ - how they raced each other to be the first explorer to reach the North Pole - did your teachers explain that this was an early example where public figures lied to gain glory? oth The New York Times and New York Herald enabled them, by spreading the explorers' fake news - although critics still debate w...

An English teacher at Middletown High School in New York State gave students video cameras back in the 1990s, and told them to tell compelling stories. Result: They uncovered illegal dumping of toxic wastes tied to the mob, and then made films about it - which shook the community and triggered government investigations. A documentary about their real-life drama, Teenage Wasteland, is making the ro...

Shekar Krishnan just got re-elected to the New York City Council, with more than twice as many votes as his opponent - which is good news for Zohran Mamdani, the newly-elected mayor, because he'll need progressive allies like Shekar to back his agenda. As you'll hear in our chat with Shekar from two years ago, he's the rare kind of politician who shows how politics and government ca...

Now that Judge David S. Tatel has retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he feels freer to warn us all: the Supreme Court is threatening America's democracy by inventing spurious legal doctrines and grabbing more power for itself. There are also lighter moments in this revealing interview, as David pulls the curtain aside and tells us how the judges on this powerful cour...

In this moving episode, David Tatel, who retired last year from the U.S. Court of Appeals, describes with his wife Edie how he gradually went blind - and struggled to hide it from friends and colleagues alike. David tells about tricks he would use, like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels down sidewalks; Edie shares, among other things, why David'...

Answer: probably zero. As astonishing as it might seem among all the other astonishing outrages in today’s America, it turns out that there is no legal way to stop Trump’s unprecedented financial profiteering from his presidency, even when it damages the nation's interests. Only society’s norms — stronger than the laws — could have prevented it in earlier times when Americans had higher value...

We're repeating this episode so soon because we can't hear these warnings enough. Hitler and the Nazis assaulted universities, museums and art institutions; purged them of people that Hitler perceived as enemies; and rewrote textbooks and museum exhibits to tell Hitler's fake version of history. Sound familiar? Historian Joan Clinefelter, who retired recently from the University of...

It sounds almost ridiculous to say this, but when people talk about wars or floods or wildfires or drought, they often neglect the fact that roughly half of the victims are children. Yet, the officials who dispense aid usually treat the kids as statistics and ignore their special needs. For instance, consider that children's brains are still developing - so if they're malnourished or sic...

Scientists have been trying for decades to understand these magnificent creatures, which can grow longer than a typical house. Michelle Fournet and her colleagues at the University of New Hampshire have been breaking new ground: They record the whales' daily communications in Alaska, and then send whale recordings back to the giant animals to see if and how they respond. Some of Michelle&apos...

As US, Israeli and Iranian leaders trade bombs and threats, this episode will help remind you one reason why Iran's government learned to detest the US long ago: The US and Britain secretly ran the plot to topple its leader in the 1950s. Why? For Iran's oil. Filmmakers Taghi Amirani and Walter Murch discuss their riveting documentary, Coup 53 - which shows step by step how the CIA and MI...

As we post this episode, Trump has sent Marines and Army National Guard troops to the streets, to try to quash protests by fellow citizens - the vast majority of them peaceful. Our guest Elizabeth Gotein, of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, has warned us before that any U.S. president could wield dozens of sweeping emergency powers to dismantle democracy, some so secret that members of...

Hitler and the Nazis assaulted universities, museums and art institutions; purged them of people that Hitler perceived as enemies; and rewrote textbooks and museum exhibits to tell Hitler's (fake) version of history. Sound familiar? Historian Joan Clinefelter, who just retired from the University of Northern Colorado, says that there are major differences between Hitler in his early days and...

The US government outlawed debtors' prisons in the 1830s, the Supreme Court has ruled they're unconstitutional, and you'll find sentences like this on the internet: "Today it is illegal to put someone in prison because of a debt." So how is it that courts across the country lock up thousands of low-income people each year, according to estimates, because they haven't...

I think it is (Danny's writing this) - especially when the author is my co-host, David K. Shipler.  Dave's new novel, The Interpreter , takes us into the rice paddies and twisting alleys of Vietnam, right after US troops fled the war there in 1973. But Dave explores provocative issues that would resonate in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other country where interpreters play a crucial role f...

Two Israeli educators argue, with evidence to back them up, that Israel's schools have indoctrinated people over the decades to detest and mistrust Palestinians - and to be primed to fight them (Palestinian schools have done a similar job poisoning their own students against Israelis). Daniel Bar-Tal and Nimrod Tal are convinced that revamping the curriculum could help change Israelis' m...

AI recreations of real people, which clone their faces, distinctive voices and all, have become so convincing that even top computer specialists are finding it hard to tell the difference between fakery and reality. Creative "deep fakes" aren't all bad - they can bring dead artists and historical figures alive, to energize museums and schools - but most uses so far have been evil: T...