First, what does the US midterm election results mean for international relations, ethical considerations of US border policy and the future of US-Russian relations? Guest host Doug Becker speaks with three experts. Doug is Professor of International Relations at USC. Here’s that discussion. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Pam Chasek is Chair of the Political Science Department at Manhattan College. She is the author of Transforming Multilateral Diplomacy: The Inside Story of the Sustainable Development Goals, Global Environmental Politics, and The Global Environment in the 21st Century: Prospects for International Cooperation.
• Amy Eckert is Professor of Political Science at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. She is the author of Outsourcing War: The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization, and the book chapter “Critical Approaches to the Ethics of War”
• Brent Sasley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society and the journal articles Theorizing States’ Emotions, and Palestinian Roadblocks: Changing Attitudes Among Israeli Jews.

Then, what do dictators, CEOs, and political leaders have in common? We’ll re-explore some of the strategies for getting and keeping power with Alastair Smith coauthor of “The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics“. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

• Alastair Smith is Professor of Politics at NYU. He has also co-authored the book “The Logic of Political Survival“.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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What is at stake in the upcoming midterm election? How does our current moment fit within American history? What are the factors that will determine the election’s outcome? And what does it mean for the future of the US? We have four experts on American history and politics with us.

• Henry Brady is Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the co-author of Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age, and The Unheavenly Chorus: Political Voice and the Promise of American Democracy. He is also the co-editor of Capturing Campaign Effects. And the monograph, Counting All The Votes: The Performance of Voting Technology in the United States.
• David P. Redlawsk is the James R. Soles Professor and Chair of Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is the co-author of the book The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning. He is also co-author of the publications Donald Trump, Contempt, and the 2016 GOP Iowa Caucuses and Donald Trump and right-wing populists in comparative perspective.
• Jennifer Frost is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism
• Paul Taillon is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of Good, Reliable, White Men, Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917 and the research paper A syndicalist moment? Democracy, insurgent unionism, and the ‘Outlaw Strike’ of 1920.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, Bird Colony collapse and crop failures.

• Josh Tewksbury is Research Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Director of the Colorado Global Hub, Future Earth. He is also Executive Editor of Anthropocene magazine. He is the co-author of the studies Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate and Defaunation leads to interaction deficits, not interaction compensation, in an island seed dispersal network.
• Curtis Deutsch is Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography in the School of Oceanography at Washington University. He is the co-author of the studies Acceleration of oxygen decline in the tropical Pacific over the past decades by aerosol pollutants, Microbial functional diversity alters the structure and sensitivity of oxygen deficient zones, and Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate.
• Steven R. Beissinger is Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the co-author of the studies Mojave Desert Bird Populations Plummet as Region Warms and Dries and The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational ranges.

Then, birds, bees, whales and turtles all use the earth s magnetic field to guide their behaviour. Now scientists have learned much more about how. Joining us is Andres Vidal Gadea. He s a professor of Molecular Neuroethology at Illinois State University who has made the fascinating discoveries. [ dur: 15mins. ]

• Andrew Vidal Gadea, Professor of Molecular Neuroethology, Illinois State University . His research website at Illinois State University.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, how water has shaped our past and how new water challenges are shaping the future. We talk with Charles Fishman author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

• Charles Fishman, journalist and author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

Then, on the Scholars’ Circle panel, the so-called “memory entrepreneurs” try to change how we remember the past to shape the future. Are they losing the Cold War memory fight? [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Ellen Schrecker, Professor of History, Yeshiva University. Author of No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities
• Jon Wiener, Professor of History at the UC Irvine. He is the author of How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America
• Douglas Becker is a Professor of International Relations at USC.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, are Google and Facebook increasing income inequality, harming the arts and damaging democracy? Our guests says yes. [ dur: 44 mins. ]

• Jonathan Taplin was the founding director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and an Oscar nominated filmmaker, a music manager and author. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.

Then, how one university professor is teaching children about community, civics, empathy and giving. [ dur: 14 mins. ]

• Ann Crigler is Professor of Political Science at USC. She is the co-author of Common Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning and Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates and the Media in a Presidential Campaign, and the co-editor of Rethinking the Vote: The Politics and Prospects of American Election Reform and The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, why do people remain in refugee camps for decades? [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Elizabeth Cullen Dunn is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at Indiana University–Bloomington. She is also the author of No Path Home and Privatizing Poland.

Then, our guests have studied the food system and what it means to have an equitable and sustainable system. What are the problems in the system and what are the solutions? [dur: 30 mins. ]

• Saru Jayaraman is Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley . She is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) which has more than 18,000 worker members, 200 employer partners, and several thousand consumer members in a dozen states nationwide. She is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door and her latest Forked: A New Standard for American Dining.
• Raj Patel is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, The Value of Nothing – a New York Times and international best-seller – and his latest, co-written with Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He co-hosts the fortnightly food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient .

Raj Patel and Saru Jayaraman are contributors to The Nation magazine’s special issue, “The Future of Food: Setting the table for the next generation“.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, the birth of what we know as big science. The big money supported, cross institution collaborations that have supported both medicine and weaponry. How did science and government get so entrenched with industry, and one another? And what have been the results? We discuss with Michael Hiltzik his latest book Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military Industrial Complex. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. He has been writing for the Los Angeles Times for three decades and is currently the Times’ Business Columnist. He is the author of many books including, The New Deal: A Modern History; The Plot Against Social Security, and his latest Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military Industrial Complex.

Then, greenwashing culture. How journalism, the entertainment industry and museums impact our environment. We discuss with Toby Miller his latest book Greenwashing Culture. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Toby Miller is the Professor and Director of the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. He is author and editor of over 40 books. His numerous publications include, Greenwashing Culture, Greenwashing Sports, The Routledge Companion to Global Cultural Policy (co-editor), and The Sage Companion to Television Studies (co-editor).

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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We discuss the many faces to money laundering, the cost to society and potential remedies. Why is it so hard to track and prosecute money laundering? How does it finance terrorism? [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• Moyara Ruehsen is Associate Professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. She is the Director of Financial Crime Management Specialization. Her expertise is in financial regulatory compliance and investigations, and public policies related to illicit markets as well as macro-economy. She is the author of Follow the Proliferation Money and Terrorism Financing Methods: An Overview.
• Richard Gordon is Professor of Law at Case Western University. He is also Director of the Financial Integrity Institute; Associate Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center. He is the author of A Model Regulation on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism and Laundering the Proceeds of Public Sector Corruption.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Can international finance systems be harnessed to protect human rights? While historically financiers have funded some of the worse of human rights abuses, finances also enabled great human leaps. Our guest argues that it is time to alter the financial system for the good of humanity. [ dur: 29 mins. ]

• David Kinley is Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Sydney Law School. He is the author of Necessary Evil: How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights, and Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy. He is also the co-editor of Human Rights: Old Problems, New Possibilities.

Then, our guest studies factors that shape our lives and ways of being in life, like ideas and events. What does it really mean to be responsible? It might depend on where you live. [ dur: 29 mins. ]

• Susanna Trnka is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland. She is the co-editor of Competing Responsibilities: The Politics and Social Ethics of Responsibility in Contemporary Life and State of Suffering: Political Violence and Community Survival in Fiji.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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What can we make of the latest revelations from inside the Trump administration? We spend the hour with three top scholars of the U.S. presidency. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University. His books include Predicting the Presidency, The Strategic President, Governing by Campaigning and On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit.
• Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. His books include, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, and Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama.
• David Stebenne is Professor of History and Law at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Arthur J. Goldberg: New Deal Liberal and Modern Republican: Arthur Larson and the Eisenhower Years.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download