With historic changes in the House of Representative, what can we expect from Congress and the President in policy and investigative battles? How will the power struggles play out? Will the Supreme Court weigh in, and if so, how?

• Andrew Rudalevige is Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government at Bowdoin College. He is the author of Managing the President’s Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation and The New Imperial Presidency.
• George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University. His books include On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit , The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership ,and Predicting the Presidency: The Potential of Persuasive Leadership. He is the editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly.
• Mark Peterson is Professor of Public Policy and Political Science in the Department of Public Policy’s Meyer and Renee Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Legislating Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan and the editor of Healthy Markets? The New Competition in Medical Care and co-editor of the volume Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch,
• Sean Theriault is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of The Power of the People: Congressional Competition, Public Attention, and Voter Retribution, Party Polarization in Congress, and The Gingrich Senators: The Roots of Partisan Warfare in Congress.

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 spend the hour understanding crypto-currency. Will cryptocurrency profoundly alter the monetary system? What is the future of it? What are the pros and cons? And what do they mean for economics, for power and for society? [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• David Golumbia, is Associate Professor in the Department of English; Media, Art, & Text Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of The Cultural Logic of Computation and The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism . His blog is uncomputing.org.
• Gina C. Pieters is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Trinity University, and an honorary Research Fellow at the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies. She is the author of the research papers Does Bitcoin reveal new information about exchange rates and financial integration?, The Potential Impact of Decentralized Virtual Currency on Monetary Policy and Cross-Country Distribution of Power and Exposure in the Crypto-Market.
• Lee W McKnight is Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He is the co-author of The Gordian Knot:Political Gridlock on the Information Highway, Cloud to Edgeware: Wireless Grid Applications, Architecture and Security for the “Internet of Things”, Knowledge Networks, the Internet, and Development , and co-editor of Creative Destruction: Business Survival Strategies in the Global Internet Economy and Internet Economics.
• Emin Gun Sirer is Associate Professor at Cornell University and Co-Director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts. He is the co-author of Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable, Managing the Network with Merlin. and On the Feasibility of Completely Wireless Datacenters. He developed the precursor to Bitcoin. His blog is HackingDisturbed.com

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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While water is a basic human right, some 3 billion people face water scarcity and some countries are running out of water. We’ll explore the realities of water. [ dur: 34 mins. ]

• Barbara Cosens is a Professor with the University of Idaho College of Law and the Waters of the West Graduate Program. She is the author of Indigenous Water Justice, The Adaptive Water Governance Project: Assessing Law, Resilience and Governance in Regional Socio-Ecological Water Systems Facing a Changing Climate, and Truth or Consequences: Settling Water Disputes in the Face of Uncertainty.
• Rick Hogeboom is Executive Director of The Water Footprint Network. He is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Twente in Netherland.

Then, how much water is in the jeans we wear or the meals we eat? How our everyday decisions can alleviate the water crisis. Thomas Kostigan discusses his book, the Green Blue Book. [ dur: 22 mins. ]

• Thomas Kostigen is an author, journalist, and environmentalist. He is the author of The Green Blue Book: The Simple Water-Savings Guide to Everything in Your Life, The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time and The Big Handout

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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Why did soldiers on the front line of one of the deadliest wars lay down their arms and play soccer with the very men they were supposed to shoot? We’ll revisit the Christmas truce of 1914 with Stanely Weintraub, author of, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce. [ dur: 23 mins. ]

Then, on the Scholars’ panel, we explore the Science of Compassion. What is it and how does it impact society? Can we learn to be compassionate? [ dur: 35mins. ]

• Iain Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research. He is the author of Suffering: A Sociological Introduction and Anxiety in a Risk Society
• Dr. Paul Gilbert is the head of the Mental Health Research Unit as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby. His books include Compassion-Focused Therapy: Distinctive Features and The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life’s Challenges
• Dr James R. Doty is a Clinical Professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and Founder and Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He is the co-author of Surgical Disorders of the Sacrum

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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How does culture shape our understanding and treatment of mental illness? [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• Roberto Lewis-Fernandez is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also Director of NYS Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and Hispanic Treatment Program and Co-Director of Anxiety Disorders Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is the author and co-editor of the book DSM-5(R) Handbook of the Cultural Formulation Interview. He is also the co-author of the research publications Impact of motivational pharmacotherapy on treatment retention among depressed Latinos, and Conditional risk for PTSD among Latinos: A systematic review of racial/ethnic differences and sociocultural explanations.
• Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford University. She is the author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry and Our Most Troubling Madness: Schizophrenia and Culture.
• Andrew G. Ryder is Associate Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Clinical Research in Health at Concordia University. He is the co-author of the research publications Culture and psychopathology, Revisioning psychiatry: Cultural phenomenology, critical neuroscience, global mental health, Depression in cultural context: Chinese somatization and Towards a cultural-clinical psychology.

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, we explore tariff policy in the US and its global implications, and the ongoing trade war between the US and China. With guest host Professor Doug Becker. [ dur: 43 mins. ]

• Iva Bozovic is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of International Relations. She is the author of the book chapter “Social Capital and Performance in Transition” in Democracy, Trust and Transition: Social Capital in a Changing World.
• Lui Hebron is a Training and Development Specialist for the Executive Management Program at Transcendent Solutions. He was previously an Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at Hult International Business School. He is the co-author of Globalization: Debunking the Myths. He is also co-editor of Understanding New Security Threats.

Then, hormones change our brain according to neuroscientists. What might these changes be? What does this mean for women taking birth control pills over the course of their child bearing years? [ dur: 14 mins. ]

• Belinda Pletzer is a researcher at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg, Austria. She is the co-author of many publications including, Sex and menstrual cycle influences on three aspects of attention, 50 years of hormonal contraception. Time to find out what it does to our brain and Subcortical structural changes along the menstrual cycle: beyond the hippocampus.

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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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Some call it post-truth society. With increased media consolidation, fake news and plummeting trust in media what needs to be done? [ dur: 24 mins. ]

• Victor Pickard is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at Pennsylvania State University. He is the co-editor of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights (with Robert McChesney) and The Future of Internet Policy (with Peter Decherney). And he is the author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and The Future of Media Reform
• Robert Entman is Professor of Media and Public Affairs and Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He is the author of The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (with Andrew Rojecki), Projections of Power and Scandal and Silence: Media Responses to Presidential Misconduct.

Then, Why do we sleep? What is its purpose? And what actually happens during sleep? [ dur: 34 mins. ]

• Marcos G. Frank is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Washington State University-Spokane. He is the author of The mystery of sleep function: current perspectives and future directions, The role of sleep in memory consolidation and brain plasticity: dream or reality? and Sleep enhances plasticity in the developing visual cortex.
• Graham H. Diering is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He is the co-author of Homer1a drives homeostatic scaling-down of excitatory synapses during sleep, and Regulation of dendritic spine growth through activity-dependent recruitment of the brain-enriched Na+/H+ exchanger NHE5.

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 role of food in history- as a weapon of war, of empire and of building societies. With Tom Standage. [ dur: 21 mins. ]

• Tom Standage is a journalist and author of The Edible History of Humanity.

Then, what is the relationship between minerals such as oil, diamonds and gold and conflict, authoritarianism and poverty? This week’s scholars have spent years studying how these so-called extractive industries, mining and drilling, impact people’s lives, their governance and the environment throughout the world. How can countries so rich in mineral wealth remain mired in so much poverty? [ dur: 33 mins. ]

• Jeffery Mantz is Program Director of Cultural Anthropology at the National Science Foundation. His publications include Blood Diamonds of the Digital Age: Coltan and the Eastern Congo, Do Cellular Phones Dream of Civil War? e Mystication of Production and the Consequences of Technology Fetishism in the Eastern Congo and How a Huckster Becomes a Custodian of Market Morality: Traditions of Flexibility in Exchange in Dominica
• Michael Ross is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA. His books include The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations and Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia.
• Suzana Sawyer is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Her books include Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador and The Politics of Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations and the State.

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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Experts say Yemen is the worse humanitarian crisis in modern history. Warnings from the UN say the death toll from starvation could reach 18.4 million by the end of the year. Why is this happening? And what can be done? [ dur: 29 mins. ]

• Dr. Charles Schmitz is a professor of geography at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. From 2004 to 2014, he served as president of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. He is an affiliated scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. Professor Schmitz is the co-author of Historical Dictionary of Yemen.
• Hammoud Salhi is Professor and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Cal State Dominguez Hills. He is a host of SWANA Region Radio on KPFK in Los Angeles. He is a commentator for Arabic media.

Guest host Sam Smith speaks with historian Mike Levine about musicians, cultural boycotts and the BDS movement. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

• Mark LeVine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History in the Department of History at UC Irvine. He is the author of Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil and Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Soul of Islam. He is also the co-editor of One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States and Religion and Social Practices and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies.

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, 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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