President Trump has ordered federalization of the California National Guard and deployed them to Los Angeles. He also has deployed active Marines in the city. Does this violate the law? What is the law of posse comitatus? What is its history? And will mass protests help preserve democracy? The law of Posse Comitatus needs reform to prevent abuse? In today’s political environment, is this even possible? [ dur: 58mins. ]

• David S. Meyer is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Planning, Policy, and Design at UC Irvine. He is the author of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America and co-editor of The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement. His blog is Politics Outdoors.
• Gautham Rao is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the American University Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Federal “Posse Comitatus” Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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What will it mean for Catholicism and the world to have the first Augustinian Pope? What were the teachings of Augustine of Hippo, who inspires the Order of Augustine? And what are Pope Leo’s theological views for the Church and beyond as the Church confronts a world with poverty, violence, and war? [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Sarah Stewart-Kroeker, is the Associate Professor of Early Christian Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary; Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine’s Thought, and Sacrifice in Environmental Ethics and theology
• John Doody is the Clinical Professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. He’s the co-author of at least 12 books on Augustine, and one of those is entitled Augustine and social justice.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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We interview Professor James S. Fishkin author of the recently published book – Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy? . Then we remember Ngugi wa Thiongo , scholar of language and author many books such as Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).

Discussion with Professor Fishkin on his book Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?. He shares his experience in conducting deliberative polling 150+ times around the world. Hosted by Doug Becker.  [ dur: 30 mins. ]

• James S. Fishkin he holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University. He is the Professor of both communication and of political science at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogly Institute for International Studies and the director of the Deliberative democracy lab. His work focuses on a concept We’ll get into, uh, called deliberative polling.

Interview with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o hosted by Prof. David Lloyd. This is an excerpt from the original recording from October 2021 ( show link ).  In this excerpt Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recalls his thoughts on theory of Globalectics and how it affects thoughts of decolonizing the mind.  [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. Among his many writings are Decolonising the Mind, Globalectics and his memoir Detained recently recast as Wrestling with the Devil. His most recent novel is Murogi wa Kagogo, published in English as Wizard of the Crow. His rendering of the Gikuyu epic, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, appeared in 2019. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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What exactly an emolument? Is the airplane gift from Qatar to President Trump an emolument? Is it evidence of corruption? And has the Supreme Court continued to enable corruption? Hosted by Doug Becker. [ dur: 26mins. ]

• Clark D. Cunningham is Lee Byrd’s Chair in Law and Ethics at Georgia State University College of Law. He is the author of Using Empirical Data to Investigate the Original Meaning of Emoluments. In the Constitution, and has co-authored several amicus briefs on the Using Empirical Data to Investigate the Original Meaning of “Emolument” in the Constitution.”Emolument” in the Constitution.
• Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is the Professor of Law at Stetson Law School. She’s the author of The Stakes of the Supreme Court’s Pro-Corruption Rulings in the Age of Trump. And the very recent publication, Corporatocracy how to protect democracy from dark money And corrupt politicians.

From the arctic to the depths of the oceans, microplastics are wreaking havoc, posing health threats to human health, animals life & the ecosystems on which we all rely. How did we get here and what can we do? Hosted by Maria Armoudian. [ dur: 26mins. ]

• Samantha Ladewig is Research Fellow at University of Auckland, NZ. She is the co-author of Benthic ecosystem function responses to plasticizer content in polyester and PVC .
• Nathalie Gontard – Research Director at INRAE (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment). She is the author of Recognizing the long-term impacts of plastic particles for preventing distortion in decision-making.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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Canada’s Liberals were facing a 20 point deficit a few months back but came back to maintain power by re-electing Liberal Prime Minister, Mark Carney. What does this mean for the country and its challenges this year and beyond? What are Canada’s most pressing political challenges? Canadian politics are complex and experts argue their most recent election was not only a reaction to Donald Trump’s remarks about the country. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Terry Givens is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. She’s the author of The Roots of Racism, The Politics of White Supremacy in the US and Europe and also the impact of strategic voting in Canada.
• Mark O’Reilly is Professor of Political Science and the chair of the History, Political Science, Philosophy, and Religion Department at Heidelberg University. He’s the author of unexceptional. America’s Empire in the Persian Gulf.
• Stephen Lammy is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, International Relations, and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Introduction to Global Politics that’s in its seventh edition

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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We are 100 days into the second Trump Administration. How different is this term from his first and from other Presidents? What are the constitutional and normative challenges it poses to American democracy? Just how much has Trump attempted to consolidate power in the Presidency? What are the biggest threats his administration poses to the constitution, the rule of law and to American democracy? [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Heidi Kitrosser is Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is the author of the book, Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, and the articles, The Shadow of Executive Privilege, and Accountability in the Deep State.
• Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the co-author of “Problems with President Records are Not Just About Trump” with Kenneth Osgood. He is also the author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office. He is the host of the podcast This is Democracy.
• Steve Swerdlow, Esq. is Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political and International Relations at the University of Southern California. He writes extensively as a human rights monitor for Human Right Watch in both the Central Asian region and in the Caucuses.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.

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Science is under attack. Who and what are behind the attacks? While we face catastrophic climate change and other pending disasters, how can we restore the public’s understandings about scientific realities? We explore disinformation and ways to communicate with non-scientists to loosen the grip the disinformants have on so many people. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a recent Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier , Post-Truth, and On Disinformation (MIT Press, August 2023),
• Christopher Reddy is a senior scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and faculty member at MIT of the MIT/Woods Hole program in oceanography. He is the author of SCIENCE COMMUNICATION IN A CRISIS: An Insider’s Guide (Routledge; May 10, 2023).

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin and Sudd Dongre.

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April is Genocide Awareness Month, and no genocide was more devastating, more destructive and more emblematic of the demand for never again like the Cambodian Genocide. Often referring to as the “Killing Fields” after the moving Dith Pran novel and movie of the same name, 2 million people out of a pre-genocide population of 7 million were killed by the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia between the years 1975 and 1979. The importance of the remembrance of the genocide lies in remembering its victims. But learning from the processes by which this killing was committed and to understand how genocides are perpetrated is essential at ensuring Never Again. And in light of the world’s rejection of its commitments to human rights in its contemporary times, including an American government with a much lessening commitment to these rights, how much can we learn from genocides like Cambodia to counter such actions today? [ dur: 30mins. ]

• Alex Hinton  is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention, and the award-winning author or editor of seventeen books, including, most recently, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU, 2021), Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell, 2022) and Perpetrators: Encountering Humanity’s Dark Side (Stanford, 2023). Most recently, he received the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology in the Media Award in 2022, a 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Network of Genocide Scholars, and a H. F. Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award in 2024.

Portugal’s colonization of Mozambique is part of a pattern of colonialism from European powers in Africa in the 19th and 20th century. Mozambique was one of the last countries to be decolonized. A bitter war of independence broke out in 1964 from a campaign by the Mozambique Liberation front and a ten year resulted in the nation gaining its independence in 1975. Numerous atrocities marked this war and one in particular, the Portuguese massacre at Wiriyamu in December, 1972, marked the brutality of this war and the Portuguese response. Our guest has written the definitive history of this massacre, which proved to be challenging to construct the story. His account serves as an incredibly important marker of the Portugese violence in Mozambique and in Portual’s eventual acknowledgement and apology for the atrocity.[ dur: 28mins. ]

• Mustafah Dhada, is a Professor in the Department of History at California State University, Bakersfield. He is the author of Wiriyamu Massacre: An Oral History, 1960-1974.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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Recent peace treaty communication coming from Armenia and Azerbaijan explained.

• Robert English is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War and The Other Side: How Soviets and Americans Perceive Each Other.
• Talin Hitik is an international human rights advocate focused on seeking accountability for war crimes and human rights violations. She also has worked as a legal officer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law and the Permanent Court of Arbitration and has served at the Ministry of Justice of Armenia, managing the European Court of Human Rights litigation department. She was a professor of international human rights and humanitarian law at American University of Armenia and Yerevan State University and most recently, was an Academic Affiliate at the University of Michigan Law School.

US Tariff policy effect on labor.

• Wendy Hansen is professor of Political Science at University of New Mexico. Her research interest are in international relations, economics, public policy and labor. She is author of New Evidence for the Theory of Groups: Trade Association Lobbying in Washington D.C. and Campaign Finance in US Politics: An Era Without Limits.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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With wars still raging in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, we return to an earlier interview on the origins of war. When and how did war begin?

While some have argued it evolved in early human behavior within forging bands societies, our guests say, that’s not true. Forger bands did not wage war. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

• Douglas P. Fry is Professor and Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Beyond War, The Human Potential for Peace, and Nurturing Our Humanity, co-authored with Riane Eisler.
• Robert L. Kelley is Professor of Anthropology at University of Wyoming. He is the author of The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers, The Foraging Spectrum, and The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell us About Our Future.

We continue this conversation by exploring how war and violent conflict might be resolved. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

• Douglas P. Fry is Professor and Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Beyond War, The Human Potential for Peace, and Nurturing Our Humanity, co-authored with Riane Eisler.
• Mari Fitzduff, Professor of International program of coexistence and conflict at Brandeis University. She is the author of The Psychology of Resolving Global Conflicts: From War to Peace
• Douglas Noll is a lawyer and a mediator of peacemaking. Author of Peacemaking: Practicing at the Intersection of Law and Human Conflict.

Websites mentioned : University of North Calorina Greensboro studies of Peaceful Societies and an example of building a Peaceful society organization.

This recording was produced Nov. 2013.

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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