Category: Interviews

The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies

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Mike talks with Susan Jacoby, an independent scholar specializing in the history of reason, atheism, secularism, and religious liberty. She’s the bestselling author of 12 books, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason, which just came out in a new, updated edition titled The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies.

They discuss American anti-intellectualism, the meaning of unreason, if unreason has become a bigger problem in recent years, whether this is a bipartisan phenomenon, if Donald Trump is an aberration or a sign of things to come, and lots more.

Susan Jacoby’s Website

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Dana R. Fisher on American Resistance

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Mike talks with University of Maryland sociology professor Dana R. Fisher about her research on activism and protests, the Women’s March, who protests and why, whether protests can drive real political change, differences between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, and lots more.

Follow Dr. Fisher on Twitter

Show Links
The Women’s March

Indivisible

Mike’s Talk with Indivisible’s Jeremy Haile

Network

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Whistleblowing, Leaking, and Employment Discrimination

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Mike talks with attorney Scott Oswald, a managing principal at The Employment Law Group. Scott has extensive experience with whistleblower, employment discrimination, and wrongful termination cases, regularly lectures on employment and whistleblower law, and has authored numerous articles on federal and state whistleblower and employment law protections.

Mike and Scott discuss the differences between whistleblowing and leaking, protections for whistleblowers, leaking of classified information, the magnitude of the employment discrimination problem, whether things are getting better, and differences between the Trump and Obama administrations in employment discrimination enforcement.

The Employment Law Group on Twitter

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Patients, Physicians, and Employers on Value in Health Care

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Mike talks with Dr. Bob Pendleton, Chief Medical Officer at University of Utah Health. They discuss the school’s recently released ‘Value in Health Care Survey‘ which asked patients, doctors, and employers across the country about about their perceptions of value in health care and how they prioritize quality, service, and cost of health care services.

Mike and Dr. Pendleton dig in to the survey’s findings, some of which were fairly astonishing – for instance, that patients ranked getting better as less important than the friendliness of the medical office staff. They also discuss what these findings mean for the healthcare system in the United States and how policymakers might use this information to improve the U.S. system.

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon or PayPal links.

Norman Ornstein – One Nation After Trump

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Mike welcomes back to the show political scientist and American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Norman Ornstein. They talk about his latest book: One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.

Mike and Dr. Ornstein discuss why Donald Trump’s victory does and doesn’t mean, whether ‘presidential demeanor’ really matters, if President Trump’s liberties with the truth are that much of a break with the past, if presidents can pardon themselves, whether those on the left calling for the ‘normalization’ of impeachment have a point, and lots more.

Show Links:
Glenn Kessler’s ‘Fact Checker’ Blog at the Washington Post

Norm Ornstein on Twitter

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon or PayPal links.

The U.S. Constitution Explained

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Mike talks with historian Ray Raphael about his latest book, The U.S. Constitution: Explained – Clause by Clause – For Every American Today. Ray argues that both sides are wrong about the 2nd Amendment, explains why there’s no such thing as an Constitutional Originalist, discusses whether or not the Constitution is outdated, and lots more.

Ray Raphael on the web

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Spy Schools: How Intelligence Services Have Infiltrated Higher Education

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Mike talks with Daniel Golden, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel Golden, author of Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities. They discuss how widespread spying is (a lot more widespread than Mike thought, that’s for sure), if schools that are recruiting more international students are more vulnerable, how Trump administration immigration policies are likely to affect spying in colleges and universities, and lots more.

Dan Golden on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

How Safe Is Your Food?

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Mike talks with Dan Flynn, Editor in Chief of Food Safety News about the Food Safety Modernization Act, whether FDA inspections are tough enough, if regulations are unfair to smaller farms, and the state of food safety regulation in the Trump administration.

Food Safety News on Twitter

We hope you’ll check out the sponsor of today’s show:
Blue Bottle Coffee. Hurry to bluebottlecoffee.com/TPG for $10 off your first coffee subscription order.

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Americans for Financial Reform

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Mike talks with Carter Dougherty, Communications Director of Americans for Financial Reform. They cover a lot of ground in their conversation, including:
– Congress overturning the CFPB’s arbitration rule
– the Equifax security breach
– the 2008 financial crisis & Dodd-Frank
– government bailouts
– prosecutors’ unwillingness to go after financial firms
– Wall Street’s influence in Washington

Americans for Financial Reform on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

MIT Professor Luis Perez-Breva on Innovation

Mike talks with Luis Perez-Breva, a successful serial innovator and director of the Innovation Teams Program at MIT. Dr. Perez-Breva holds degrees in Chemical Engineering, Physics, Business, and Artificial Intelligence. He’s an expert in the process of technology innovation, an entrepreneur, and the the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong. (MIT Press 2017).

Mike and Dr. Perez-Breva discuss:
– whether or not innovation is lagging
– if we should be concerned about AI taking millions of jobs
– whether 21st century companies are failing at job creation
– how innovation works
– what government can do to help innovation
– what government does that hinders innovation
– if government itself needs to be innovated

Follow Luis Perez-Breva on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.