Category: Interviews

What We’ve Learned About Fake News

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Mike talks with Jason Reifler, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, about his research into fake news. They discuss Dr. Reifler’s recent paper on the topic (‘Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign‘), whether fact checking helps combat fake news, if this is a Trump-specific phenomena or part of a broader and even more disturbing trend, and lots more.

Follow Jason Reifler on Twitter

Episode Links
– Politifact
– Factcheck.org
– Snopes
– Craig Silverman

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Reforming an Unresponsive Political System

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Mike talks with Jim Jonas, a founding director of the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers and co-founder of Colorado Independent Voters. Jim is an experienced political, public affairs and corporate communication consultant based in Denver, Colorado. For the last decade he’s helped create and manage a wide variety of entrepreneurial, disruptive political organizations and campaigns to promote independent/nonpartisan causes and candidates. He was a co-founder of Unity ’08, a consultant to Americans Elect, and the campaign manager to Greg Orman’s independent campaign for the US Senate in Kansas in 2014. Jim got his start in politics writing and producing political media for consulting legend Roger Ailes in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC. He also served as Senator Lamar Alexander’s communications director for his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in 1996.

Mike and Jim discuss whether political elites have too much power, the barriers both major parties have set up to reform, how reform can happen, and what listeners can do to help the cause of nonpartisan reform.

Jim Jonas on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution

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Mike talks with Ganesh Sitaraman, a professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He’s a longtime advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren, serving as her policy director and senior counsel. Professor Sitaraman has commented on foreign and domestic policy in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, and The Christian Science Monitor and is the author of The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars, which won the 2013 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and, most recently, The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution: Why Income Inequality Threatens Our Republic.

In this episode, Mike and Professor Sitaraman discuss ‘class warfare’ vs ‘middle class’ constitutions, the radicalism of the Founders, why income inequality wasn’t a big problem in 18th century America, the reasons for increased economic inequality over the past 40 years, and lots more!

Ganesh Sitaraman on Twitter

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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

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.

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.