Our Final Swing State Episode: How We Rebuild Our Economy
Swing State
With many millions out of work and so much uncertainty around basic questions of health, housing, money for food, the future of businesses and jobs, we wanted to look straight at the US economy in the midst of pandemic and political instability.
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The Final Push: Trump, Biden and The Media
Swing State
We have two leading lights from the newsroom: Margaret Sullivan is media columnist for the Washington Post, former public editor at the New York Times, and author of "Ghosting the News." Bina Venkataraman is editorial page editor at the Boston Globe, a science policy maven out of Harvard and MIT, author of "The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age." We pulled them out of the news torrent to talk 2020, the loss of local news, and how to fix our information ecosystem as they hunker down.
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Why Are We Ignoring The Big One? Climate Migration
Swing State
The 2020 election campaign season is fraught with unrelenting drama and we lose track of the scale of what's really upon us. Beyond masks and death rates, the pandemic, the high court, the economy, democracy, fear of fascism, and all the rest there looms the Big One, our climate, and how the hammer of climate change will dramatically change our lives. New York Times and ProPublica journalist, Abrahm Lustgarten, does soften the blow. Clear facts and smart insight you won't want to miss.
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Are Americans Even Listening To Each Other Anymore?
Swing State
Is there a better way to do journalism than Americans are seeing, hearing, and reading right now? Heidi and Tom dive in with John Gable who set out almost a decade ago to help news consumers get out of their information bubbles and see the world afresh with his website allsides.com. But is there a way to cover these times with a straight face when the President doesn't tell the truth? How do journalists cover this moment in a time of social media disinformation and deep polarization?
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Longtime GOP Strategist Stuart Stevens Games Out 2020 and Says It Was All A Lie
Swing State
Republican super-strategist Stuart Stevens knows the home stretch to presidential elections like very few others. He’s been at the heart of Republican campaigns for decades – for big-name governors, senators, Republican presidents, and contenders: George W. Bush, John McCain, Bob Dole, and top strategist for Mitt Romney in 2012. In his new book, “It Was All a Lie”, Stevens is tough on himself and the GOP. The next 50 days, he told us, will be the most dangerous for this country since the Civil War.
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The Stakes Are High. Letters From An American.
Swing State
It's been quite an August, for the country and host Tom Ashbrook who lost his beloved dad. Heid and Tom promised they'd be back and take us to November 3 and Election Day. The big issues have put our whole country in a "Swing State" – life and death with Covid-19 and the life and death of democracy on the table. From her home up in Maine, Heather Cox Richardson has been interpreting every twist and turn of this country's election year journey. Don't miss this frank conversation.
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Bob Dylan's Art of Conversation: Should We Demand More From Dylan and Boomers Right Now?
Swing State
Bob Dylan was the protest icon of a generation. “The times they are a-changing,” sang Bob Dylan and “a hard rains’ gonna fall.” Now, those 1960s protests are deep in the rearview mirror. A new generation is in the streets, with demands for a racial, cultural, gender, economic and structural accounting that might make Dylan look tame. At 79, with a new studio album, his first in years, we explore Dylan’s music, tenderness and anti-establishment voice with UMass Lowell's American Cultural Historian, Professor Michael Millner, and Yale’s American Religious Studies Professor...
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A Watershed Moment: Dr. Andre Perry on How We Make Substantive Structural Changes To End Inequality
Swing State
Know Your Price, Dr. Andre Perry's dynamic new book, offers concrete policy solutions that lift up Black communities and asks us to invest in Black people as he defines six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued. A fellow at the non-partisan Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., Dr. Perry has long studied economic models around housing devaluation which leads to substandard education and substandard infrastructure in Black communities. In this incredibly useful interview, he offers ideas that stop blaming Black people and instead asks Americans to use this...
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The Risk of The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Swing State
At the same time as protests erupted across American cities and the world demanding racial equity, the cities have become dystopian scenes of military hold. Gen. James Mattis now warns of division from the very top as a threat to American democracy. Many protests began peacefully until the nefarious, often violent, opportunists arrived. Who are they and who is inciting the violence? Are they opportunists, provocateurs of different ideologies, white supremacists, anarchists? University of Chicago Professor Kathleen Belew has tracked the contemporary rise of the White Power Movement from...
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What Do We Tell the Kids? And How – and When – Do We Get Them Back to School?
Swing State
The country is in crisis. Riots, protest, police brutality, pandemic. What do we tell our kids to help them understand? And how do we get them educated in our time of Covid-19? When and how do they go back to school? We reached out to leading educator Dr. Jennifer Price. She knows the public school world, the private school world, and how children's lives and educations are being pummeled by pandemic and upheaval. Don't duck the issues, she says. Talk about everything. And be ready for almost anything when it comes to the new face of education in Covid time. Jen Price walks us through...
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