This is Democracy

Jeremi and Lieutenant Richard Mack discuss what it’s like for those who work in the front lines responding to and helping citizens in dealing with this current pandemic Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Silence and Sound.” Richard Mack is a lieutenant in the New York Police Department, where he has served for almost twenty-five years. He is currently a Platoon Commander in the Strategic Response Group for the New York Police Department. Richard is also an adjunct professor at John Jay College in New York.

Jeremi sits down with Dr. Paul von Hippel to talk about education equality in the strange online reality we currently live in. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Hologram Semester.” Dr. Paul von Hippel is an associate professor of public policy, sociology, statistics and data science at the University of Texas at Austin, best known for his work on summer learning, summer weight gain, research design, and missing data. He works on evidence-based policy, education and inequality, and the obesity epidemic. Before his academic career, he worked as both a church music director and a data scientist, using predictive analytics to help banks prevent fraud. Currently, he is trying to pick up jazz piano. Paul recently published an important article in Education Next:  https://www.educationnext.org/how-will-coronavirus-crisis-affect-childrens-learning-unequally-covid-19/

Jeremi and Zachary have a chat on the web with Neta Crawford and Catherine Lutz about the government’s response to Covid-19 pandemic. What are the effects and repercussions of treating the coronavirus like a war enemy to generate awareness, collect responsibility and resources to fight the ongoing pandemic? Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Carpet Bombing Disease.” Neta C. Crawford is Professor and Chair of Political Science, Boston University. She is the author of numerous books, including: Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Argument and Change in World Politics (2002). Neta has written more than two dozen peer reviewed articles on issues of war and peace.2. Catherine Lutz is the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Lutz is the author of numerous books, including: War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (ed. with A. Mazzarino, 2019), The Bases of Empire (ed., 2009), and Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (2001). Catherine and Neta are co-directors of the “Costs of War” project at Brown University. They recently published: “Fighting a Virus with the Wrong Tool,” The Hill, 28 March 2020.

Jeremi and Zachary have a chat on the web with Dr. Miha Vindis and Lance McNeill about crowdsourcing. What are the positives and negatives of the power to raise funds through social media at lightning speed? Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “The Pockets of the People.” Miha Vindis is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on leadership and entrepreneurship. When not teaching, Miha works as a consultant helping organizations create and implement strategic planning processes and train their next generation of leaders. He also serves as a board member for Habitat for Humanity Texas. Prior to moving to Texas, Miha worked for Shell Oil in The Netherlands and also worked with entrepreneurs in Europe, a passion which he has continued in Texas. He is originally from Slovenia and has lived in Thailand, Germany, Poland, and The Netherlands. Miha earned his master’s degree in Global Policy Studies and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Lance McNeill is a Program Manager with the City of Austin’s Small Business Program. In this role, he coaches and teaches small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. He also oversees the City of Austin’s Challenge Studio Program, which incubates social entrepreneurs working toward solutions to local and regional challenges. Lance was born and raised in Austin, Texas. After graduating from Texas State with a MBA, he joined the Peace Corps and worked as a small business adviser in Namibia where he taught entrepreneurship at a rural secondary school and consulted small businesses in the community. After coming back to the U.S, he attended the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Jeremi sits down with Adam Tooze to discuss the affects of Coronavirus on the global and U.S. economy. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Fallen.” Adam Tooze is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University. He is a leading economic historian and expert on the contemporary global economy. He is the author of numerous prize-winning book: Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (2001), Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2006), The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931  (2014), and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018). Tooze frequently comments on current affairs for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. You can follow him on Twitter: @adam_tooze.

Jeremi sits down with Deborah Grayson Riegel to discuss our varying relationships with humor and how humor helps us in tragedy. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “The Ones Who Live.” Deborah Grayson Riegel is an executive coach, speaker, instructor, and writer who helps leaders and teams communicate and present more effectively. She has served as an instructor of Management Communication at Wharton Business School and also worked as a Visiting Professor of Executive Communications at the Beijing International MBA Program at Peking University, China. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Stuyvesant High School. Deborah’s clients range from the American Bar Association, American Express, Bloomberg, and Kraft Foods to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Pfizer and the United States Army. She has been a featured expert and a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Inc., and The New York Times. Deborah is the co-author with her teenage daughter Sophie of Overcoming Overthinking: 36 Ways to Tame Anxiety for Work, School, and Life. She and her husband Michael, also an executive coach, live in New York with their rescue dog, Nash.

Zachary and Jeremi sit down to discuss the current and future economic impacts of the novel coronavirus. Zachary kicks it off with his original poem, “The Pestilence Depression.”

Recording live from the Suri household in Austin, TX on Monday, March 16 to discuss what history may teach us about how to handle the COVID-19 outbreak in a responsible, humane way. Poetry by Zachary, “Invisible Fires.”

Professor Paul Stekler holds the Wofford Denius Chair in Entertainment Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a nationally recognized documentary filmmaker whose critically praised and award-winning work includes George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire; Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style; Vote for Me: Politics in America, a four-hour PBS special about grassroots electoral politics; two segments of the Eyes on the Prize II series on the history of civil rights; Last Stand at Little Big Horn (broadcast as part of PBS’s series The American Experience); Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics (broadcast on PBS’s P.O.V. series); Getting Back to Abnormal (which aired on P.O.V. in 2014); and 2016’s Postcards from the Great Divide, a web series about politics for The Washington Post and PBS Digital. Overall, his films have won two George Foster Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards, three national Emmy Awards, and a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jeremi chats over the phone with Professor Clark Miller to discuss transitions on a global scale to sustainable energy and the numerous, diverse challenges that come with such a task. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Eulogy.” Clark Miller is the Director of the Center for Energy and Society at Arizona State University and a Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He also leads the sustainability team at the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies photovoltaics engineering research center. For the past decade, his research has explored the human dimensions of large-scale transitions in the energy sector and the potential for leveraging energy transitions to improve human futures. His most recent book, The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, is free to download as an e-book from the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination. His other books include Designing Knowledge, a guide for organizations who want to better create and use knowledge in decision-making; Science and Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond; The Practices of Global Ethics; and Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance.