WHOLE TRUTH WITH DAVID EISENHOWER, THE Season 3
#301: Ending Modern Slavery
Modern day sex trafficking and other forms of coerced labor not only persist in this country, and around the world, but are continuing to grow into one of the world’s largest and most lucrative businesses. The best chroniclers of this phenomenon conclude that there are more slaves today than at time in human history. What can be done?
Guests:
- Lisa Cohen, Senior Supervising Producer of CNN’s Freedom Project
- Bradley Myles, CEO of Polaris, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent modern-day slavery and human trafficking
- Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, actor/producer Ashton Kutcher’s international anti-human trafficking organization that works to address the sexual exploitation of children.
#302: American Workforce 2040
Since the Industrial Revolution the work of humanity has changed and changed again and it is clear that the 21st century will bring, is bringing already, another great wave of change, perhaps the greatest and fastest ever. What does our workforce look like today, what will it look like toward the middle of this century? What will work mean? Our panel explores issues including the proper target for workforce participation, potential ways to address decreases in workforce participation by non-college educated men, the potential costs and benefits on the workforce of the next wave of automation and artificial intelligence advancements and, more generally, the future of work in our country.
Guests:
- Anurag Harsh, author and Senior Vice President at Ziff Davis
- Alana Semuels, staff writer for The Atlantic
- Stephen Moore, the Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation
- Dr. Lane Kenworthy, Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought, University of California San Diego
#303: Overmedicated, Overdosed America: The Opioid Epidemic
With opioid overdose deaths now surpassing deaths from car accidents in the United States, it’s absolutely clear that this is a public health problem of great urgency. But what has caused the surge addiction and its consequences and what can be done about it? Our panel explores issues including the social, economic, and cultural context of the rapid increase in opioid abuse and related deaths, the medical aspects of substance abuse treatment and recovery, and public policy recommendations for a national response to these issues.
Guests:
- Dr. David Herzberg, Associate Professor of History at the University at Buffalo
- Dr. Michael Pantalon, Psychologist and Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine
- Dr. Bertha Madras, Professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School and member of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis
- Regina Marchetti, Certified Recovery Specialist at Crozer-Keystone Health System and a recovering addict.
#304: Healthcare: Beyond The Insurance Coverage Debate
Even without providing health insurance to all of our citizens, why does the American healthcare system still manage to spend so much more, two to three times more per person, than so many other advanced nations? And, even given all that spending, why are our health outcomes not better than these lesser spending nations? And, in some regards, why are they actually worse? Our panel explores issues including why healthcare in the United States costs so much more per capita than in other advanced countries, without achieving better outcomes (including discussing quality of care, and spending on super-consumers and end of life), and whether the coming digital/mobile advances in healthcare delivery can improve quality and reduce costs.
Guests:
- Jonathan Rothwell, Senior Economist at Gallup
- Dr. Thaddeus Pope, Director of the Health Law Institute at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law
- Dr. Bon Ku, Assistant Dean for Health & Design and Director of JeffDESIGN at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
#305: Alternative Energy Futures
So far, the debate about the future of energy seems locked in the past – a political and economic struggle between the fossil fuel industry and the renewables sector, especially solar power and wind power, which have already been offered as alternatives for decades. But what else may be out there, on the technological horizon, to give the world truly, new energy alternatives?
Guests:
- Howard Herzog, Senior Research Engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative
- Dr. Balakrishnan Nair, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Oscilla Power
- Dr. Jose Reyes, co-founder and Chief Technology Officers of NuScale Power
- Dr. Chris Case, Chief Technology Officer of Oxford Photovoltaics
#306: Is American Criminal Justice Just?
“The Talk” by African-American parents to their children, especially their young men, about dangerous interactions they may well experience with police is a rite of passage with which even the first African-American President of the United States, and the only currently serving African-American Republican United States senator, are personally familiar. Still, most Americans hold judges, prosecutors, and especially police, in high esteem for the great sacrifices they often make to protect and serve our communities. Can we find a path forward in which a broad majority of Americans, including Americans belonging to racial or ethnic minorities, can believe that American criminal justice is, in fact, just?
Guests:
- Tara Setmayer, CNN Political Commentator, ABC News Political Contributor and former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill
- Paul Butler, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and Harvard Law School, and author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men
- Rick Jones, President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Executive Director, and founding member, of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
#307: Identity Politics: Embracing Diversity or Creating A House Divided Against Itself? I
One of the longest standing mottos for the United States is E Pluribus Unum – from many, one. It’s long been thought to mean much more than the formal and legalistic concept of a union of states – it’s been thought to mean a uniting into a civil society of peoples of many kinds. And indeed, it’s indisputable that the American people are of many kinds. But today many speak of a new age of American tribalism. On both the left and the right, in different ways, there is both the feeding of, and feeding on, differences and divisions among groups of Americans. Are politics highlighting differences among Americans a sign of progress – ferreting out historical wrongs and establishing protection for new expressions of rights – or are we becoming once more, as we were in the lead-up to the most terrible civil war experienced in modern times in a Western nation, what Lincoln called “a house divided against itself”?
Guests:
- Michael Arceneaux, a Houston-bred, Howard University-educated writer and author who covers issues related to culture, religion and racial politics
- Andrew Sullivan, an English-born American author, political commentator and former editor of the conservative publication The New Republic
#308: Is The Bear Back in The Wood, And How Should The Eagle Respond?
The 1980’s presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan burned into the American consciousness an image of our country’s relationship with Russia – the image of the need for strength and vigilance against a scary “bear in the woods.” With the fall of the Soviet Union, many thought the bear was gone, but since the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, concern about the expansion of Russian power and influence in the world – from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to hybrid warfare in Ukraine to cyber-attacks on the electoral systems of the Western democracies – has returned in many quarters. Is the bear back in the woods and, if so, what is to be done about it?
Guests:
- Dr. Stephen Kotkin, historian and Director of the Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University
- Dr. Alina Polyakova, Fellow at the Brookings Institution
- Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, a former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation
#309: Ending Absolute Poverty: Small Things With Big Impacts
In 2016, for the first time in history, the portion of humanity living in extreme poverty was reduced to less than 10%. Now the world, through the UN, has set a goal of abolishing absolute poverty by 2030. Can it be done? Our panel of thought leaders discuss the ways in which they are each working on disruptive technologies which may have the potential to significantly ameliorate some of the world’s great challenges, including water scarcity, energy poverty, sanitation, the need for improved yet sustainable agricultural yields, and workforce readiness.
Guests:
- Dr. Charles Yarish, a globally renowned seaweed expert and professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Connecticut
- Dr. Cody Friesen, co-founder and CEO of Zero Mass Water
- Ali Jaffer, Global COO of Generation
- Dr. Sasha Kramer, co-founder and Executive Director of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL)