ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with Devin Fergus (@devin_fergus), the Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies, at the University of Missouri, about his new book, '"Land of the Fee: The Decline of the Middle Class and the Making of the New World Financial Order". "Consumer financial fees have helped to choke off dreams of the middle class and middle class aspirants alike," argues Fergus (History and Black Studies/Univ. of Missouri; Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980, 2009, etc.). In particular, Fergus investigates several common financial transactions that he contends involve hidden or excessive fees so egregious that they are damaging the economic well-being of Americans, including subprime mortgages, student loans, and payday lending. The damage these forms of borrowing have done to American households during and after the Great Recession is already well-known. Fergus traces in detail the discouraging story of congressional inaction by both political parties that has permitted lenders to sidestep usury laws as they burden unsophisticated borrowers with excessive interest and charges like origination fees and prepayment penalties.

@claudiacragg speaks here with @DarrWest about why he thinks Americans are so angry with each other, about the economy, about the Middle East versus isolationism, about gender rights, and just about everything. He even has an answer why some quarters in the US are right now racing towards a possibly apocalyptic war with Iran.  West argues in his book, '' that he United States is caught in a partisan hyper-conflict that divides politicians, communities—and even, or perhaps especially, families. Politicians from the president to state and local office-holders play to strongly-held beliefs and sometimes even pour fuel on the resulting inferno. This polarization has become so intense that many people no longer trust anyone from a differing perspective and the division is likely to play a large part in the 2020 election.  Drawing on his personal story of growing up as a fundamentalist Christian on a dairy farm in rural Ohio, then as an academic in the heart of the liberal East Coast establishment, Darrell West analyzes the economic, cultural, and political aspects of polarization. He takes advantage of his experiences inside both conservative and liberal camps to explain the views of each side and offer insights into why each is angry with the other. West argues that societal tensions have metastasized into a dangerous tribalism that seriously threatens U.S. democracy. Unless people can bridge these divisions and forge a new path forward, it will be impossible to work together, maintain a functioning democracy, and solve the country's pressing policy problems.

For this episode, Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks with Anne Nelson (@anelsona), about her new book. Shadow Network:Media, Money, and The Secret Hub of the Radical Right. An award-winning author and media analyst, Nelson chronicles the astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today.

Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with Dr Jacob M Appel, about his newest book, #WhoSaysYoureDead Medical & Ethical Dilemmas for the Curious & Concerned from @AlgonquinBooks Appel presents an invigorating way to think about vital health and ethical issues that many will confront as individuals, or we as a society must reckon with together. Drawing upon the author's two decades teaching medical ethics, as well as his work as a practicing psychiatrist, this profound and addictive little book offers up challenging ethical dilemmas and asks readers, What would you do? Appel is an author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia. Appel's novel The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up won the Dundee International Book Prize in 2012. He teaches bioethics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry and a member of the Institutional Review Board. He is also an attending psychiatrist in the Mount Sinai Healthcare System. He holds a medical degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and a master's in bioethics from the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany Medical College. A frequent lecturer, his essays and columns relating to bioethics have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post, and Education Update. Dr. Appel has also published novels and prize-winning short stories.

Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with , David Farber about his shattering account of the crack cocaine years, Crack. Please send any comments or questions or ideas for future shows to @ClaudiaCragg. This book from the award-winning American historian, tells the story of the young men who bet their lives on the rewards of selling 'rock' cocaine, the people who gave themselves over to the crack pipe, and the often-merciless authorities who incarcerated legions of African Americans caught in the crack cocaine underworld. Based on interviews, archival research, judicial records, underground videos, and prison memoirs, Crack explains why, in a de-industrializing America in which market forces ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated, the crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the 'Horatio Alger boys' of their place and time. These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic globalization. Hip Hop artists often celebrated their exploits but overwhelmingly, Americans - across racial lines -did not. Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late twentieth-century capitalism.

Pete Singer, The Life You Can Save, and many are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the publication (originally published 3rd December 2009) and the global initiative which it launched. He is also the author of the iconic book on Animal Liberation. This book is available FREE as a download (at https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/) to all listeners as he mentions in the piece. He says "this is to 'reach the most readers/listeners and help the most people who live in poverty." Singer believes that the end of global poverty is in our reach. THE LIFE YOU CAN SAVE gives concrete directives about what all of us should and can do to help bring that end more quickly. Since the book's 2009 first-edition release, dramatic progress has been made in reducing extreme global poverty, and the book and organization have contributed to that effort by helping raise millions of dollars for effective charities. However, millions of people across the world still live in abject poverty, so much work has yet to be done. Widely considered to be one of the most influential living philosophers, Singer was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2005, and in 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age included him among the most influential Australians of the past half-century. Among the 50 books he's co-authored, edited, or co-edited, is Animal Liberation, considered the "bible" of the animal rights movement. He is the founder of the non-profit The Life You Can Save.

Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) takes up a discussion with Lydia Pyne (@LydiaPyne), historian, about whether or not an authentic Andy Warhol painting needs to be painted by Andy Warhol? And should we be outraged that some of those famous scenes in Blue Planet were filmed in a lab? Who are the scientists putting ever-more improbable flavors in our Jelly Belly beans? Welcome to the world of "genuine fakes"--the curious objects that fall in between things that are real and things that are not. Unsurprisingly, the world is full of genuine fakes that defy simple categorization. Whether or not we think that those things are authentic is a matter of perspective. In Genuine Fakes, Lydia Pyne explores how the authenticity of eight genuine fakes depends on their unique combinations of history, science and culture. The stories of art forgeries, fake fossils, nature documentaries, synthetic flavors, museum exhibits, Maya codices and Paleolithic replicas shows that genuine fakes are complicated and change over time. Drawing from historical archives, interviews, museum exhibits, science fiction as well as her own research, Pyne brings each genuine fake to life through unexpected and often outrageous stories. Can people move past assuming that a diamond grown in a lab is a fake? What happens when a forged painting or manuscript becomes more valuable than its original? Genuine Fakes will make readers think about all the unreal things that they encounter in their daily lives and why they invoke the reactions--surprise, wonder, understanding or annoyance--that they do.

Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here for ChatChat with Richard Cahan (@Picturetweeter) about the book he has put together with Mark Jacob and Michael Williams, Aftershock:The Human Toll of War. Richard Cahan is the author of 12 books including an acclaimed history of the federal court in Chicago, A Court That Shaped America. He served as the picture editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and is currently an independent scholar at the Newberry Library in Chicago. The world was in ruin at the end of #WorldWarII: from the #Blitz in London to the atomic bomb blasts in #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki. A small group of Army soldiers witnessed it all. They photographed Germany's last push, the Battle of the Bulge, and they rode into Germany to witness unimagined destruction. They documented the Burma Road, which opened Mainland China to supplies, and saw war atrocities as far away as the Philippines. These soldier photographers are acclaimed for their war photographs, but their work showing the impact of total war has never been compiled in a book. As towns fell and the result of years of war were being laid bare, the world began to comprehend the impact of the war. Ruined cities were unearthed. The gates of concentration camps were flung open. Former prisoners, captured soldiers, and desperate refugees scoured the landscape for food and shelter. These GIs used cameras instead of guns, witnessing and capturing the loss and destruction on film. Their work is a remarkable record of pictures that is now housed at the National Archives. The photos they left behind are beautiful and brutal: cemeteries and churches. POWs and DPs. Surrenders and suicides. Liberators and prisoners. Many of the photos have never before been seen. None have been seen like this―scanned directly from original negatives for this book. Aftershock is a permanent record that shows what these soldiers saw. And it tells the story of these young photographers, whose lives were changed forever because of 1945.

Kindly consider taking part in a short survey on this podcast (on THIS CLICKABLE LINK). Your feedback would be greatly appreciated. Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with psychologist Dr Doreen Dodgen-Magee (@drdoreendm) about her new book, 'Deviced!'. With current statistics suggesting that the average American over the age of 14 engages with screens upwards of 10 hours a day, the topic of our growing dependence upon technology applies to nearly everyone. While the effects differ at each point of development, real changes to the brain, relationships, and personal lives are well documented. Deviced! explores these alterations and offers a realistic look at how we can better use technology and break away from the bad habits we've formed. Dodgen-Magee makes a detail-rich, persuasive case for the need to embrace technology yet also "make some conscious decisions about what place we want technology to hold in our lives." The dilemma, as she explains it, is that people feel "gratitude for the ways that technology benefits society" but "many are experiencing niggling questions about how a near-constant engagement with devices" affects everyday life. The concerns range from losing touch with the physical senses and having "no sense of our larger environs" to obesity and social isolation. "Take Action" sidebars throughout the book offer suggestions for modifying behavior, along with strong reasons for doing so. People's lives are changing irrevocably and unintentionally, Dodgen-Magee points out; increased interaction with one's device encourages a blinkered perspective as users merely "reflect [their] own little worlds back to [themselves]." The overall message Dodgen-Magee strongly presents is the necessity of moving toward "intention" regarding one's use of devices and technology. A five-component assessment tool will help users understand their "tech engagement and impact" and then develop appropriate "delay skills." Dodgen-Magee leaves readers with a "Ten (RICH) Minutes a Day" exercise, useful in its simplicity, grounded in meditation, and firmly directed toward "emotional well-being." This educational, encouraging book leaves its audience with a plethora of helpful suggestions. Using personal stories, cutting edge research, and anecdotes from youth, parents, and professionals, Dodgen-Magee highlights the brain changes that result from excessive technology use and offers an approach to the digital world that enables more informed and lasting change and a healthier long-term perspective. Given that the reader is living within a culture of ever-changing and advancing technologies, Deviced! offers a mindful approach to assessing current technology use, breaking bad habits, setting new norms, and re-engaging with life with renewed richness and awareness.

Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with Robert Kuttner (@rkuttnerwrites) whose latest book is The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy. Some of those interviewed in this long-running series are in such high demand that time in discussion is sorely limited. Recently, one such has been Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. In 'The Stakes....', Kuttner argues that the 2020 presidential election will determine the very survival of American democracy. To restore popular faith in government―and win the election― Kuttner believes that Democrats need to nominate and elect an economic progressive. The Stakes explains how the failure of the economy to serve ordinary Americans opened the door to a demagogic president, but also how democracy can still be taken back from Donald Trump. Either the United States continues the long slide into the arms of the bankers and corporate interests and the disaffection of working Americans―the course set in the past half century by Republican and Democratic presidents alike―or a progressive Democrat is elected in the mold of FDR. At stake is nothing less than the continued success of the American experiment in liberal democracy. That success is dependent on a fairer distribution of income, wealth, and life changes ―and a reduction in the political influence of financial elites over both parties. The decay of democracy and economic fairness began long before Trump. The American republic is in need of a massive overhaul. It will take not just a resounding Democratic victory in 2020 but a progressive victory to pull back from the brink of autocracy. The Stakes demonstrates how a progressive Democrat has a better chance than a centrist of winning the presidency, and how only this outcome can begin the renewal of the economy and our democracy. The American Prospect is "devoted to promoting informed discussion on public policy from a progressive perspective. In print quarterly and online daily, the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary to create good legislation. (They) help to dispel myths, challenge conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue." We are delighted to run this interview here even though it was curtailed by sheer pressure of those in a long long queue wanting to pick Kuttner's brains to promote a winning outcome in 2020. We were lucky to get to speak to him at all. Kuttner also writes for HuffPost, The Boston Globe, and The New York Review of Books.