In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the battle between privacy versus public safety has become ever more relevant. Law enforcement agencies maintain that the same encryption you use on your cell phone to keep your private information safe has become a tool for criminals and terrorists.
Scripps News and the Toronto Star teamed up over the past several months, investigating how law enforcement is losing the war over access to information they need to solve crimes. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, we go inside the battle between those who say law enforcement needs access to private information and those who argue encryption is essential for privacy.

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At this point, the Washington federal budget cycle is pretty well established. A stalemated federal government leads to the predictable standoff. Cue the shutdown clocks on cable news, ignore the threats lobbed between members of Congress and await the prospect of “closed’ signs at federal agencies and national parks.
On the latest DecodeDC podcast, we take a look at the federal budget and try to answer the question: what’s broken about the federal budget – the process or the politicians?

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The Electoral College - it's something we have to deal with during every presidential election. But should we? This week on the podcast, we look at how and why the Electoral College system came to be.
We also talk with Dr. John Koza, chairman of the National Popular Vote, a movement dedicated to changing the presidential election process entirely. If his group succeeds, our system of voting for president could be completely different by 2020.
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this episode, we said a candidate must get a majority of a state's popular vote in order to win that state's electoral vote. The candidate need only win a plurality in the state's popular vote. Thanks to listener Liz Norell for pointing out our mistake.

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Capitol Hill can be horrifying…
On this bonus episode of DecodeDC, we focus on the spookier aspects of Capitol Hill during a ghost tour with ScaryDC. Long-dead Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase comes back to walk us through the stories of haunted architects, spectral spies, and General Logan’s stuffed horse.

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Things are pretty weird in the House of Representatives right now. Paul Ryan was just chosen to be the next speaker of the House, a position he never wanted, after a fractured Republican Party united behind him.
Republicans have the largest majority of seats in the House since 1920, so it should be a golden time to move their agenda forward. Instead, it's been pretty miserable.
Lots of fingers are pointing to the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 of the most conservative members of the House.
This week on the podcast, we decode the Freedom Caucus—who they are, what they want and how the rest of the Republican conference, including newly elected Speaker Paul Ryan, plans to deal with them.

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It’s a bizarre question at first: Is our capacity for meaningful, soul-nourishing conversation something that can go away? Sherry Turkle, professor of psychology at MIT, and author of “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age”, says yes, emphatically.
On this episode of DecodeDC, Dick Meyer has a long conversation with Turkle about conversation - and then invited the newsroom to join. Spoiler alert: We’re all at risk of becoming device-addicted, never-present techno-dweebs if we don’t wise up fast.

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If it seems impossible to talk about poverty in the U.S. without talking about race and culture, that's thanks in large part to one man: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In 1965, Moynihan wrote a government memo that changed the way we think about poverty. In this episode, writers Peter-Christian Aigner and Stephanie Coontz weigh in on the report's legacy, and Moynihan's intentions.

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Nestled in the woods just outside of Boston sits the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center. The base does research on the necessities soldiers need on the frontline, such as clothing, shoes, body armor and food.
Part of Natick’s mandate is to get the food science it uses in producing military combat rations onto grocery store shelves and into your kitchen. That’s what Anastascia Marx de Salcedo writes about in her new book, “Combat Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat.”
On the latest podcast, we sit down with de Salcedo to discuss the military’s massive influence on the American diet and its ultimate goal of creating a nation that is in a constant state of preparedness for the next war.

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DecodeDC reporter Miranda Green and producer Eric Krupke recently took a trip to the frontlines of the 2016 battlefield -- a rally for Sanders in North Carolina and one for Trump in Texas. And what they learned was surprising. While visibly different on the surface, the events had one clear similarity: supporters, on both sides of the political spectrum, with a deep fear of big money in politics.
On this week’s podcast, Green and Krupke take you to the rallies and let you hear from the supporters. You’ll also hear from Robert Litan, a former Brookings Institution Senior Fellow, about what’s behind these candidates’ popularity -- and how the unexpected similarities in their support boil down to one thing: Citizens United.

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Less than 24 hours after touching down on U.S. soil for the very first time, Pope Francis made quite clear his stance on issues such as immigration and climate change.
Confronting major global disputes with forceful words is nothing new for Pope Francis. He has used the worldwide papacy platform to speak out on issues both inside and outside the church.
But according to David Gibson, a national reporter for the Religion News Service, the challenge lies in transforming the pope’s words into global action: “The question is — as always in politics, frankly — how do you translate that into a mandate? How do you translate that into policy? How do you make actual changes?”
On our latest podcast, Gibson guides us through a history of papal influence around the world, decoding just how far the Vatican and pope can reach into the political life of a nation and actually impact policy and politics.

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