Downstairs at the White House (0:38)

Guest: Donald Stinson, Author, “Downstairs at the White House”

Media outlets these days have entire teams dedicated to sniffing out the intrigue going on inside the White House: Who’s meeting with whom. Who’s feuding with whom. And every one who leaves a job inside the eventually writes a tell-all memoir, but I’ve never read one quite like Donald Stinson’s. In 1973, when he was 17 years old, Stinson talked his way into a series of low-level jobs making copies and delivering mail in the White House. He wasn’t important, but he met lots of important people – often by loitering outside the Oval Office, which did not amuse the Secret Service. In the end, Don Stinson got himself a front row seat to the most momentous political events of the time, including the resignation of President Nixon. (Originally aired: 4/16/2018)

 

A New Way to Counter the Generic Drug Shortage (27:39)

Guest: Dan Liljenquist, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Intermountain Healthcare, Board Chair of Civica Rx

While the coronavirus dominates public health concerns in America right now, there are patients all across the country with serious conditions that are not new or mysterious who are struggling to get the medicine they need. Virtually every hospital in the US has had to delay surgery or come up with a treatment workaround because of chronic drug shortages. Most of the time these are generic drugs, so, you’d think they’d be plentiful and cheap. A group of about 750 hospitals decided they’d had enough of those shortages and formed a nonprofit drug manufacturer to be their supplier. (Originally aired 8/21/19)

 

Artificial Music and Google Magenta (50:40)

Guest: Douglas Eck, PhD, Principal Scientist, Google, Creator of the Google Magenta Project

Could a computer listen to so much music that it learns how to compose its own – and do it even better than humans? Google has a research project called Magenta that’s been working on this for years. (Originally aired 10/30/2018)

 

Getting More Women on the Force (1:08:28)

Guest: Ivonne Roman, Police Captain, Newark, New Jersey, National Institute of Justice LEADS Scholar, Cofounder of the Women’s Leadership Academy

There’s a nationwide push to add more women to the ranks of law enforcement. Currently they make up less than 13 percent of police officers in the US and an even smaller percentage of law enforcement leadership. It’s not that women are less capable of policing. Study after study has shown policewomen are actually better at communicating and defusing potentially violent confrontations. So why aren’t there more women on the force? The problem starts with police academy, says Ivonne Roman. She’s been a cop in New Jersey for 25 years. And she’s co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Academy to close the gender gap in policing. (Originally aired 9/4/2019)

 

What if All Our Digital Data Had Expiration Dates? The Case for More Forgetting (1:23:48)

Guest: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford University, Author of “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” 

When was the last time you wished your memory was worse? I don’t think that’s even a thing. Mainly we’re just trying to keep a handle on the stuff we do need to remember. But Viktor Mayer-Schonberger thinks we’d be better off if we did forget more. Specifically, he argues that our digital memory needs a purge. (Originally aired 9/9/2019)