Should the CDC be independent? 

Professor Dorit Reiss of U.C. Hastings Law explains two recent Supreme Court decisions and their practical implications on President Biden's vaccine mandates. She also explains the history behind America’s vaccines laws. For example, do we have federal vaccine laws? Does the federal government have the power to set working conditions for its own employees? Why is it that the CDC seems to have less power than many other federal agencies, such as the FDA? Are there benefits to our system of state-level vaccine laws? Can you sue someone for giving you Covid? Or should we deny health insurance coverage for people who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks? Professor Reiss's current research and activities focus on legal and policy issues related to vaccines. She has written extensively about vaccines mandates, policy responses to non-vaccinating, tort issues and administrative issues related to vaccines, and the anti-vaccine movement. 

To learn more about Professor Reiss and her work, visit her academic homepage. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our country's vaccine laws. 

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Are Ukrainians and Russians One People? Mr. Putin certainly claims so. In this episode, Ms. Catherine Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at PennState University, sets out to answer this complex question by exploring Ukraine's and Russia's shared histories, as well as their similar languages and religions. 

Professor Wanner has devoted her career to the study of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and has published extensively on this subject. Her most recent book is Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Amazon link). Examples of her previous books include State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Amazon link) and Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Amazon). To learn more about Prof. Wanner and her work, please visit her academic homepage. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about Ukraine's national identity.

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Prof. Agahi was working with opioid users from the very beginning of the crisis. In this episode, she tells the story of how America's opioid problem became a pandemic!  

Prof. Agahi tells us about "chasing the white dragon", a term she digs into and defines it in the context of overdose, which is the leading cause of death and injury in the U.S. She speaks about who is to blame, how should addicts be treated (wholistic approach), suicide prevention, harm reduction, and compares the opioid pandemic death tolls against other major U.S. killers, such as diabetes. Thankfully, she concludes with a message of hope - that 60-70% of overdose patients fully recover and lead highly productive lives. 

Professor Agahi of the University of Massachusetts Global, School of Social Work, has over 20 years of expertise in alcohol and drug prevention and treatment, as well as suicide prevention and treatment - a subject she feels quite passionately about. She received her doctorate from the University of Southern California, School of Social Work, and holds dual Masters in Public Health and Social Work. To learn more about her work, including her long list of presentations and publications, visit her academic homepage. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our opioid crisis. 

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"Old Man Get Out!" With personal stories and professional analysis, Prof. Tutumlu takes us through the history of her homeland, the aspirations of its people and their dashed hopes, and the deep-rooted causes for this month's widespread uprising.  

Kazakhstan is a resource-rich country with a very low population density. It has successfully attracted consortiums of large international corporations and diligently polished its business-friendly image abroad. So by all indications, Kazakhs should enjoy high living standards. Unfortunately, the realities of life in Kazakhstan are starkly different than the country's potentials otherwise suggest. The overwhelming majority of wealth and power is held by a few. And Kazakhstan's former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who led the country from its independence from Soviet rule for some 30 years, still wields considerable power from behind the scenes. As for Russian troops, they were deployed to Kazakhstan not to ensure stability and peace for Kazakh people and businesses. Rather, President Putin sent them there to ensure the security of a friendly oligarchy within the sphere of its influence.  

Professor Assel Tutumlu, Near East University, has written extensively about Kazakhstan. Click this link to access some of her publications and read highlights of this podcast conversation. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about Kazakhstan.  

Adel

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Prof. Shermer tells us how student loans were designed as a financial product, rather than a guarantee for higher education. This history, she explains, has made all the financial difference to students, their families and our country, and has created the current crisis.     

As of the production of this podcast episode, America's student debt burden stood at $1.73 trillion! Do the math, and you'll note that this figure is not an insignificant percentage of our GDP. While this debt keeps on climbing, no one in government is really rushing to fix the problem. And here is something intriguing: this is a decades-old problem. That's right! As Professor Shermer tells it, complaints about student debts were voiced as far back as 50 years ago. As the complaints became more vocal in the 1990s, the Clinton Administration almost embarked on major changes to our student debt system. But as politics go, it was not to be! Blazing voices of students during the Occupy Movement in the Great Recession brought national news coverage to the debt crisis. Regardless, student debt and its burden have continued climbing unabated.     

Professor Elizabeth T. Shermer, Loyola University Chicago, is the author of Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (also available on Amazon). In this episode, she explains how we got here.  

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our country's student debt crisis. 

SOCIAL MEDIA: to watch the host of ThePeel.news, Adel, peel the history behind news with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors, follow us on social media by clicking the following links:

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Prof. Shih explains banks, shadow banks, massive debt, Evergrande, economic shocks, and President Xi's personal history that informs his ideology and policies. 

In December, one of China's largest real estate developers, Evergrande, defaulted on its loan. Evergrande is the "world's most indebted developer" and this was potentially "Asia's largest default". Prof. Shih cautions that this default and other looming real estate crises do not mean that the Chinese people and investors have lost faith in real estate assets. No! This recent crisis, which Prof. Shih is confident the PBOC will prevent from devolving into a market crash, was caused by government regulations, regulations meant to end the borrowing binge of giant private companies, companies that have become too powerful for President Xi's taste and conservative communist beliefs that seem to pivot China away from its roaring days of capitalism to something else, some form of economy that Prof. Shih explains in this episode.

This is the link to Prof. Shih's academic homepage: https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/victor-shih.html

And these are the Amazon and University of Michigan Press links to Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability, a 2020 book edited by Prof. Shih and discussed in this episode.   

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Listen to 42 highlights from Season One, and learn about what's coming up in Season Two. 

The first season of ThePeel.news has come to an end. Over the course of the past 42 episodes, we've covered many fascinating subjects and organized them into several series, which you can find on our website. 

In this first season, our audience has grown, our newsletter subscription has increased, and more and more of you are financially supporting our program through your small monthly contributions.

I am very grateful for your support, which helps us develop and distribute this podcast. So, thank you!!

We have exciting episodes planned for our second season, which starts on Fri., Jan. 7, at 6 am ET. Click the image below to learn more about our New Year episodes.

Adel

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Prof. Craig explains America’s water rights, the Colorado River’s special case and environmental consequences of diverting the water far away from their river sources.   

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided against Mississippi in its water rights dispute against Tenessee. The case was not only the first oral argument of this term and the first decision rendered by the Court, but it was also the first of its kind: a dispute about groundwater rights that is based on tort law, and not the legal doctrine of Equitable Apportionment. If all of this sounds too... well, too legalese, not to worry. Professor Robin Craig of USC's Gould School of Law livens up this podcast conversation with stories about the Colorado River and the clever scheme of Tenessee to suction off Mississippi's water from right under their feet (I hope you read that literally). She goes on to explain how the Colorado River's water is split between the many thirsty states along its meandering path, and why it is that California has senior rights to Colorado's water over other states. In addition, she informs us about the environmental catastrophes that result from the mismanaged use of America's river and aquifer waters.   

Professor Craig specializes in all things water. She is the author, co-author and editor of many books on this subject, and has a long list of accomplishments and engagements relating to water law, management and scholarship in the US and abroad. They are listed on her academic homepage, the link for which is this: https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/?id=77538 

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our water rights and its environmental challenges. 

Adel

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As Covid vaccine conflict continues, Dr. Wadman explains history of vaccines that saved our parents and grandparents.   

Omicron arrived in America this week. It is a new Covid-19 variant, one which President Biden says is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic. Regardless, the President, the CDC and other health care professionals and institutions are encouraging Americans, as they have been for months now, to get vaccinated.  To better understand what the world was like when there were no vaccines, and what happened when vaccines were developed, such as polio and rubella vaccines, we spoke with Dr. Meredith Wadman. In addition, she provided some perspective for us, from her own medical experience, about countries in which vaccines were (and still are) unavailable. Dr. Wadman is a staff reporter at the journal Science and has written for Nature, Fortune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease. This is a direct link to Dr. Wadman's homepage: http://meredithwadman.com/the-vaccine-race/   

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about America's past interest to get vaccinated. 

Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast

SOCIAL MEDIA: to watch the host of ThePeel.news, Adel, peel the history behind news with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors, follow us on social media by clicking the following links:

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Prof. Silverman describes first Thanksgiving: an accidental feast between frenemies that was never repeated.  How much is our Thanksgiving tradition based on real events that transpired sometime in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts? And why does it matter anyway? Don't all nations have feel-good traditions that are partly based on facts, but mostly predicated on myths?  Professor David Silverman answers these questions and more. For example, he shares with us that Europeans had been in contact with the Wampanoag Native Americans, who are the "Indians" of our Thanksgiving tradition, since at least 1524. And that the Pilgrims were guided to Plymouth by at least one crew member who touted its advantage - hint: all its native inhabitants had died of disease, leaving houses and fields empty and available for the would-be English settlers. And while the turkey was certainly on the menu, so was eel!   In this episode, Professor Silvermans explains the aftermath of that first Thanksgiving. And by way of follow-up, I ask him to explain why it is that some Native Americans observe a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.  

Professor Silverman is the author of This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, a 2019 book. Click this link for this book's Amazon page.  Professor Silverman has written several other books about the history of Native Americans, which are listed on his academic homepage is along with his other publications, projects and honors.  Here is the direct link to Professor Silverman's academic homepage: https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/david-silverman 

In addition, below is a link to another podcast on another cherished American holiday:

S1E20: The 4th of July - who does it belong to?, Dr. Thomas Blacerski