History Behind News Program

Prof. Loeb informs of the scientific community's reluctance to embrace UFO research.   

The U.S. government's intelligence community released its report about UFOs on June 25, 2021 (it was actually an analysis of many reports). And prior to this, our government had revived its special task force on UFOs. But what about our scientific community? According to Professor Avi Loeb, a professor in and the former chair of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, the scientific community has been cool to explore UFOs and research this fascinating and mysterious topic. Why you may ask, as did we? Because of the risks involved. While scientists have researched the dark matter, the taboo and the potential for ridicule surrounding UFOs has, generally speaking, kept away from delving deep into the subject of UFOs.  

Professor Loeb is the Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative and a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House. He has authored four books and some 700 research articles. His latest book is Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. It was published in January of this year. 

Here is the link for his academic homepage: https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb 

And this is the link to his most recent book: https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Extraterrestrial/9780358274551 

Prof. Balcerski shares the surprisingly circuitous history of America's celebration of the 4th of July. 

America's Independence Day has been on the news. One reason is that President Biden set a goal for at least 70% of Americans to get one Covid vaccine shot, which he did not achieve. Another reason, a more complicated one, is that some have brought focus to the importance and meaning of the 4th of July, which doesn't seem all that out of place, given last year's pandemic crisis, BLM protests, a contested presidential election and the January 6th insurrection. As it turns out, the history of the 4th of July is not that straightforward. For example, it took about a century for the recognition of our Independence Day as a federal holiday. And for some 80 years after the Civil war, some parts of the South, including Vicksburg, did not celebrate the 4th of July. It took WWII to create a new sense of nationalism, including the national celebration of the 4th of July.  

To better understand the history of our Independence Day, we spoke with Professor, an associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he teaches classes on early American history, African American history, and US presidents and first ladies. In addition, Professor Balcerski is a frequent contributor to CNN, the Washington Post, NBC, and other news organizations. This week he published an opinion on CNN, in which he talked about this week's release of C-SPAN's 2021 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. In addition to the fact he was one of the 142 historians who participated in this survey, he also authored a book on President James Buchanan… which is highly relevant to the C-SPAN survey because James Buchanan is ranked as our country's worst president. 

The link to Prof. Balcerski's academic homepage: https://www.easternct.edu/faculty-directory/balcerski.html

Prof. Wasserstrom connects history of Opium Wars to China's repossession of Hong Kong & its emotional patriotic education. 

Hong Kong never really left the news after its massive demonstrations in 2019 and early 2020. But this month, June 2021, America's news coverage of Hong Kong spiked. Here are some highlights. According to the Wall Street Journal, out of apprehension for Hong Kong's future, big international businesses are leaving that city, and the effects of that exodus are highly visible, both metaphorically and literally - the latter manifest in the high rate of commercial real estate vacancies. In addition, although Hong Kong's annual observance of the Tiananmen Square massacre has been banned, in defiance, Hong Kong residents gathered in small numbers to commemorate that tragic day anyway. And there is one more highlight that we like to share. The leaders of the G-7 group of nations issued a rebuke to China regarding many issues, including its treatment of Hong Kong's autonomy and the freedom of its residents. But why does Hong Kong receive so much press coverage? What makes the case of Hong Kong special? To better understand Hong Kong, its past and present, we spoke with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a Chancellor's professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Wasserstrom is a specialist in modern Chinese history and has a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into global perspective. 

Here is the link to Professor Wasserstrom's academic homepage, which includes a list of his numerous publications: https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5310. 

The consumer price index rose to 5% in May, a level it had not reached since August 2008, when it was at 5.4%. Economists and the business community are now wondering when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to combat and control inflation. Changing interest rates may affect the stock market, our economy, and our lives - the lives of ordinary Americans, which means that the Federal Reserve is a very powerful institution, and an independent one. But where did the Federal Reserve come from? There is nothing about it in the Constitution. We did not have a Federal Reserve at our founding. We merely had a private bank that acted as America's de facto central bank. But that was too much for us Americans - giving that much power to one bank. So, until 1913 America didn't have a central bank... and for some time after its establishment, the Federal Reserve was not the powerful entity that it is today. For example, it hardly mattered during the Great Depression.    

To better understand the history of the Federal Reserve, in this episode we speak with Roger Lowenstein. Mr. Lowenstein is a financial journalist and writer. He reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Review of Books, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His books include Buffett, When Genius Failed, Origins of the Crash, While America Aged, and The End of Wall Street. In addition, he is the author of a 2015 book titled "America's Bank, THE EPIC STRUGGLE TO CREATE THE FEDERAL RESERVE"… which nicely fits with this episode's history behind the news.  

This is the link http://rogerlowenstein.com/news to Mr. Lowenstein's website, which includes a list of his numerous publications.   

Join two patent experts (one is a historian) for a fun debate about the ethics and economic impact of America's patent system.  

Last month, President Biden's Administration made the extraordinary decision to support the suspension of Covid vaccine patent rights.  While pundits weigh our moral obligation to help other countries against the gravity of patent rights for America's businesses and their leadership in innovation, we decided to ask an entirely different question - a seminal question. What is a patent anyway? What rights does a patent give a patent holder? And where did patents come from? And why has patent law - a highly technical field - has had such a complicated history?  

To get the answer to these questions and learn more about the history of patent law, we turned to two experts, Mr. Steve Pepe & Dr. Sam Brenner. 

And here is a link to a fascinating episode about the history of CRISPR patents. 

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Prof. Pytlik tells the long history of coexistence between Muslims & Jews, which defies America's understanding of this region. 

Last month, in May 2021, for almost two weeks Israel and Hamas exchanged missiles and rockets. At the same time, Israeli Arabs attacked Jews, and Israeli Jews attacked Arabs... all in the streets, neighborhoods and restaurants of Israel. This was the people of Israel attacking other people of Israel. 

In this podcast episode, Professor Michael Pytlik describes the long, intertwined history of Muslims and Jews, and how in comparison to Christian Europe, for several centuries Jews lived in relative peace in the lands of Islam and even thrived. He ends our conversation by asking us all to remember what we forgot. 

Mr. Pytlik is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Religious Studies at Oakland University, in Rochester, Michigan. He is the Director of Judaic Studies and the Director of the Cis Maisel Center for Judaic Studies and Community Engagement. Professor Pytlik is also the Director of the Study Abroad in Israel: an archaeological field school and culture tour. This is the link to Professor Pytlik's academic homepage: https://www.oakland.edu/socan/top-links/faculty/pytlik.

Prof. Demmer: 130,000 Vietnamese evacuated in 1975 along with the US military. Over time, one million Vietnamese refugees settled in the U.S.  

When is the right time to leave Afghanistan? And when was the right time to leave Vietnam? Are we leaving our allies in Afghanistan, defenseless before the onslaught of the Taliban? Just as we left our allies at the mercy of the North Vietnamese? What will time tell? Will Kabul go the say of Saigon? And if so, will it take two years? Or will Kabul fall faster? 

One rare soldier who served in both wars believes that the same thing that happened in Vietnam is happening now in Afghanistan. 

To understand what happened in Vietnam and its aftermath, we spoke with Professor Amanda Demmer, an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech, whose research and teaching are focused on the boundaries between war and peace in American history. Her recently published book is highly pertinent to our conversation, and it's titled After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975-2000. 

To learn more about Professor Demmer's scholarship and contributions to America's history of war, visit her academic homepage at https://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-history/faculty/amanda-demmer.html. 

The success of President Biden's climate summit hinges on the unprecedented cooperation of the international community. But as Professor David Takacs explains the history of America's climate change commitments in this episode, the U.S. doesn't come out quite the exemplary leader to spearhead this enormous effort. Ask yourself this: how did the U.S. handle the Kyoto Protocol? Or the Paris Agreement?  But surely, you may say, that even though the U.S. has disappointed the international community in the past when it comes to climate change, we've done a great job back home... right? No. Not right! The United States of America, the biggest historical polluter of greenhouse gases, is the only Western democracy not to have any climate change laws. In this podcast episode, Professor Takacs explains how our federal government's climate policies are implemented in the absence of laws, and the real and political ramifications of this lack of laws on climate. Professor Takacs further teaches us that rules and laws won't do any good, and they may not even pass, without the participation of those who are negatively impacted by our shift to a low or zero carbon emission economy. As he tells it, we need a just transition for workers that will lose their jobs due to our efforts to combat climate change. To learn more about Professor Takacs's important scholarship and contributions to climate studies, visit his academic homepage at U.C. Hastings College of the Law (link: https://www.uchastings.edu/people/david-takacs/), and read his numerous publications and book (link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1393231). 

And here is an Amazon link to Professor Takcas's book on biodiversity: https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Biodiversity-Philosophies-Paradise/dp/0801854008/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+Idea+of+Biodiversity&qid=1621394881&sr=8-2. 

One last point, in addition to teaching law, Professor Takacs has a Ph.D. in the history of science and has taught undergraduates for a decade. Prior to that, he has spent time in Keyna and Senegal and witnessed climate change firsthand. In this episode, he shares the depth of his expertise and breadth of experience with us.  

And, as we promised during the podcast, this is the link to the White House's fact sheet regarding President Biden's climate summit.  

Professor Takacs Recommendations: Novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (Amazon link). My Octopus Teacher, a film on Netflix.  

🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

China's highly anticipated and much-delayed census finally arrived. And it is making China's officials nervous because it shows a definite downward trend for its population growth. In fact, China's recently announced that families can have three kids, which is a step up from two kids, which was a step up from only one child, which was China's policy from about 1979 to 2015.  China's population decline will affect everything - its pension and housing systems to its geopolitical relations with Europe and the U.S.  In this episode, we spoke with Professor Wang, who shared the brutal history of China's one-child policy and drew perspective for us... for what the future may look like. 

Mr. Feng Wang is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine (academic homepage). He has research interests in contemporary Chinese society and comparative demographic processes and social inequality in state socialism, and his work is frequently cited in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other prominent journals.

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about China's population control programs.  

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