Show Summary: Angie’s guest is Ken Jennings – he parlayed his long run as a Jeopardy champion into success as an author, podcaster, and online wise guy. He sees humor everywhere – so much so that he says it’s nudging serious issues and real human interaction aside. Ken Jennings joins Angie with his book, Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture.     From John Stewart to Donald Trump, Chaucer to Sumerian Tablets, fart jokes to Cable TV “zingers,” Ken Jennings lends his signature wit and whizzing, encyclopedic perspective to the history of humor and how it came to dominate our modern world. Today, an unprecedented number of people get their news from comedy shows. Newspapers race to find the catchiest headline with an avidity that forgets the need to inform. In our democracy, showmanship has replaced good-nature debate. Jennings looks at the foundations of these current manifestations, and what that says for our future.

Ken Jennings - Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture

In Deep with
Angie Coiro is an independently produced, weekly interview
program. Hosted by award-winning Bay Area journalist Angie Coiro, In Deep is a
closer look at news and issues of the week, particularly the important stories
that fall through the cracks of major media coverage. Featuring lively,
thought-provoking interviews with newsmakers, politicians, and behind-the-scenes
notables, each show illuminates the issues and forces shaping the national
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Show Summary: Angie’s guests tackle the many obstacles to our most precious freedom: access to the ballot box. Donald Trump has convinced many voters not to trust the Post Office with their ballot, and overseen destruction of mailing systems. Gerrymandering is the norm across the country. And a rising number of poor districts and neighborhoods of color report hours-long voting lines. Angie's guests: Gilda Daniels is the author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America; she's a former Deputy Chief in the U.S. Dept. of Justice Civil Rights Division, Voting Section. She served in both the Clinton and Bush administrations and is currently a professor of law at the University of Baltimore Law School. Myrna Peréz heads the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She has testified before Congress and several state legislatures on a variety of voting rights related issues. She is a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and has also served as an adjunct professor of clinical law at NYU School of Law.

The Voting Hour

Show Summary: Donald Trump, elected in a populist uprising, has eschewed the normal conventions of politics. But the idea of what’s “normal” needs to be examined in its own light. For example – “normally”, laws are drafted in Congress and sent to the President for signature. What if that were a two-way street? What if the President could propose legislation for Congress to approve?  William Howell is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago; he’s the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the university’s Harris School of Public Policy.  Terry Moe is at Stanford University, where he’s the Wm Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Together they’ve created an audacious proposal: what if we looked at the reality of “normal” politics – deadlocked, partisan, vulnerable to the worst of populist instincts – and literally rejiggered the Constitution to fix it? Their book is Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.

Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

Show Summary: What if the Left/Right divide were more distraction than destruction? Economist and academic Robert Reich says the real threat is the wealth divide. Runaway economic injustice can spell the end of democracy, while we’re busy hating each other over social divides. We talk about his latest book, and the Netflix documentary Saving Capitalism.  Robert Reich has immersed himself in the US economy for decades. He served in the administrations of three presidents: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He was on Barack Obama’s transition team of advisors. He’s a prolific book author, beginning in 1982 with Minding America’s Business. His latest was released earlier this year: The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.  Reich is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He co-founded the American Prospect, where he serves as chairman.

Robert Reich on Democacry in America

Show Summary: Q-anon; the Bill Gates vaccine plot; 911 truthers: this week's In Deep is an escorted dive into the murky world of conspiracies. What mental processes lead to belief in Q-Anon, or chemtrails, or vaccines as a corporate plot? With more conspiracies gaining ground – what’s the effect on democracy? Joseph Pierre is with the UCLA School of Medicine; Harvard’s Nancy Rosenblum is the co-author of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. They’ll walk us through understanding, coping with, and compensating for conspiracy theorists in America.

Belief in Conspiracies: The Effect on Democracy

Show Summary: The American people divide into three groups. One group is certain there’s something deeply wrong and deeply dangerous with Donald Trump. A second group is concerned but unsure. The third group of our citizens cannot be persuaded that he’s a danger to our lives and country. This hour won’t do much for that last group. But for groups one and two, a new documentary will be of deep interest: Unfit: the Psychology of Donald Trump. Angie talks with the show's director and producer, Dan Partland.  Dan is a Multi-Emmy winner of documentary and non-fiction TV, whose work includes series such as A&E’s Intervention, The Sixties on CNN, and American Race with Charles Barkley for TNT. Dan's work also includes landmark films of the independent cinema such as the feature documentary A Perfect Candidate along with Sundance winners Welcome to The Doll House and The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack.

Ken Jennings - Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture

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