Policy 360

Stephen Glass's story is legendary in certain circles – he is one of the most famous liars in journalism. In 1998, as a young writer for the New Republic and other magazines, Glass fabricated more than 40 articles. And not just small details, he made up whole characters and scenes.

His story even became a film called Shattered Glass.

After Glass was caught, he had to somehow put his life back together again. He did find employment (not as a journalist) and he had a longtime partner. He decided he'd live by a simple rule: always tell the truth.

But when Duke Sanford professor Bill Adair invited Glass to speak to his ethics class, he discovered a little-known part of Glass's story. He had vowed not to lie again, but he found he had to break that promise.

• Read the article Loving Lies on Air Mail
• Get show notes, transcript & credits

Twelve Duke students had an exciting opportunity recently – they attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. They join us to discuss what stood out to them, what worries them, and what gives them hope.

Get show notes, transcript & credits.

Dr. Jim Young Kim is a physician and anthropologist who previously served as the President of the World Bank. As a student at Harvard he co-founded the influential non-profit Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer.

Kim has received the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and was named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World."

Dr. Kim sat for a wide-ranging conversation with the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Judith Kelley. The two discuss China, the challenge and the need to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, and how anyone can use their own skills to make real change.

Scholars, practitioners, advocates and students gathered recently at Duke University to examine the topic of redistricting, the process of drawing congressional boundaries.

The conference included judges and mathematicians, investigative reporters, and more. Each contributed insights to try and untangle the complex web that redistricting had become.

This episode includes comments from:

• James Andrew Wynn, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Jonathan Mattingly, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, Duke University
• Tyler Dukes, Investigative Reporter, Raleigh News & Observer and Adjunct Instructor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
• Art Pope, Chairman, John William Pope Foundation
• Tom Ross, President, The Volcker Alliance and Co-Chair, North Carolinians for Redistricting Reform

Guest: Professor Deondra Rose, Director of Polis, the Center for Politics at Duke University.

There's been tremendous political wrangling in the US recently about raising the debt ceiling (how much money we allow ourselves to borrow). The U.S. is not the first country in history borrow money and we won't be the last. In the late imperial period until the early 1920s, Russia needed cash, and they got it from Britain and France. Owing so much money gave Russia a kind of power; if Russia defaulted, it would have been catastrophic for the countries that lent them money.

Guest: Duke professor Jennifer Siegel. Her book is For Peace and Money: French and British Finance in the Service of Tsars and Commissars.

If you've ever opened the New York Times, it's likely that you've read something by Frank Bruni. He worked at the paper for 25 years as metro reporter, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and even the chief restaurant critic for a time. He was also the first openly gay op-ed columnist at the Times. Bruni is now a faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and he joins Dean Judith Kelley to talk about polarization, ambivalence and ambiguity in the media.

Here's the article they discuss.

Duke University's Cyber Policy program has a new report that shows data brokers are openly and explicitly advertising sensitive information about US individuals for sale including demographic information, political preferences, even real-time GPS locations on current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors say such data brokerage is a virtually unregulated practice in the United States.

Guest: Justin Sherman directs data brokerage research for Duke's Privacy & Democracy Project during his fellowship through Duke's Technology Policy Lab.

Most Americans have no idea that there are elaborate pretend Iraqi and Afghan villages scattered around the United States – on US military bases. The villages are designed to look real. There are people in them - many of the people were born in the Middle East and immigrated to the U.S. They now play pretend versions of themselves, in pretend Middle Eastern villages, in the very real forests and deserts of the U.S.

Christopher Sims has been photographing the villages, and he joins Duke Sanford Dean Judith Kelley to discuss his work. Sims is a new faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He also serves as the Undergraduate Education Director at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies.

Credits/Transcript: https://policy360.org/2021/09/08/inside-military-training-villages/

COVID-19 has ripped through nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the US, painfully unveiling and amplifying the problems that have been inherent in long-term care delivery for decades.

Guest: Nathan Boucher is an assistant research professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

What does it take to build a business from the ground up? Are there special challenges that women face? Are there lessons that can be learned from those who have, as they say, been there and done that when it comes to building organizations that matter?

Our guest today is Maya Ajmera, who started her first organization, the Global Fund for Children, shortly after she graduated from Duke University with a Master of Public Policy degree. She's now the President and CEO of the Society for Science and Publisher of its award-winning magazine, Science News.