Story in the Public Square

2020 is a year we won’t forget any time soon—though many of us might want to.  From the impeachment trial of the president, through the pandemic, and the 2020 election, this year has seen more than it’s fair share of important narratives.  Dr. Evelyn Farkas helps us make sense of them all and name our 2020 Story of the Year.

Farkas is one of the nation’s premier voices on American foreign policy and geopolitics, and one of the nation’s most-trusted experts on U.S.-Russia relations.  As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, she was the U.S. Department of Defense’s top Russia expert under President Barack Obama.  Farkas advised three U.S. Secretaries of Defense during her tenure at the Pentagon and was responsible for policy toward Russia and the surrounding region.  She is an outspoken voice on how America should respond to adversaries and manage aggressors, ranging from Russia to North Korea to Iran.  Expertly positioned to discuss the at times tenuous intersection of foreign objectives and domestic priorities, Farkas appears regularly as an NBC/MSNBC national security contributor to discuss hot-button geopolitical issues.  She serves as Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and has penned research papers and op-eds featured in most leading publications.  She discusses how America’s position abroad is shifting under the Trump administration, the global gamut of U.S. foreign and defense policy, and current national security challenges including Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The uncertainty of a creative career—waiting for acceptance and dealing with rejection—can be an isolating experience. Gayle Kabaker turned artistic resilience into advice for coping through the pandemic.

Kabaker is a graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco and has illustrated for various markets worldwide for over 35 years.  She illustrated her first New Yorker magazine cover, “June Brides,” in 2012, which celebrated gay marriage, and has subsequently illustrated five other covers for the New Yorker.  She uses travel as her inspiration, sometimes creating illustrated stories from her experiences.  Kabaker enjoys collaborating with Animators, filmmakers, editors & musicians to match talent with various projects.  She describes her creative process as “a combination of old school painting, mostly with Acryla Gouache paint, that I scan and finish in Photoshop.”  She adds, “I am also dipping my toe slowly into the world of “fine art” and selling original paintings and prints.”  Kabaker is also the illustrator of a book in art exhibition called “Vital Voices,” which celebrates a hundred women leaders and honors 100 years of women’s suffrage in America. Her portfolio with her illustrated stories and other projects can be found here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There hasn’t been a lot to laugh about in 2020, but Gina Brillon reminds us of the power of laughter and good humor even amidst so much tragedy.

Brillon is a standup comic, singer, published writer, and poet.  Her newest one-hour comedy special, “Gina Brillon: The Floor is Lava,” is now available on Amazon Prime Video, along with her first one-hour special, “Pacifically Speaking.”  She also performs in the HA Festival: The Art of Comedy on HBO Max.  Her half-hour comedy special, “Easily Offended,” was one of the top shows from the Entre Nos franchise on HBO Latino, and streams on all HBO Digital Platforms.  She has appeared on Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham,” E!’s “Chelsea Lately,” “The View,” “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Brillon also appeared on “Kevin Can Wait” on CBS and “The Conners” on ABC.  In 2012, she became the first and only Latina winner of NBC’s Stand up for Diversity Showcase.  The following year, she was a “New Face” at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival.  In 2019, she was featured on Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias’ “Beyond the Fluffy Tour,” which visited 46 cities across the United States.  She co-hosts the podcast, “Mess In Progress,” with Katherine G. Mendoza.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America’s founders feared the rise of political factions that would pit Americans against Americans.  Lee Drutman warns that the founders’ greatest nightmares have come true and threaten the health and welfare of our republic.

Dr. Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America.  He is the author of “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” and “The Business of America is Lobbying,” winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association’s Robert A. Dahl Award, given for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy.”  He is also the co-host of the podcast “Politics in Question,” and writes for the New York Times, Vox, and FiveThirtyEight, among other outlets.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Science fiction is full of stories about communication and contact with civilizations beyond the stars.  Andrew Siemion leads a multi-national effort to scan the heavens for indications of intelligent life.

Dr. Andrew Siemion is an astrophysicist and director of the Berkeley Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research Center. His research interests include high-energy time-variable celestial phenomena, astronomical instrumentation and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Siemion is the Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen program, the “largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.” In 2018, he was named the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and was elected to the International Academy of Astronautics as a Corresponding Member for Basic Sciences. In September 2015, he testified on the current status of astrobiology to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the United States Congress. He is jointly affiliated with Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Malta.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is one of the cruel realities of life for every nation and every individual: we all suffer loss and disappointment.  Maggie Smith is a poet whose new book offers wisdom—and hope—for anyone who knows that pain.

Smith is the author of four books of poetry, including “Good Bones,” “The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison” and “Lamp of the Body.”  Her latest book, “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change,” a collection of essays and quotes, was released in October.  She is also the author of three prizewinning chapbooks.  Her poems are widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, POETRY, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  In 2016, her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.  Public Radio International called it “the official poem of 2016.”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The pandemic has changed a lot of habits—including the ways in which people around the world spend their leisure time and resources.  Kate Aurthur tells us that the entertainment industry—literally built on storytelling—has been among the most effected.

Aurthur is a veteran entertainment journalist and is editor-at-large at Variety.  She has worked as a top reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.  She writes high-impact cover and feature stories about the industry for Variety’s weekly magazine, breaking news on Variety.com and contributes to its video content.  She covers major issues and business trends in TV, film and streaming as the consumption of content across all distribution platforms, including Netflix, Amazon and Apple, continues to reshape the media landscape.  Aurthur also writes about diversity and inclusion in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera, profiles prominent writers, directors, producers and actors and covers key festivals and events.  She also contributes to Variety franchises including Actors on Actors, and moderates panel discussions at the company’s summits and conferences.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the pantheon of American presidents, perhaps none was better prepared for the job than Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Susan Eisenhower shares with us the principles that guided Ike in war and in peace.

Eisenhower is the CEO and Chairman of The Eisenhower Group, Inc., a Washington D.C. based consulting company founded in 1986, which has provided strategic counsel on business development, public affairs and communications projects for more than twenty-five years.  She is the Chairman Emeritus at the Eisenhower Institute of Gettysburg College, where she served as president twice.  She has also had a distinguished career as a policy analyst and has been a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Distinguished Fellow at the Nixon Center, now the Center for National Interest.  She is the author of the recently published biography, “How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions.”  In addition to “How Ike Led,” Eisenhower has written four trade press books, two of which were on regional best seller lists and has co-authored or co-edited four other books on international security issues and has authored hundreds of op-eds for newspapers such as the Washington Post and the LA Times.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whatever the final count of fatalities is in the United States from the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost is already far too high.  Dr. Ashish Jha reminds us that there are still simple things that Americans can do to stay safe, to stay healthy, and to help fight the pandemic.

Jha is a practicing physician and is the Dean of the Brown School of Public Health and professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice after serving as the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and teaching at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.  He has been recognized as a global expert on pandemic preparedness and response in addition to health policy research and practice.  He has led groundbreaking research around Ebola and is now on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response, leading national and international analysis of key issues and advising state and federal policy makers. Jha has published more than two hundred original research publications in prestigious journals including the BMJ and New England Journal of Medicine and is a frequent contributor to a range of public media. He has conducted extensive research on improving the quality of health care and the reduction of its costs, focusing on the impact of public health policy both nationally and globally.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the last four years, Americans have heard a lot about Russian interference in our elections. David Shimer says we haven’t heard the whole story about the Cold War, 2016, or 2020.

Shimer is an expert on election security, U.S.-Russian relations, and covert action.  He is the author of “Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference,” a New York Times Editors’ Choice book.  His reporting and analysis have been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs.  He has appeared on CNN and MSNBC to discuss the threat of foreign election interference, and he has been interviewed by the New York Times, NPR, and Politico about American and Russian foreign policy.  Shimer is an Associate Fellow of Yale University, where he received his undergraduate and master’s degrees in history, and is pursuing a doctorate in international relations at the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.