Story in the Public Square

Ep. 507 | Original Air Date March 12, 2019

Democracy relies on facts, accurately reported and commonly understood—and journalists play an essential role in building that shared body of knowledge. Llewellyn King argues that technological change is placing great strain on our democratic societies.

Llewellyn King is the creator, executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle,” a weekly news and public affairs program, airing nationwide on more than 200 PBS and public, educational and government (PEG) access television stations and the commercial AMGTV Network, and worldwide on Voice of America Television. Now in its 20th year on the air, “White House Chronicle” episodes can also be viewed on the program’s website or on Vimeo.

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Ep. 505 | Original Air Date February 26, 2019

Poets, rock stars, authors—and even we mere mortals—all share a nightly sojourn—a temporary stay–in the land of dreams. Alice Robb argues they are not just flights of fancy, but critical to health and happiness in our waking hours too.

Robb is a science writer whose work has been published in The New Republic where she was a staff writer, The New York Times, The BBC, The Atlantic, among others. She graduated from Oxford with a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology. Her book, Why We Dream, published in November of 2018, is described by Houghton Mifflin:

“Robb draws on fresh and forgotten research, as well as her experience and that of other dream experts, to show why dreams are vital to our emotional and physical health. She explains how we can remember our dreams better—and why we should. She traces the intricate links between dreaming and creativity, and even offers advice on how we can relish the intense adventure of lucid dreaming for ourselves.”

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Ep. 504 | Original Air Date: February 19, 2019

There are not a lot of examples of perfection in life—except in the world of sports. On rare and exciting nights, a baseball pitcher can throw a perfect game or a basketball player can have a perfect night shooting. But a perfect career—that’s the rarest of accomplishments. Mike Stanton recounts the life of Rocky Marciano, who finished his heavyweight championship career with a perfect 49 and 0 record.

Mike Stanton is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut and the author of the best-selling 2003 book, The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds; and the recent critically acclaimed, Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano’s Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World.

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Ep. 503 | Original Air Date: February 12, 2019

Recently, the Trump administration proposed defining gender as an individual’s assigned sex at birth. But the medical community—including Dr. Jason Rafferty—tells us gender is not so simply expressed.

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Ep. 502 | Original Air Date: February 5, 2019

Even for the devout, questions about the earliest history of Christianity can seem lost behind a shroud of history and official church teachings. Karen King traces the power of stories told and untold in the growth of the early church.

Karen L. King is the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana and a doctorate from Brown. King was appointed to the Divinity School in 1997 and from 2003 to 2009 served as the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History. In October 2009, she became the first woman appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity, the oldest endowed chair in the United States (1721).

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Ep. 501 | Originally Aired: January 5, 2019

The costs of war are measured lives and treasure.  As of the day we produced this episode, 6,979 Americans have lost their lives in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dr. Rosella Cappella Zielinski warns that the financial costs of these wars have profound meaning for the United States, our politics, and our economy.

Rosella Cappella Zielinski is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University.  Her research interests include how states economically mobilize for national security requirements and how domestic political and economic considerations influence foreign policy and the persecution of conflict.

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Ep. 424 | Originally Aired: December 22, 2018

Since the era of the French Revolution, commentators and politicians have referred to the press as “The Fourth Estate,” signifying the important (if informal) role of the press in public life. Charles Sennott leads a non-profit news agency extending the power of the press to under-covered corners of the world.

Sennott is the founder, executive director, and editor-in-chief of The GroundTruth Project, a non-profit news organization that supports a new generation of journalists to tell the stories that matter in under-covered corners of the world including the United States. Based at the flagship PBS station WGBH in Boston, GroundTruth’s mission is to provide training, mentoring and resources to emerging journalists to do work that seeks to make a difference and to do it safely.

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Ep. 423 | Originally Aired: December 15, 2018

Every December since 2013, the Pell Center at Salve Regina University has named a “Story of the Year,” the most important narrative in the public life of the United States in the preceding 12 months.

Since June 1, 2018, we have asked guests what they thought the top story would be, so some of their answers were speculative. In this episode we hear from past guests such as Caroline Orr, Twitter sensation and behavioral scientist; Mark Blyth, author and Professor of Political Economy at Brown University; Sister Helen Prejean, anti-death penalty activist and author; Korsha Wilson, food writer and host of the podcast A Hungry Society; and many more on their top picks. The theme that resonated throughout their answers is what informed the decision, by hosts Jim Ludes and G. Wayne Miller, for the Story of the Year which is: The Battle for Truth.

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Ep. 422 | Originally Aired: December 8, 2018

Publically available satellite images offer some of the most fascinating perspectives about life on Earth. Luis Martinez goes one step further and mines those images for the data and stories they contain about some of the world’s most repressive regimes.

Luis Martinez is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His main research interest is in the empirical analysis of the political economy of development, with a particular focus on the functioning of democracy in Latin America.

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Ep. 421 | Originally Aired: December 1, 2018

National security analysts typically ground their work in a deep appreciation of history, context, and contemporary politics. Jeffrey Lewis adds a sophisticated understanding of nuclear weapons and the states seeking them to describe a catastrophic potential future of the U.S. relationship with North Korea.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at CNS. At the Middlebury Institute, he teaches courses on arms control issues in Northeast Asia and Chinese nuclear policy. The work of his team was recently covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and VICE. He is the author of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States, Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age.

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