Show Summary: Thought leader Tamim Ansary returns for a discussion of his sweeping new nonfiction work, The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000 Year History of Human Culture, Conflict and Connection.     Tamim Ansary sprang into prominence with Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. Now he turns that scrutiny to the histories of smaller groups of people into today's globally connected, fully-interwoven human populace, and discovers something prescient: even before disparate human cultures ever met, their innovations always influenced one another… and now that influence is only speeding up. The world's major cultural movements— Confuscianism, Islam, Judeo-Christianity and Nomadism—have, he says, reached a new interrelationship inevitable in the march of human history. We are in a new time of revolutionary reinvention, as differing cultures overlap and transform rapidly due to global connectedness. What does this new proximity portend?     Tamim Ansary and Angie Coiro discuss the price and the prospect of this singularly connected moment in human history.

Tamim Ansary: The Invention of History

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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.

Tamim Ansary: The Invention of History

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