The Recount Daily Pod

The journalist Cokie Roberts left behind a tremendous legacy when she passed away in 2019. Her late husband Steven Roberts, who is also a journalist, grieved and honored her in his own way — by reporting on Cokie's life and work at organizations including NPR and ABC, and writing a book about it. "Cokie: A Life Well-Lived" chronicles the career, values, and personal faith of a journalist who proved to many other women that they had a place in the newsroom.

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Severe staff shortages at Georgia prisons have contributed to a huge spike in violence, including at least 44 likely homicides since last year. In September, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the violence and possible constitutional violations by the correctional system. Separately, a lawsuit filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights called the prison conditions “abysmal.” Sara Totonchi is the organization’s executive director, and Atteeyah Hollie is an attorney there. They join the podcast to shed light on the crisis.

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Climate envoy John Kerry described it as “the last best chance the world has" — this weekend world leaders and thousands of negotiators, journalists, and activists converge on Glasgow for COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. In the span of two weeks, can world leaders pull off what they never have, committing to realistic carbon-cutting policies in order to limit the planet's disastrous warming? Those who fear the worst may be familiar with the feeling of “eco-anxiety.” Caroline Hickman — a practicing psychotherapist and board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance — defines the phenomenon... and tells us what we can do about it.

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George Will was the first political columnist to call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment, and he's lent a leading conservative voice to the Washington Post and other publications ever since. Most recently, he’s out with a collection of his work — "American Happiness and Discontents" — first published between 2008 and 2020. He joins the podcast to talk about polarization in America; former President Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party; and a column he wrote about his son, Jonathan Will, who is living a full life with Down syndrome.

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Andrew Yang drew attention to universal basic income as a Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election, and earlier this year in his run for mayor of New York City. Since then, he’s announced he’s leaving the Democratic Party to start a new one. The Forward Party will back certain candidates — Democrats and Republicans alike, Yang says — in favor of open primaries and ranked-choice voting, two policies he believes would free politicians from appealing to the extremes and “give rise to a more vibrant, dynamic, multi-polar democracy.”

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More than 40 million Americans are in debt for getting an education. The federal government holds $1.6 trillion in student loan debts, a sum roughly on par with Canada’s GDP. President Biden has canceled billions of dollars of debt, but plenty more remains. Plus, a freeze on payments, put in place by President Trump at the start of the pandemic, expires in late January. Unless Biden extends it, as he has done before, loan repayments will be coming due again. 

How did the student debt crisis in the U.S. get so bad in the first place, and what can we do about it? Persis Yu, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center and Director of the Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, joins the podcast to explain the problem — and possible solutions.

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In 2013, Mark and DeAnne Stidham founded LuLaRoe, a multi-level marketing firm that still sells women's clothing today. Pushing a feminist image, the company claims to give women the opportunity to become independent retailers. But it's faced plenty of lawsuits, including one from the state of Washington accusing it of operating a pyramid scheme. Amazon's documentary series "LuLaRich" uncovers the company's glamorous rise and empty promises, including through a sit-down interview with the founders themselves. Directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason join The Recount Daily Pod to tell the story.

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Nearly two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is seeing a sustained drop in new COVID cases. And recent forecast models by researchers advising the CDC suggest we could see a steady decline in cases throughout the winter and into spring, rather than a seasonal surge. Is the country really edging toward an end to the crisis? Two leading voices in COVID research and analysis — Dr. Bill Ku (retired scientist and a former senior lecturer and researcher at Columbia University), and Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists) join The Recount Daily Pod to catch us up on where we stand with COVID today.

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Surprise: very little of the plastic you dutifully put in your recycling bin ends up actually being used again. The costs to successful recycling are prohibitive. And even then, recycling is a market with fewer and fewer buyers. So how can we really cut down on waste? Michael Cyr is the co-founder of Cup Zero, a company that seeks to cut down on waste, starting with all those cups we use and throw away at public events. He joins The Recount Daily Pod to break it all down for us.

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A presidential assassination, a devastating earthquake and criminal gangs engaging in mass kidnappings. The problems plaguing Haiti today are many — and they’re often misunderstood. How can the U.S. and the international community help bring stability and economic renewal to the country? Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and publisher of The Haitian Times, joins The Recount Daily Pod to share his insights.

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