The Takeaway

The new podcast, "HBO Docs Club," revisits some of the most fascinating HBO documentaries of the past several years with the people who made them. The first two episodes of the show look back at "Atlanta's Missing and Murdered:The Lost Children" and "How to Survive a Pandemic."

The Takeaway speaks about the podcast with its cohosts, Brittany Luse, writer, cultural critic, and co-host of the podcast, For Colored Nerds, and Ronald Young Jr., storyteller, audio producer, and cultural critic.

A new study is causing an uproar within the paleontology community. According to it, the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex should be broken up into three different species: T.Rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina.

The Takeaway speaks with Thomas Carr, paleontologist at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about the new paper, the controversy around it, and more.

On April 1st, JFK8 Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island voted to unionize against all odds, becoming the first Amazon warehouse in the nation to vote to join a union. We speak with WNYC reporter Gwynne Hogan and Rebecca Givan, Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER), Co-Director, Center for Work and Health (CWH) at Rutgers University.

After police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, people across the country demanded racial justice and amplified a national movement to “defund the police.” During that time, several large cities and counties promised to restructure local police budgets with plans to rein­vest in community programs. But those promises have largely faded or reversed course completely. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, a majority of the City Council pledged to dismantle the police department and create a new department of public safety in its place. But come last November, voters rejected the idea, and during that November election, many voters across the country favored mayoral candidates who campaigned on public safety and were “tough on crime.”

Meanwhile the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act remains stalled in the Senate. The bill would have enacted sweeping federal police reform that would ban certain police techniques, including chokeholds and forms of potentially deadly force. It would have also ended qualified immunity, a legal provision that makes it difficult to sue police officers for any wrongdoing.

In order to make sense of these new efforts to refund local police departments, we talked with Philip Atiba Goff, Co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity, and a Professor of African-American Studies and Psychology at Yale University.

We live in surround sound. From the din of traffic to a symphony of song birds, you can’t escape noise no matter where you live — whether it’s a rural, suburban, or urban environment. 

In Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, author David George Haskell explores the diverse sounds of our planet, as well as humans’ impact on the world’s soundscape. 

The Takeaway recently spoke with David, who is also a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South, about the first animal sounds, humans’ impact on the world’s soundscape, and the looming crisis of what he calls a “sensory extinction.”

In the introduction of Scott Reynold Nelson’s new book Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World, he writes “Ukraine has what may be the richest soil in the world.”  Throughout history, what is today Ukraine, was considered a prize for ambitious emperors who saw the fertile land as a way to feed populations in their homeland, and in conquered lands.  

Today, Ukraine is the world’s 4th largest exporter of corn and the world’s 5th largest exporter of wheat, and between Ukraine and Russia, the two countries produce 30-percent of the world’s wheat and 12-percent of the world’s calories.  But with the region that is known today as the “World’s breadbasket” now embroiled in war after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, wheat prices and global food prices have hit record highs, pushing the world towards a global food crisis.

To explore the historical significance of grain to this region and hear how it's factoring into Russia's war in Ukraine and a global food crisis, we spoke with Scott Reynolds Nelson, Professor of History at the University of Georgia and author of the new book Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World.

In our latest installment of Women Leading Locally we speak with Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell who serves as the chair of the LA County Board of Supervisors about her path to politics, hopes for the future, and inspiring others into service. We’ll also wrap up the Women Leading Locally series and look back at what we learned, the power of sisterhood and the necessity of money for women running for office.

We also highlighted this week’s Facebook Live where we spoke with Kira Sanbonmatsu, Professor of Political Science at  Rutgers University and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. We’re also joined by Baton Rouge’s Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and, according to the non-profit watchdog group Airwars, Russian airstrikes are responsible for the deaths of as many as 23,000 Syrian civilians.

For Syrians watching from afar, the parallels in Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine are unsettling. Borzou Daragahi, International Correspondent for The Independent, recently traveled to the opposition held Idlib province and spoke to Syrians about how they’re processing the invasion of Ukraine.

We talk with William Neuman, former Andes Region Bureau Chief for The New York Times about his new Book Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela. He’ll take us through the events that have led to the current state of crisis for Venezuela and how the country factors into the current situation between Ukraine and Russia.

Cuba has refused to publicly support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abstaining from a United Nations resolution to condemn the unprovoked war. Abstention does not signal neutrality, however.

Cuban state media has echoed Russia’s false claims for invading Ukraine and blamed NATO for what they’re calling a “special military operation.” We speak with Patrick Oppmann, CNN International Correspondent and Havana Bureau Chief about Cuba’s position and what’s at stake during the Russian invasion.