Think from KERA

Keah Brown is a smart, funny woman with an affinity for pop culture. She’s got a lot to offer – but throughout her life, so many people only see her as someone with cerebral palsy. The journalist and creator of #DisabledandCute joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how she moved beyond self-pity to become an advocate for people with disabilities. Her new book is called “The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love with Me.”

Dustin Lance Black won an Oscar for his screenplay for “Milk,” starring Sean Penn as the politician Harvey Milk. Black joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about his formative years in a Mormon household near San Antonio – and how he left that life behind to become an LGBTQ activist and sought-after screenwriter. He tells his story in his new memoir “Mama’s Boy: A Story from Our Americas” (Knopf).

It’s hard to keep secrets in a small town – and when a young woman is found murdered, ugly truths come spilling out. Author Julia Heaberlin joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about her latest crime novel, which deals with themes of beauty, trauma, and grit. It’s called “We Are All the Same In the Dark.”

Beginning in World War I, the American military began sending young women overseas to boost the morale of personnel on the frontlines. Kara Dixon Vuic, professor of war, conflict and society in 20th Century America at TCU, joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about the roles these women served through the Vietnam War and beyond. Her new book is called “The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines” (Harvard University Press).

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Black and Latino Americans disproportionately hard, but the roots of the problem go much deeper than just access to healthcare. Ruqaiijah Yearby is executive director for the Center for Health Law Studies and executive director of the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity at St. Louis University. She joins guest host Courtney Collins to discuss how unemployment, lack of affordable housing and other factors lead to health inequities. Her paper “Health Justice Strategies to Combat the Pandemic: Eliminating Discrimination, Poverty, and Health Inequity During and After COVID-19” will be published in the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. This conversation is part of KERA’s One Crisis Away series, “Coronavirus & Life On The Financial Edge?” series.

It starts with an innocent post on Twitter. A few hours later, the conversation has devolved into one self-righteous argument after another. It’s time to take a hard look at our language of virtue signaling. Justin Tosi, assistant professor of philosophy at Texas Tech University, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why getting off the soapbox is the best way to make the world a better place. His book, written with Brandon Warmke, is “Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk.” 

You might not know the details of a famous Swedish bank robbery, but you certainly know the diagnosis that it produced: “Stockholm Syndrome.” Historian David King joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the series of events that led hostages inside a bank to identify so closely with their gun-wielding captor. His new book is called “Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome.”

The average recovery time for COVID-19 patients ranges from two to six weeks. How long it will take the Texas economy to recover, however is an open question. Host Krys Boyd explores how the energy, banking and other important industries in the state might bounce back – and how everyday Texans can get back on their feet. Joining the discussion are Robert S. Kaplan, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Marvin Odum, former president and chairman of Shell Oil Co. who is heading up the City of Houston’s recovery effort.

“Gerrymandering” is a dirty word in politics. But the reality is: It’s actually really, really hard to fairly divide up voting districts. As a chair of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, Walter Olson gained firsthand experience in the process. He’s now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and he joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the many factors – some political, some not – that go into deciding how Americans cast their votes. His recent story for Reason magazine is headlined “Why Redistricting Reform Goes Off the Rails.”

Gen Z loves to take on a Tik Tok challenge – be it a new dance, lip sync or prank. Meanwhile, their parents’ generation worries the app might actually be a trojan horse from China. Michael Schuman is a contributing writer to The Atlantic and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how a seemingly harmless app has hit a nerve with American cybersecurity experts and provided yet another sticking point in U.S.-China relations. His recent article in The Atlantic is headlined “Why America Is Afraid of TikTok.”