Think from KERA

International trade agreements might not sound that exciting. But they’re actually vital to maintaining peace among global powers. Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how the current breakdown of some of these agreements eerily resembles the run-up to the First World War. His essay “Will Today’s Global Trade Wars Lead to World War III?” appears in current issue of Reason magazine.

Most Americans are in favor of at least some immigration. The question that divides us is: how much? David Frum joins host Krys Boyd to walk through the many issues at play in this complicated question. His essay“How Much Immigration Is Too Much?”appears in The Atlantic.

In 1961, President Kennedy announced his goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley joins host Krys Boyd to chart how just eight years later, Neil Armstrong made JFK’s dream a reality. Brinkley’s new book is called“American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race”(Harper).

Eight Americans have suddenly be thrust into the most powerful job on Earth when the president they were serving under dies. Jared Cohen, adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the vice-presidents who rose to the occasion – including Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman – and the ones who didn’t (we’re looking at you, John Tyler and Chester Arthur). His new book is called “Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America” (Simon & Schuster).

For the first four years of the Obama administration, Janet Napolitano guided the Department of Homeland Security with the mission of keeping the country safe. She joins host Krys Boyd to take stock of our post-9/11 efforts to root out terrorism without crippling our free society. Her new book is called“How Safe Are We?: Homeland Security Since 9/11”(PublicAffairs).

The U.S. government has spent $36 billion over the last decade in an effort to turn handwritten medical charts into electronic records. Fred Schulte joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how all of that time and money has somehow made healthcare record keeping even less efficient. His story,“Death By 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong,” written with Erika Fry, is a join investigation between Forbes and Kaiser Health News.

As a black woman, Dani McClain knows America to be hostile territory. And after becoming a mother, she now must figure out how to guide her daughter through the same experience that she’s still figuring out how to navigate. McClain joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how she and other mothers are grappling with the challenge, which she writes about in“We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood”(Bold Type Books).

What if every time you visited a doctor, a robot could take your blood pressure, listen to your deep breaths and record your vital signs? Cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how A.I. could free human doctors up for the personal interactions that actually lead to healing. His new book is called“Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again”(Basic Books).

Since the days of the cavemen, humans have lived alongside domesticated animals. Jacky Colliss Harvey joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how the furry, feathered and scaly friends we’ve shared our homes with have shaped us for thousands of years. Her new book is called “The Animal’s Companion: People & Their Pets, a 26,000-Year Love Story” (Black Dog).

In a digital world that becomes more fractured by the day, our personal attention span is the currency we have to spend. Jenny Odell joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how we should consider the pieces of ourselves we share – and about rethinking what it even means to be productive. Her new book is called“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy”(Melville House).