Water Inequality, War Letters, Disney+

Guest: George McGraw, Chief Executive Officer, DigDeep You don’t think about it when you flush the toilet or turn on the sink, but access to clean, reliable running water and safe sanitation are a real privilege. And right now, in the America, more than two million people lack that privilege. A person’s race is the strongest predictor of whether they’ll have access to clean water and sanitation. (Originally aired November 20, 2019)

Guest: Andrew Carroll, Director of the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University Historian Andrew Carroll is on a mission to collect a million letters from soldiers during wartime. He’s already collected tens of thousands, and they span 250 years of American conflicts from the Revolutionary war to the present day. One of them was even written on Hitler’s own stationary. (Originally aired November 20, 2019)

Guest: Shilpa Davé, Assistant Professor of Media Studies and American Studies at the University of Virginia Some of the classic animated films of our parents’ childhood –the ones they showed to you as kids with such nostalgia -are now available for endless streaming on the newly-launched Disney+. Peter Pan,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “Dumbo” and a number of other films now available on Disney+ come with a disclaimer that reads: “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” Is that enough, though? Would it be better for Disney just to edit out the offensive stuff? Or keep them off Disney+ entirely? Disney’s not the only studio in this boat. Lots of films and TV shows made in previous decades wouldn’t fly today. (Originally aired November 20, 2019)

Guest: David Farber, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of History, University of Kansas, Author of “Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed” America, as you know, is in the midst of a drug crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people have overdosed on opioids in the last decade. The companies that make prescription pain killers, the pharmacies that sell them and doctors that prescribe them are being prosecuted. Local governments are clamoring for cash to make treatment available to more people with opioid addiction. Before the opioid epidemic, there was the crack epidemic. But America responded very differently to that drug crisis. Historian David Farber says the comparison is worth looking into, for what it tells us about race, poverty and our “collective inability to treat each other with decency and mercy.” (Originally aired November 21, 2019)

Guest: Cory Leonard, Associate Director at the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU Model United Nations is a program for kids to pretend they’re a representative of a country and debate global issues. Simulating diplomacy like this started in the 1920s before the UN even existed. But what’s the point of having students run around pretending to be the Peruvian or Russian delegate if none of it is real? (Originally aired November 21, 2019)