Conviction Integrity, Wayback Machine, Economics of College Sports

Guest: Sim Gill, District Attorney for Salt Lake County In 2017, 139 people in the US were exonerated of crimes ranging from murder to non-violent drug offenses. Nearly a third of those exonerations came through the efforts of Conviction Integrity Units, which are a new trend in the justice system. Across the country district attorneys and top prosecutors are establishing these units to identify and correct false convictions.

Guest: Mark Graham, Director, Wayback Machine, Internet Archive People often say, “You can find anything on the Internet.” From Twitter to YouTube to Wikipedia, an impossibly huge amount of information is uploaded to the web every day — but information is also deleted and lost. Sometimes it’s because no one cared, and sometimes it’s an effort to scrub the past. If a Tweet or website gets deleted, is it gone forever?

Guest: Andrew Zimbalist, Professor of Economics, Smith College, Co-Author of “Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It” In 39 states, the highest paid public employee is either a men’s football or basketball coach. And it’s not even close: the highest paid football coaches earn over $7 million a year. But the vast majority of colleges lose money on athletics — and even football, often thought of as the money maker, is far more often a money drain than a cash cow. Who’s paying for it all – and is worth it?

Guest: Elizabeth Legge, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Toronto. Walking down a street in London or New York, you might see tourists snapping photos of a surreal stencil spray-painted on a public wall. The anonymous street artist Banksy’s work has become so sought-after, some of his pieces have sold for more than $1 million at auction. Did you hear about the Banksy original that self-destructed as soon as the bidding was finished a few weeks ago?

Guest: Ann Power-Forde, Presiding Judge, Constitutional Court Chamber, Kosovo Specialist Chambers, The Hague; Former Judge, European Court of Human Rights We’re always hearing that “one voice can make a difference,” but it feels more cliché than truth a lot of the time. What difference is my one vote or my one voice at a protest really going to make?  Recently, we had the opportunity to speak with someone who built a reputation for being that one voice. Ann Power-Forde is an international human rights judge and served for from 2008 to 2015 on the European Court of Human Rights. She often found herself alone championing the rights of vulnerable individuals as the sole dissenter on the court.

Guest: Kirsten Hawkes, ParentPreviews.com The Hate U Give is a new film ripped from the headlines.  It stars Amandla Stenberg as an African American teenager who watched a white police officer shoot her friend, Khalil. The film is about her grapple with systemic racial injustice. And it’s one of several films Kirsten Hawkes at ParentPreviews.com recommends for parents and older teenagers on the subject of dealing with racial discrimination.