Convicted and Condemned with Keesha Middlemass

With less than 5 percent of the planet’s population, the United States houses 22 percent of the world’s prisoners. The challenges of navigating that system don’t end when the convicted felon completes his or her sentence.  Keesha Middlemass shines a light on the substantial barriers felons face whe…

Afghanistan Beyond the War with Adela Raz

Afghanistan is known to most Americans as the site of America’s longest war.  Since 2001, the United States has sent hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters to fight extremists and hunt-down the perpetrators of 9/11.  But Afghanistan is more than the war. Ambassador Adela Raz has a unique p…

2019 Story of the Year: The Fracturing of America's Public Narrative

It’s been quite a year. From the release of the Mueller report to the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, the swirl of stories and competing political narratives has, at times, felt overwhelming.  In this episode, we’re going to unpack those stories and name our Story of the Year with …

Bridging the Divide with Susan Rice

Politics, it’s often said, is a tough game.  But lost in the back and forth over policies are the lives of public servants who pay a very real toll for their service.  Ambassador Susan Rice knows that experience better than most. Rice served as the U.S. National Security Advisor under President Ba…

The Cost of Child Poverty with Lenette Azzi-Lessing

For generations, American politicians have promised reducing—or even eliminating—poverty as one of their goals.  In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson went so far as to declare an “unconditional war” on poverty.  Lenette Azzi-Lessing warns, however, that the rhetoric of fighting poverty has become a wa…

Blood Libel in an American Town: Antisemitism in the United States with Edward Berenson

On September 22, 1928, a four-year-old girl named Barbara Griffiths disappeared in the woods near the small town of Massena, New York.  At some point in the panicked search that followed, someone speculated that the child may have been murdered by a Jewish resident of the community in a ritual sacr…

Open Technological Innovation and Tomorrow's Terrorists with Audrey Kurth Cronin

After Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, his invention reshaped the world—literally.  From mining to infrastructure projects, dynamite proved essential to the building of the modern world.  But it also changed political violence—both on battlefields and in the streets where the first wave of modern t…

Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned our World with Dr. John Halpern and David Blistein

In 2017, opioid addiction claimed nearly 50,000 American lives—that’s as many Americans as were lost in the entire Vietnam War, and more than were lost to gun-shots and automobile accidents combined.  Dr. John Halpern and David Blistein explore the history of opium—from antiquity to the modern worl…

The Guarded Gate: Bigotry Eugenics, and the Immigration Act of 1924

In 1924, a new American law ended the wave of immigration to this country that had begun in the 19th century.  Hundreds of thousands of southern- and eastern-European immigrants had entered the United States each year before the law, but after 1924, those numbers were reduced to a trickle.  Daniel …

Memory, Connection, and Healing Through Storytelling with Patricia Nguyen

If you are a regular viewer of “Story in the Public Square,” you know we define “story” and “story-teller” very broadly.  Educators, artists, scholars—and more—all qualify in our eyes; but occasionally, we meet a talent that weaves all three skills together with a profound humanity that commends th…