FDR’s Overhaul: The New Deal and Its Lasting Legacy

In the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned on a platform that would bring radical change to America: a package of policies he called the New Deal. The New Deal completely reinvented our infrastructure and central government, according to Eric Rauchway, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and author of the book Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal. He says that the effects of FDR’s revolutionary plan remain with us today. And indeed, many of the 2020 Democratic candidates are proposing policies that would amount to a new New Deal. But is the country ready?

Battles Over Barbie: The Question of Intellectual Property

When Carter Bryant invented Bratz dolls, Mattel (the makers of Barbie) took its former employee to court, claiming he had come up with his ideas on the company’s time. Bratz were the first dolls to successfully compete and - in some places - outsell Barbie. Orly Lobel, a law professor at the University of San Diego, has written about the lengthy and costly legal fight Mattel and Bryant engaged in over Bratz in her book: You Don’t Own Me: The Court Battles That Exposed Barbie’s Dark Side. That fight, Lobel explains, was emblematic of a serious issue that American workers now face: heavy restrictions on their talent and creative ideas.

Political Teamsmanship

Politics in the United States has long been dominated by two main groups – the Republicans and the Democrats – but, in recent decades, we’ve seen increasing divisiveness and conflict. Voters have become less concerned with what government does, and more interested in politicians they believe represent who they are. Lilliana Mason, assistant professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, and Marc Hetherington, professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, discuss what happens when politics gets personal. And they consider the consequences for our democracy.

Cracking the Code on Wall Street

Have you ever wanted to be rich? Really rich? Gregory Zuckerman, a special writer at The Wall Street Journal and author of “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution,” shares the story of the mathematicians who cracked Wall Street’s code. Starting from humble beginnings in a strip mall on Long Island, NY, the hedge fund company that Simons started (where about 300 people work today) now pulls in more money in a year than companies like Hasbro and Hyatt Hotels, which have tens of thousands of employees.

Can You Hear Me Now?

At this very moment, you’re probably being inundated with noise. Whether the sound is something you chose, like music or our podcast, or something outside of your control, like traffic outside or planes overhead, you are essentially never enjoying true silence. According to David Owen, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World,” all that noise is doing something to our brains; and it’s not very good news.

Funding the Cure: But For Whom?

In 1983, Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act which incentivized the development of treatments for rare diseases. Since passing, the legislation has helped to create hundreds of new treatments for rare diseases... but it may have also had some side effects. According to Dr. Peter Bach, a pulmonologist and intensive care physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the push towards finding cures for rare diseases has been so strong that drug companies are paying little attention to more common illnesses, including some of the leading causes of death in the United States, like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Tipping the Scales: How America Started Moralizing Food

It was once a virtue to have some excess weight, kids weren’t considered picky eaters, and the term “overweight” didn’t even exist. What changed? Helen Zoe Veit, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, and author of “Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century,” joined us to talk about how America began to moralize the food that we eat — or don’t eat.

The Race for Nuclear Power

The heroism of D-Day is immortalized in history books, but far less attention is given to the individuals who worked undercover to prevent Germany from developing an atomic bomb during WWII. In his new book, The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb, science writer Sam Kean tells the stories of the men and women who made up the Alsos Mission, or the “Bastard Brigade.” They worked tirelessly to make sure Germany’s (impressive) scientific discoveries wouldn’t change the course of the war.

The American Achievement of Advertising Apollo

After Russia sent a man into space, the United States didn’t want to be left behind. But getting a man on the moon wasn’t as easy as just saying we would. David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist and co-author of the book Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program talks about just what it took — from PR strategies to partnering with Walt Disney — to get enough support for the mission. Without the marketing and media attention, Scott thinks, we couldn’t have landed on the moon.

The Myth of the Gendered Brain

It’s no secret that men and women are different — it’s the punchline of a hundred jokes. But does our sex really show in our brains, or is there something else at play? Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Aston University in the U.K. and author of “Gender and Our Brains,” argues that sex doesn’t play nearly as big a role in influencing our brains as we might think. Rather, she says, social cues likely start to influence children at very, very young ages - and it is those cues that account for many of the differences we see.