According to a recent bipartisan report from the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution, the federal budget inadequately addresses children's needs. After three years of work, the group's consensus outlines a range of budget-neutral policy recommendations. Guests: Michael Strain, the Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the working group co-chairs. Lisa Gennetian, Pritzker Professor at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy and af...
Apr 08, 2022•23 min•Ep. 139
Ray Starling grew up on a hog and tobacco farm in rural North Carolina. He recalls working on the property by age five. Abdullah Antepli grew up in poverty in a slum in Turkey - his father left school in the fifth grade, and his mother is illiterate. Today, both men live in North Carolina, and their politics could not be more different. Starling leans right - he is a former principal agriculture advisor to former President Trump. Antepli, a Duke professor and a Muslim leader, leans left. But the...
Mar 24, 2022•46 min•Ep. 138
Russia has invaded Ukraine. In response, President Biden has promised that the U.S. will impose “severe sanctions” against Russia for its actions. But what are sanctions exactly? How do they work? Do they have a history of working? Do they work well? Bruce Jentleson is a former State Department official. He has held numerous senior foreign policy positions in past U.S. administrations. He’s a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and his new book is called Sanction...
Feb 24, 2022•32 min•Ep. 137
COVID-19 has upended lives around the world. Prior to the pandemic, Jennifer Lansford and her colleagues were conducting in-depth. multi-year research on children and families in nine countries. They are now expanding their research to consider COVID-19 and children and parents’ mental health. Jennifer Lansford is a research professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University where she’s an affiliate of Duke’s Center for Child & Family Policy. Get show notes, transcript &...
Feb 09, 2022•26 min•Ep. 136
Duke Sanford School of Public Policy Professor Stephen Buckley argues In some ways, the events of January 6 and related actions by Trump and his allies feel "like a coup that will never end. An almost invisible, drip, drip, drip coup. Or, as one friend recently called it, 'a termite coup.'" Read the article in The Atlantic Get show notes, transcript & credits...
Jan 26, 2022•26 min•Ep. 135
Stephen Glass’s story is legendary in certain circles – he is one of the most famous liars in journalism. In 1998, as a young writer for the New Republic and other magazines, Glass fabricated more than 40 articles. And not just small details, he made up whole characters and scenes. His story even became a film called Shattered Glass. After Glass was caught, he had to somehow put his life back together again. He did find employment (not as a journalist) and he had a longtime partner. He decided h...
Jan 12, 2022•36 min•Ep. 134
Twelve Duke students had an exciting opportunity recently – they attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. They join us to discuss what stood out to them, what worries them, and what gives them hope. Get show notes, transcript & credits.
Dec 08, 2021•28 min•Ep. 133
Dr. Jim Young Kim is a physician and anthropologist who previously served as the President of the World Bank. As a student at Harvard he co-founded the influential non-profit Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer. Kim has received the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World." Dr. Kim sat for a wide-ranging conversation with the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Judith Kelley. The two discuss China, the chal...
Nov 24, 2021•52 min•Ep. 132
Scholars, practitioners, advocates and students gathered recently at Duke University to examine the topic of redistricting, the process of drawing congressional boundaries. The conference included judges and mathematicians, investigative reporters, and more. Each contributed insights to try and untangle the complex web that redistricting had become. This episode includes comments from: James Andrew Wynn, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Jonathan Mattingly , James B. Duke...
Nov 10, 2021•40 min•Ep. 131
There’s been tremendous political wrangling in the US recently about raising the debt ceiling (how much money we allow ourselves to borrow). The U.S. is not the first country in history borrow money and we won’t be the last. In the late imperial period until the early 1920s, Russia needed cash, and they got it from Britain and France. Owing so much money gave Russia a kind of power; if Russia defaulted, it would have been catastrophic for the countries that lent them money. Guest: Duke professor...
Oct 27, 2021•32 min•Ep. 130
If you’ve ever opened the New York Times, it’s likely that you’ve read something by Frank Bruni. He worked at the paper for 25 years as metro reporter, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and even the chief restaurant critic for a time. He was also the first openly gay op-ed columnist at the Times. Bruni is now a faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and he joins Dean Judith Kelley to talk about polarization, ambivalence and ambiguity in the media. He...
Oct 13, 2021•41 min•Ep. 129
Duke University’s Cyber Policy program has a new report that shows data brokers are openly and explicitly advertising sensitive information about US individuals for sale including demographic information, political preferences, even real-time GPS locations on current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors say such data brokerage is a virtually unregulated practice in the United States. Guest: Justin Sherman directs data brokerage research for Duke’s Privacy & Democracy Project durin...
Sep 22, 2021•32 min•Ep. 128
Most Americans have no idea that there are elaborate pretend Iraqi and Afghan villages scattered around the United States – on US military bases. The villages are designed to look real. There are people in them - many of the people were born in the Middle East and immigrated to the U.S. They now play pretend versions of themselves, in pretend Middle Eastern villages, in the very real forests and deserts of the U.S. Christopher Sims has been photographing the villages, and he joins Duke Sanford D...
Sep 08, 2021•34 min
COVID-19 has ripped through nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the US, painfully unveiling and amplifying the problems that have been inherent in long-term care delivery for decades. Guest: Nathan Boucher is an assistant research professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.
Jun 03, 2021•24 min
What does it take to build a business from the ground up? Are there special challenges that women face? Are there lessons that can be learned from those who have, as they say, been there and done that when it comes to building organizations that matter? Our guest today is Maya Ajmera, who started her first organization, the Global Fund for Children, shortly after she graduated from Duke University with a Master of Public Policy degree. She’s now the President and CEO of the Society for Science a...
May 20, 2021•28 min
What role do corporations play in a functioning democracy? Is there a way to encourage companies to be more socially responsible? Guest: Stan Litow is the author of The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward. At IBM he led the global corporate social responsibility program. Litow now teaches graduate courses at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He has held high level positions for the Mayor and Governor of New York, and served as New York City’s Deputy Scho...
May 04, 2021•37 min
Our guest this episode is part of a team of researchers that used data from real people's social media accounts to build bots that expose people to news they don't agree with – then they measured how users reacted. What they found is that when people are exposed to views that oppose their own, they actually become MORE not LESS polarized. Guest: Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Data Science and director of The Polarization Lab at Duke University; Author of Breaking the Soci...
Apr 16, 2021•40 min•Ep. 123
Sometimes we know exactly what the consequences of a policy will be, and sometimes we don’t. In this episode, we’ll explore a surprising consequence related to stepped-up enforcement of immigration policy in one county in North Carolina: Mecklenburg County. Guest: Professor Christina Gibson-Davis is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke and co-author of the study Heightened Immigration Enforcement has Troubling Impact on Babies....
Apr 02, 2021•25 min•Ep. 122
In this episode, we look at ways to demystify artificial intelligence (AI) for military commanders and arm military personnel with the right questions to ask to distinguish AI with real, enduring capabilities from so called “drive-by AI.” Guest: Marc Losito is a Master of Public Policy student at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy, where he is a Carlucci Fellow in Security Studies. He is also a Warrant Officer in the US Army. He authored an article for the Small Wars Journal, "The Commande...
Mar 18, 2021•32 min•Ep. 121
As Elizabeth Warren memorably wrote, “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.” That quotation is an apt introduction to Mallory SoRelle's book, Democracy Declined – the Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection. Consumer financial protections are becoming more and more com...
Mar 07, 2021•42 min•Ep. 120
In this episode, we explore new research into providing healthcare recommendations by algorithm. Professor Kate Bundorf recently published a study examining the impact of algorithmic information and recommendations on consumer choice in health insurance plans.
Feb 18, 2021•16 min•Ep. 119
On January 27, 2021, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security issued a first-ever National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the U.S., which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the Jan. 6 Presidential Inauguration. In a recent guest column in the Tampa Bay Times, Duke Professor David Schanzer wrote “Jan. 6 demonstrated to all Americans what many observers have been warning about for years – we have a serious domestic terrorism t...
Feb 02, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Duke Professor Anne-Maria Makhulu joins Dean Judith Kelley to compare the current racial and socioeconomic disparities of South Africa with the disparities that have been made increasingly apparent over the past decade in the United States. The scholars discuss the countries' similarities and differences with regards to the coronavirus response, responses to police violence, movements for racial equity, and more. Makhulu says that one lesson to be learned from this comparison is that "the intrac...
Dec 03, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 117
The end of the Cold War is often considered a bit of a geopolitical anomaly. In 1980 the increasing antagonistic relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union caused many to fear that the conflict was once again on the path to nuclear fallout. President Regan famously characterized the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and while Soviet media described U.S. foreign policy as “nuclear insanity.” Then suddenly, things quickly shifted. The two superpowers started cooperating and even more surprisi...
Nov 20, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 116
In a special episode, Policy 360 joins a panel of Duke University experts for a debrief the day after election day 2020. Sanford professors Mac McCorkle, Director of POLIS: Center for Politics, and Deondra Rose, director of Research at POLIS: Center for Politics, moderate a discussion with four other professors here at Duke. John Aldrich is a professor of Political Science and an expert on politics in the United States. Duke Law School professor Guy-Uriel Charles is an expert on constitutional l...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 115
This episode takes a look behind the curtain to see what actually happens during elections and just how your vote counts and is counted. Judith Kelley is joined by Damon Circosta, the Chair of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Oct 22, 2020•37 min•Ep. 114
Since graduating from Sanford in 2015, Emily Feng has travelled all over China as a foreign correspondent covering topics ranging from human rights, to technology, to the environment. As foreign correspondent for the Financial Times , Feng uncovered key information surrounding the Chinese oppression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, China. Her coverage of the human rights abuses in Xinjiang won several human rights press and journalism awards. Feng now works as NPR’s Beijing correspondent and joins...
Oct 09, 2020•40 min•Ep. 113
North Carolina has been at the center of discussions around race-based voter suppression, most recently focused on stringent voter ID requirements. With election day only two months away, there is growing concern among many in this pivotal swing state about whether their voice will be heard. James Leloudis, professor of history at UNC Chapel Hill, and Robert Korstad, professor of public policy at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy, join Dean Judith Kelley to discuss the implications of vot...
Sep 24, 2020•40 min•Ep. 112
Thomas J. Tierney is an expert in smart philanthropy and co-founder of the Bridgespan Group which provides management consulting to nonprofits and philanthropists. He is the co-author of Give Smart: Philanthropy That Gets Results , which is intended for philanthropists and nonprofits with the resources to do big things to make big changes in the world. Our guest host is Alex S. Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and former director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, ...
Sep 10, 2020•35 min•Ep. 111
Billy Shore is a founder of the organization Share Our Strength, the umbrella organization of No Kid Hungry. Over the past 35 years, the organization has made huge strides in ending childhood hunger in the United States. How have they done it? Listen: This episode is hosted by Alex S. Jones - Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and former director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. It is part of a two-part series is produced in partnershi...
Sep 10, 2020•40 min•Ep. 110
