American foreign policy under the Trump Administration currently is “chaotic, amorphous, and …unprofessional,” according to Ambassador Reuben Brigety, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Ambassador Brigety expresses to Spectrum podcast that he is concerned about the huge number of important positions in the State Department that are not yet filled after four months in office. The Trump Administration has not nominated a sufficient number of people...
Jun 28, 2017
During the scramble to be the first and provide the best possible coverage of the ongoing Trump/Russia investigations, credible news organizations have published numerous stories based upon “leaks” from sources who are listed as “anonymous” or described without using their names or titles. Some Administration officials decry “leakers” and infer that they are not credible and chastise news entities for using the information from these unnamed sources. Some officials call stories based on anonymou...
Jun 21, 2017•43 min
We have investigations ongoing of the Trump campaign/Russia connection in the Senate, the House and with the Special Counsel appointed by the Interim Attorney General. It seems we don’t have any one place to follow the events and with each entity conducting its own investigation, we as average citizens can feel like we’re drowning in a sea of terminology and confusion. We can’t keep up or keep the news straight in our minds. Philip Ewing, national security editor for National Public Radio (NPR),...
Jun 14, 2017•48 min
Authenticity and great storytelling combine to form the backbone of good advertising, according to advertising expert Chuck Borghese. Borghese is an award-winning veteran of the creative side of advertising having spent nearly four decades in the business and charting its changes over time. He notes that in the days of Mad Men advertising executives, up through the early 1960’s, that most advertising was based on “authority.” The advertisers, according to Borghese, told consumers what they wante...
Jun 07, 2017•44 min
Linda Tirado, author and activist, has written and spoken around the globe about what it's like to be poor in America. She now has a new project. She is seeking truth about our democracy by traveling the country and interviewing voters in the last Presidential election to find their current reaction to the Trump Administration and to the apparently stalled Congress. Tirado is finding that we have groups of disparate people living in the same geographical country but most people no longer having ...
May 31, 2017•46 min
This White House is run differently than the West Wings of past Presidents. Those were based on fairly rigid protocols, roles, traditions and procedures. This White House is not the norm. It sometimes appears to be chaotic but it actually reflects the temperament, the personality and the style of its primary occupant – President Donald Trump. “It’s not better or worse…it’s just what the President wants,” says TIME Washington Correspondent Philip Elliott. Some traditional roles are quite differen...
May 24, 2017•41 min
This is a special edition of SPECTRUM featuring intelligence expert, David Crane. The way President Trump is dismissive of “intelligence briefings” and makes disclosure decisions without prior consultation with intelligence experts causes grave concern to a long time security veteran. Recently, the news has focused on security gaffes in the White House. Some reports have said that President Trump gave the Russians intelligence information that was classified at the highest level of secrecy. It i...
May 22, 2017•30 min
World-renowned international lawyer and national security expert David Crane is heading the Syria Accountability Project to hold Syrian governmental and faction leaders accountable for thousands of verified war crimes. He and his group are building war crime cases and trial packages against Syrian government and faction leaders. To date, Crane’s group has verified over 8,000 pages of individual war crimes. Crane is building conflict maps and criminal law matrix to help international, national an...
May 17, 2017•33 min
The job of the editorial teams at National Geographic is to make a “round world” come to life on a “flat plane” of a magazine, a web-screen, a phone or other mobile device. That, often, is a big challenge. Kaitlin Yarnall is Deputy Director for the Centers of Excellence in Journalism, Mapping and Photography at the National Geographic Society. She also has been the lead editorial manager for National Geographic’s 2014 multi-year, multimedia food initiative – to examine all aspect of food in our ...
May 10, 2017•32 min
National Public Radio’s Bob Boilen has shaped the way an entire generation consumes music. During his 20 plus year career at NPR, Boilen has served as creator and host of the online series “All Songs Considered” and created the increasingly celebrated “Tiny Desk Series.” Earlier, he was producer and director for the afternoon news show “All Things Considered.” Sound is important to Boilen. He grew up in a noisy Brooklyn neighborhood and he recalls falling in love with the sound of a baseball car...
May 03, 2017•28 min
Nicole J. Phillips once had a personal life in turmoil until she discovered the gift of giving kindness to others and to herself. Outwardly, she appeared to have it all: a prominent and loving husband, three beautiful children, and a job as a television news anchor. It was a life that most people would only dream about and fight to get. Yet, Nicole was “miserable.” She was depressed and engaged in self-destructive behaviors that drew her away from her marriage and her family. In addition, she ca...
Apr 26, 2017•40 min
It is Will Cooper’s firm belief that the American judicial system doesn’t value the lives of poor black women and therefore, their stories of abuse, deprivation and courage are seldom told by mainstream media. Their conditions are ignored by politicians, he argues. If their stories are told, Cooper contends that mainstream media “sanitizes” the stories so as to not offend the sensitivities and stereotypes of audiences. Today is the last of a three-part weekly Spectrum Podcast series examining is...
Apr 19, 2017•39 min
This is part two of our three part series on race, media and politics. Washington Post’s Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Wesley Lowery covers law enforcement, justice and he served as the lead reporter for The Post in Ferguson, Missouri. He has covered the Black Lives Matter Movement for a number of years. And, in November, he had a book published called “They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement.” Lowery has traveled the country studying cas...
Apr 12, 2017•40 min
In this special edition, Spectrum breaks down the Trump Administration’s recent actions against climate change into plain English that everyone can understand. To help us with that, we are assisted by Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko, Professor and Director of the Environmental Studies Program at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University. For 15 years prior to that, Dr. Dabelko served as director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson ...
Apr 06, 2017•30 min
Researcher and former photojournalist Danielle Kilgo asserts that African Americans are negatively stereotyped by the mainstream media – especially in photos and video. Danielle Kilgo is receiving her doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin and next fall will start teaching in The Media School at Indiana University. She has been part of a research team at the University of Texas. Her research analyzes the visual images of African Americans in the media. She contends that both Black men and...
Apr 05, 2017•24 min
Ian Mullins, 40, is a professional mountain biker based in Seattle. He started taking a drug in 2008 to ease pain after a bicycle accident. The drug, Tramadol, not only stopped his pain but improved his performance by allowing him to race through any physical discomfort. Soon, he was addicted. For seven years, he struggled with addiction to the painkiller. Eventually, it took over his life. He then needed the drug just to keep from being sick from withdrawal. When he couldn’t get Tramadol, he to...
Mar 29, 2017•37 min
How safe are the special drug compounds you take or put in or on your body? Most people, today, think that they are pretty safe but that has not always been the case. Back in 2012, the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts produced 18,000 vials of a contaminated steroid that was distributed across about 20 states. The tainted compound, to date, has sickened 751 people with fungal meningitis and related illnesses. At last total, there were 64 deaths. In 2015, the company rea...
Mar 22, 2017•46 min
Philip Elliott has “seen it all” in Washington D.C. and today’s White House is nothing like he has ever seen before. It is “chaos” despite protestations to the contrary by Administration members and President Trump himself, according to Elliott. Elliott has experienced the West Wing under three different administrations. He covered President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama for the Associated Press for over a decade and then switched to Time in 2015 to finish out the Obama Administratio...
Mar 15, 2017•39 min
Philip Ewing, National Security Editor for National Public Radio (NPR), gives us his insights into the National Security Council, President Donald Trump’s proposed military budget, the ongoing investigation of Russian ties to the Trump campaign and ISIS. Ewing has been the National Security Editor since November 2015 but he also has had almost a decade of prior experience covering military and defense issues in Washington. He echoes the general consensus that Lt. General H.R. McMaster is a wise ...
Mar 08, 2017•36 min
Dr. Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, DC, notes that the costs of higher education have increased markedly in recent years while the value of a college degree may be diminishing. To counteract these trends, he says that colleges and universities must implement reforms and modernize. But, the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University notes that reform is an alien concept to many administrators and faculty in hig...
Mar 01, 2017•41 min
Minnesota trial judge Kevin Burke is concerned about negative public perceptions of our courts – especially among people of color. People too often believe they are treated unfairly and that judges are biased and make their decisions based upon “political views” and not the law. They also think judges are not understandable and that court processes are mysteries. Judge Burke is on a mission to stem this negative tide. He has studied this issue, done surveys, written about it and is lecturing ext...
Feb 22, 2017•34 min
Award-winning journalist and former Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander just finished co-authoring an in-depth report for National Public Radio about the death of two of its journalists in Afghanistan in June. He is a strong proponent of increased security measures for reporters in a world ravaged with wars and terrorism. He also promotes improved security for reporters being threatened at home in the USA. Alexander asserts that it is more dangerous today for reporters in conflict areas t...
Feb 15, 2017•33 min
A new documentary “Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask” is being distributed to public television stations across the nation through the National Educational Telecommunications Association. The film highlights the life and legacy of the first African American to achieve national acclaim as a writer. The documentary is the result of a collaboration of three Ohio University faculty members: Dr. Judith Yaross Lee – Distinguished Professor in Communication Studies, Dr. Joseph Slade, Professor Emer...
Feb 08, 2017•38 min
Recently the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) released the results of a post-election national survey of 50,000 teenagers between 13 and 18 years old. Some 70 percent reported witnessing bullying, hate messaging, or harassment since the election with racial bias being the “most common motive cited.” These incidents are far more frequent than before, according to the survey, and they seemed to escalate markedly after the beginning of the presidential campaigns. The participating young people said 70 p...
Feb 01, 2017•39 min
Megan Westervelt left graduate school with some experience under her belt and some uniquely creative ideas in her head about how she could capture environmental photos. She labels herself a Conservation Photojournalist which means she tells stories with her still and video cameras about human impact on the environment. While still in school, she did an in-depth story on exotic animal ownership in Ohio and photo story about human interaction with the coastal environment of oil rich eastern Scotla...
Jan 25, 2017•33 min
The American system of amateur athletics is mostly school based: elementary, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities. Yet, that system is failing both the student-athlete and the general public, according to Dr. David Ridpath, the Kahandas Nandola Professor of Sports Administration at Ohio University. With a school based system, too many students are “cut” from competitive athletics at an early age and therefore, do not receive the benefits of physical activity throughout their s...
Jan 18, 2017•45 min
To the vast majority of scientists, climate change exists and it has been exacerbated over the years by human factors. However, not all politicians agree and most assuredly, most of the dissenters from this proposition reside in the Republican Party – the party now in power. The GOP now controls both houses of Congress plus the White House and regulatory agencies. The fact that climate change deniers now hold power, gives some scientists pause and reason for concern. The future of America’s reac...
Jan 11, 2017•42 min
Be prepared in the next couple of years for “virtual reality” (VR) and “augmented reality” (AR) to be more and more parts of your daily lives – from health and medicine to education, journalism and assistance in completing your daily chores. Although many still see VR and AR as primarily for gaming, that image is no longer accurate. Total immersive experiences are being developed for training and for rehabilitation among other complicated and useful applications. Researchers are exploring implem...
Jan 04, 2017•39 min
Karen M. Chan, an actor, director and producer is merging old-time radio dramatic techniques with modern podcasting to bring a new, fresh approach to storytelling for public media. Chan, a veteran of theater, television and film, has lately been concentrating her efforts on dramatizing works of literature for digital distribution by WOUB Public Media. She uses unabridged works of literature and brings them to life using actors from Ohio University and the surrounding communities. She marries the...
Dec 28, 2016•31 min
Ron Luce, a board member of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences and President of Ohio Recovery Housing, says “the Holidays” can be a troubling time for those addicted to drugs or alcohol –even those already in recovery. Addiction is often linked with depression, according to Luce, and “the Holidays” can exacerbate emotions in the addict of isolation, shame and feelings associated with causing nothing but problems for family and friends. Those negative feelings can even happen when some...
Dec 21, 2016•48 min
