New Books in Public Policy

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Episodes

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Episodes

Paul Offit, “Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All” (Basic Books, 2011)

If a parent decides not to vaccinate their children, is that an individual choice, or is it a serious threat to the public health? In Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (Basic Books, 2011), Dr. Paul Offit discusses the very real threats to the public health created by the anti-vaccine movement, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the book, Dr. Offit reviews the history of vaccines, their importance, and the various attempts to discredit them over the past few ce...

Mar 25, 2011•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Brandon L. Garrett, “Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong” (Harvard UP, 2011)

Wrongful conviction is, both morally and practically, the worst mistake that society can inflict on an individual. From Franz Kafka to Errol Morris, from Arthur Koestler to Harper Lee, Western culture is deeply shaken at the prospect of the innocent person condemned. Outside of fiction, it used to be nearly impossible to prove a convict’s innocence to a level of certainty that could overturn the judgment of a jury: after all, twelve peers have found that it would be unreasonable even to doubt hi...

Mar 25, 2011•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Teresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-Homeless in San Francisco” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010)

Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness the result of a depilating mental illness or chemical addiction? From a different perspective, perhaps homelessness is less an “individual issue” but more a “systemic one.” As sociologists are apt to point out, maybe homelessness should be linked to broader issues like the lack affordable housing, or the short supply of well paying jobs, and even ins...

Mar 25, 2011•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Robert Goldberg, “Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit” (Simon & Schuster, 2010)

This week New Books in Public Policy interviews Bob Goldberg about his new book Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet Is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit (Simon & Schuster, 2010). The book is a look at the way medical science is discussed and played out over the Internet. As Goldberg says on his website, tabloid medicine is “medical reporting or information based on or consisting of Internet material that sensationalizes and exaggerate the dangers of medical technology witho...

Mar 18, 2011•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Beth Bailey, “America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force” (Harvard UP, 2009)

The United States Army is a product of our society and its values (for better and for worse), but it also makes claims to shape our society – and of course to defend it. What is the relationship between military service and citizenship? How do we as Americans balance the competing demands of liberty and equality when we establish armed forces to defend us? How are our changing ideas about race, gender, andcivil rights reflected in our military? These are just some of the important questions rais...

Mar 18, 2011•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast

James Fleming, “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control” (Columbia UP, 2010)

In the summer of 2008 the Chinese were worried about rain. They were set to host the Summer Olympics that year, and they wanted clear skies. Surely clear skies, they must have thought, would show the world that China had arrived. So they outfitted a small army (50,000 men) with artillery pieces and rocket launchers (over 10,000 of them) and proceeded to make war on the heavens. The idea was to “seed” clouds with silver iodide before they got to Beijing and rained on the Chinese parade. Or maybe ...

Oct 20, 2010•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Nick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” (Bloomsbury, 2009)

In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I also noticed that there were a lot of drugs. One of them was “crystal methamphetamine,” or “crystal meth” for short. I’d never heard of it before (which is not surprising), but I quickly learned that, while not as fashionable as coke, it was inexpensive and widely available. Lots of people did it. It made them feel good. I left Iowa in 1984 for Cali...

Aug 14, 2009•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Colin Gordon, “Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)

This week we have Professor Colin Gordon of the University of Iowa on the show talking about his new book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Professor Gordon is the author of two previous monographs, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 2004) and New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Mapping Decline brea...

May 09, 2008•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast