Chatting Up A Storm - Claudia Cragg

REPRISE of an interview for @KGNU in which Claudia Cragg talks for with  who was a bureau chief in Tokyo and London for The Washington Post. His book, “: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care,” is as valid with #COVID19 in 2020 as it was when originally published. It is a great shame that, in the intervening years, the lessons Reid so succinctly and expertly drew on from his wide experience of living outside of the US were not paid more attention to.  His work is a systematic study of the health systems in seven countries that was inspired in part by his family’s experiences living overseas and receiving health care abroad. Mr. Reid also produced a 2008 documentary on the same topic for PBS called “Sick Around the World.”

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Katherine Stewart @kathsstewart about her book, 'm.' With a sad nation still mourning the tragic loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stewart's work takes on new relevance in its opinion  that for too long the 'Religious Right' has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, she reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with @ about her book : The Illusion of Religious Equality in America.' The United States is recognized as the most religiously diverse country in the world, and yet its laws and customs, which many have come to see as normal features of American life, actually keep the Constitutional ideal of “religious freedom for all” from becoming a reality. Christian beliefs, norms, and practices infuse our society; they are embedded in our institutions, creating the structures and expectations that define the idea of “Americanness.” Religious minorities still struggle for recognition and for the opportunity to be treated as fully and equally legitimate members of American society. From the courtroom to the classroom, their scriptures and practices are viewed with suspicion, and bias embedded in centuries of Supreme Court rulings create structural disadvantages that endure today. In White Christian Privilege, Khyati Y. Joshi traces Christianity’s influence on the American experim

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Peter Hessler @peterhessler. @NewYorker For @KGNU we discuss here what may be learned from how China managed and appears to have controlled #Coronavirus. #COVID19. Hessler has been teaching and living with his wife, the journalist Leslie T Chang, and their family in Sichuan throughout the pandemic. Peter Hessler joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2000. From 2000 until 2007, he was the magazine’s correspondent in China and, from 2011 to 2016, he was based in Cairo, where he covered the events of the Egyptian Arab Spring. His subjects have included archeology in both China and Egypt, a factory worker in Shenzhen, a garbage collector in Cairo, a small-town druggist in rural Colorado, and Chinese lingerie dealers in Upper Egypt. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, a small Chinese city on the Yangtze River. He is the author of six books, including a trilogy about the decade-plus that he spent in China: “,” “,”which was a Nati

@claudiacragg speaks here with @motazhmatar about his new book, The Pigeon Whispeer. It is a magical book which, nevertheless, raises such important issues such as hope, hopelessness, belonging, war, migration, love, and loss Dabbour is a 25-year-old Syrian refuge and introvert and a pigeon herder. He fled with to Berlin with Yasser, his childhood friend and the two have succeeded in finding a new home using fake passports. Dabbour is trying to learn the ropes in this new country; while trying to learn German he's fallen for his German teacher, Zara. One day, Dabbour jumps on the railway tracks to save an injured pigeon and almost gets himself killed. For this, he gets arrested by the police – and realizes how much he misses home and the birds. Yasser asks Dabbour to use his talents as a "pigeon whisperer" and steal stray pigeons to transport drugs. Dabbour agrees, then realizes it was a big mistake. Dabbour is forced to choose between his loyalty to his friend and the promise of a new "family" and doing the

@claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU with archeologist Dr. who, for over a decade, has been studying The # and its California location.  Her studies continue this year even though the festival has gone virtual due to #COVID19. Because the event requires participants to “leave no trace,” the site is according to White “an archaeologist’s worst nightmare.”  And yet she finds that #BlackRockCity is also the perfect site at which to conduct “active site” research, which looks not at ancient ruins, but at places that are currently inhabited.  How does one do archeology in a city that is at once growing and disappearing?  And what can we learn about cities from looking at one so ephemeral? In her forthcoming book, , White explains that there is something distinctive about active-site archaeology.  When conducting this type of research, one must “confront on a minute-by-minute basis the ways that the city’s residents are the creators, users, and destroyers of the city…. Black Rock City is not just a place where some

@claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU with Pawan Dhingra, @phdhingra1 author of Hyper Education Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough? In this book, Dr. Dhingra offers an up-close look at the arms race in at home/after-school learning, academic competitions – and the perceived failure of even our best schools to educate children. Dhingra offers a useful critique of how privileged families are skewing the educational system in pursuit of advantages for their kids.  He also makes a case that all of this "hyper-ness" is about achieving and exceeding the American Dream, something some immigrant communities, in particular, take very seriously. Dr. Dhingra is Professor of American Studies; Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Officer @AmherstCollege.  

speaks here for @KGNU #ItsTheEconomy with Brad Feld @bfeld. He has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding , he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad is also a co-founder of . Brad is a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. He’s written a number of books as part of the  series and writes the blogs  and . Boulder, CO, he says is important as an example right now, not not only exemplifying his , but laying out a blueprint that other communities can follow.   

Fire season is upon us and for @KGNU Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with @Dani_Anguiano and @alastairgee for an update on their reporting work for The Guardian @guardian about the devastating in California of nearly two years ago. is the harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century. There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.

@claudiacragg speaks here with J Chester Johnson about a side of his grandfather, Lonnie Burch, that he never knew and only discovered late in his own life. His new book is and is he says a 'story of reconciliation'. The 1919 Elaine Race Massacre, arguably the worst in US history (see more details below), has been widely unknown for the better part of a century, thanks to the whitewashing of history. In 2008, Johnson was asked to write the Litany of Offense and Apology for a National Day of Repentance, where the Episcopal Church formally apologized for its role in transatlantic slavery and related evils. In his research, Johnson happened upon a treatise by historian and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells on the Elaine Massacre, where more than a hundred and possibly hundreds of African-American men, women, and children perished at the hands of white posses, vigilantes, and federal troops in rural Phillips County, Arkansas. Johnson would discover that his beloved grandfather had been a member of the KKK and

A graphic novel adaptation has just been published of This important work by Sandford and Cynthia Levinson is disccussed here for  @KGNU with @ClaudiaCragg in view of the fact that, now, each day seems to bring another Constitutional crisis in the US.    With so many contentious issues seemingly shaking the very foundation of its Democracy today, many citizens are asking, "How did we get here?"     by author Cynthia Levinson and constitutional law scholar Sanford Levinson and illustrated by Ally Shwed, selects current problems and ties them directly to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers' thoughts and challenges. The book also offers alternative ideas pulled directly from other countries' governments. The medium of graphic novel brings these ideas to life and makes this book a fun, digestible lesson in history and civics.    The idea of using graphic novel to convey important but somewhat dense information to engaged readers is a growing trend. Titles such as Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone, Th

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU with Lacy Crawford @lacy_crawford about her memoir, One night in October 1990, a young Lacy Crawford took a phone call at her dorm, surprised to hear an older boy pleading for her to come help him. Crawford was mystified but convinced there must be a reason, so she slipped across her boarding school campus and met the boy at his dorm window. When she climbed inside, she was confronted by the boy and his roommate, both stripped down to their underwear. That night would haunt her for decades to come. Crawford emphasizes that the sexual assault she experienced was not unusual. “It’s so simple, what happened at St. Paul’s. It happens all the time,” she writes. “First, they refused to believe me. Then they shamed me. Then they silenced me.” She describes St. Paul’s as a lauded, sometimes lonely place where privileged teens were obsessed with their academic futures. (The author, when faced with the possibility of not returning for her senior year, pleaded with her

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Larry Tye about his new book, . This is a definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, according to Tye, based on first-ever review of his personal and professional papers, medical and military records, and recently unsealed transcripts of his closed-door Congressional hearings. is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book, a biography of Senator Joe McCarthy, will be released on July 7, 2020 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His last book was a biography of Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, U.S. senator, and presidential candidate. Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon explores RFK’s extraordinary transformation from cold warrior to fiery leftist. In the long history of American demagogues, from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. The term "McCarthyism" is used to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by associatio

When our younger son finished reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar some years ago, he commented that it was not only an extraordinary literary work but also, of course, a source for rare insight into the complications of mental illness. This reminded me  of a conversation (not so much a formal interview, you understand) I had a few years ago with the fabulous and extraordinary author, Joanne Greenberg, who as Hannah Green wrote I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. This work is a fictionalized depiction of Joanne Greenberg’s own treatment experience decades ago at Chestnut Lodge Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, during which she was in psychoanalytic treatment with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. The book takes place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, at a time when Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Clara Thompson were establishing the basis for the interpersonal school of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, focusing specifically, though by no means exclusively, on the treatment of schizophrenia. Greenberg ha

With all the #Chinabashing going on, it's perhaps important to remember why the #PRC, its people and culture rather than its national entity, matters to the rest of the world. It is easy to lose sight of now but that is why perhaps in June 2020 it's a good time to reprise a previously broadcast interview with Simon Winchester @simonwwriter.  @claudiacragg speaks here with Winchester about Joseph Needham and 'The Needham Question'. The subject caused the most tremendous brouhaha in The New York Times over a decade ago (). At the time, I commented that I can only think those who responded with such vitriol to Winchester knew absolutely nothing at all about Winchester and his work, nor anything about the subject of his new book. In this latest opus, the award-winning Foreign Correspondent, Simon Winchester returns with the remarkable story of the growth of a great nation, China, and the eccentric and adventurous scientist who defined its essence for the world in his multi-volume opus, 'Science and Civilization i

@claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU with about the updated and expanded edition of his book with Donald L Bartlett, a New York Times No. 1 bestseller -  [Mission Point Press: June 15, 2020]. Long before COVID-19 ravaged the economy, millions of middle-class Americans were struggling with another crisis — stagnant earnings, unaffordable health care and the prospect of an impoverished retirement. In this work, winning reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele explain with human stories and authoritative statistical findings how specific actions by Washington and Wall Street are systematically dismantling the middle class.,  Steele is the co-author of eight previous books, including two New York Times bestsellers and has extensive experience in reporting and writing about the most important issues of our time.  Topics covered include;- Income inequality: How government policies have created the most unequal society in America in 100 years, and why the wealth gap is widening. America’s middle class: How

Walter Schaub speaks  here with @claudiacragg for @KGNU @KGNUNews about ethics in government and the filing of a complaint with regard to the management of #COVID19 and a member of the administration.  Schaub is a senior advisor to CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington who previously served as director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE). He is a frequent cable news contributor and has also worked at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Campaign Legal Center    

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Nancy Maclean @NancyMacLean5 on her book #DemocracyInChains. What follows is a reprise of an interview a while back with Maclean about a book she wrote which offers an explosive exposé of the Right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education and change the US Constitution.  While Maclean's 'Democracy in Chains' was much vilified, it is surely becoming more clear to many that the content in her book was not only spot on when she wrote it, but can be seen to be a very specific foreshadowing of what has come to pass since.  Because, behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government, Maclean maintains that there is a political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has, she argues, been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires, she says, did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in

Claudia Cragg, @claudiacragg (all comments greatly welcomed) speaks here with , @iamaraindogtoo filmmaker and documentarian. He is the author of several books addressing American history, including: , and and more. His new film is called

@claudiacragg speaks with  @davedaley3, author: "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count" & "Unrigged: How Americans Battled Back To Save Democracy," ex-EIC @salon Following Ratf**ked, his “extraordinary timely and undeniably important” (New York Times Book Review) exposé of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation’s leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters’ revelations. With his trademark journalistic rigor and narrative flair, Daley reports on Pennsylvania’s dramatic defeat of a gerrymander using the research of ingenious mathematicians and the Michigan millennial who launched a statewide redistricting revolution with a Facebook post. He tells the stories of activist groups that paved the way for 2018’s historic blue wave and won crucial battles for voting rights in Florida, Maine, Utah, and nationwide. In an age of polarization, Un