Sociologist Peter Moskos discusses two troubled institutions at the heart of the American criminal justice system: police departments and prisons. Moskos served as a police officer in Baltimore, Maryland and then wrote, "Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District."
Media scholar and co-editor of "Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It," Victor Pickard, discusses the severe crisis facing journalism in the United States and its meaning for democracy.
Anothropologist Roger Rouse discusses the popular Disney film series, "Pirates of the Caribbean," as a way to answer the question, “How do major media corporations use images of piracy as they work to shape the ways we engage the world?”
Les Leopold discusses the state of the economy, the job crisis, and financial deregulation, while raising questions about the adequacy of the labor movement and the left's response to these developments.
Historian Susan Reverby discusses her recent discovery that the U.S. Public Health Service, as part of a study on the transmission of syphilis, intentionally infected nearly 700 people with the disease in Guatemala during the late 1940s.
Peter Richardson discusses his book, "A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America." Richardson’s study follows the birth, life, and death of this San Francisco magazine that in the 1960s and 1970s helped to revive American muckracking journalism.
Historian Nell Irvin Painter is the author of "The History of White People," which traces the origin of a white racial identity in world history, with particular attention to the role the United States played in solidifying “whiteness.”
Georgetown University historian Joseph A. McCartin discusses the history of public sector union activism in the U.S. during the 20th century and the current struggle to preserve union rights in Wisconsin.
Historian Keith Wailoo discusses the role of race in constructing scientists’ and the public’s evolving understanding of cancer in the United States during the twentieth century.
