Gun Rights and Gun Control
October 13, 2017
Episode 31
As the nation struggles to come to terms with the mass shooting in Las Vegas, host Neal Conan delves into the long history of the debate between gun rights and gun control going back to the Founding Fathers who required every adult white male to own a musket, and bring it to musters where it was inspected and registered. On the next Truth Politics and Power, how a duty for community self defense evolved into an individual right to bear arms and how the laws changed with both weapons technology and the rise of the National Rifle Association. Plus restrictions on research into guns and gun deaths
Brinkmanship
October 6, 2017
Episode 30
As President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un exchange insults and threats, host Neal Conan puts the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang into historical and intellectual context in a Brinksmanship Edition of Truth Politics and Power. Conversations about strategist Thomas Schelling and the risks of gaming nuclear conflict; Josef Stalin, Harry Truman and the lessons of the first crisis of the Cold War; and how hyperbolic rhetoric and apocalyptic threats affect the calculus of deterrence.
Politics of Disaster
September 29, 2017
Episode 29
As people in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico struggle to recover from storms, the Politics of Disaster is the next edition of Truth, Politics and Power. Host Neal Conan with conversations about how federal policy contributes to catastrophe, how an enormous flood in 1927 changed the way Americans think about the size and role of government , and the secret history of FEMA, the agency created to manage the ultimate disaster…nuclear apocalypse.
Ethnic Cleansing
September 22, 2017
Episode 28
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled across the border of Myanmar…they say the military is mounting a campaign of murder, rape and arson that a senior UN official calls a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. On the next Truth Politics and Power, Host Neal Conan explores how and why nations unleash mass violence on minorities, what’s happening in the fledgling democracy of Myanmar, and, after Rwanda and Kosovo and too many others, what we’ve learned about how to answer the atrocities of ethnic cleansing.
The United States and Iran
September 15, 2017
Episode 27
The United States and Iran confront each other in Yemen and the Gulf, while the longtime enemies act as uncomfortable allies against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, President Trump faces a crucial decision on the nuclear agreement he’s long vowed to tear up. Host Neal Conan explores the consequences of that decision, and delves into two crucial periods in the troubled history between the US and the Islamic Republic..…The Iran-Iraq War, when the US sided with Iran’s bitterest enemy…and the Invasion of Iraq, which left Iran as the principal beneficiary.
Politics of Denial
September 8, 2017
Episode 26
Legions of lobbyists and lawyers obscured the facts on tobacco and cancer for decades…even when tobacco companies knew their products caused cancer. Host Neal Conan talks with writer Alan Schwarz, who found that the football industry followed the same pattern in response to discoveries about the long term effects of concussion, and with Science Historian Naomi Oreskes, who argues that the chorus of climate deniers also follows tobacco’s lead, and that the result, will be global calamity.