So many people have suffered as a result of the pandemic. But there’s one group who may pay the price for an especially long time: America’s children. As schools start to reopen this spring, and federal funds begin to flow into states and municipalities, what can we do to make up for kids’ social, emotional, and academic loss?

Susanna Loeb, director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown, has some ideas. At the top of the list? Tutoring. To help spread what she and her team call “high-impact” tutoring to a wider range of communities, they’ve created The National Student Support Accelerator, a one-stop resource for schools and teachers to develop effective, long-term tutoring infrastructure in schools. On this episode, Sarah talks with Susanna about the definition of “high impact tutoring,” how to make it scale, and why it’s exactly what America’s students need right now. 

You can learn more about the National Student Support Accelerator here: [https://studentsupportaccelerator.com/]

You can read more about the story of its creation here: [https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-04/accelerator]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/11bP3xkMf8t3w3xh_IUXey_m6bdr4FX-g/view?usp=sharing]

'High-Impact’ Tutoring: Why It’s Exactly What America’s Students Need

2020 was a year defined by loss. Loss of life, of jobs, of opportunities. On this episode Sarah talks with Juliet Hooker, a political theorist and professor at Brown who has been thinking a lot about how feelings of loss affect not just our psyches, but our politics. Her newest book project, tentatively titled “Black Grief/White Grievance,” aims to shed light on how exactly these feelings intersect with matters of race, class, and history, and how they ripple out to our politics (for both good and bad) today.

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ep0OFfCll8LbajR2ITb8x_b2cFVW2dd9/view?usp=sharing]

Grief, Grievance, and Race in American Politics

This is the fourth and final part in a special series from Trending Globally exploring the housing crisis in the United States, and in Rhode Island in particular. The crisis has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but as we’ll show, it’s a problem that has been with us for much, much longer.

In this episode, we delve into Brown University's complicated relationship with the residential communities it touches. We explore the idea of housing not as a commodity but as a basic human right, and talk with people who are working to make that idea a reality. And we recommend ways that activists, politicians, and residents everywhere we can work toward equitably and affordably housing all Americans.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here: [evicted-in-ri.com/#/]

You can listen to Parts 1, 2, and 3 here: [soundcloud.com/watsoninstitute/sets/less-to-lean-on-housing]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U6ui1xYSxfY8xmJwrFXcibPf1WVTohgV/view?usp=sharing]

To learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts, visit: [watson.brown.edu/news/podcasts]

Less to Lean On, Part 4

In April, President Biden announced that the US will pull all of its troops out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. On this episode Dan talks with Watson Senior Fellow Stephen Kinzer about what this withdrawal might mean for Afghanistan -- and for the US. As Stephen makes clear, this news brings up questions about US foreign policy that are much bigger than any one conflict or country, and that will have ramifications for the entire world.

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1auPEKyUG74_5fSaGHsJK-rixE90E0NNi/view?usp=sharing]

You can learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts here: [https://watson.brown.edu/news/podcasts]

Will US Withdrawal from Afghanistan Mark the ‘Ebbing of an Imperial Tide’?

On this episode, Watson Economics Professor Glenn Loury talks with writer Thomas Chatterton Williams. Williams’s 2010 memoir ‘Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd,’ combined cultural criticism with his own personal story of falling in (and out) of love with hip hop culture growing up. His 2019 book ‘Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race,’ continued his exploration of issues at the intersection of race, culture, family, and his own story. Whatever your views, he and Glenn's discussion will be sure to challenge your assumptions about race, class, and identity in America. 

You can learn about and purchase 'Losing My Cool' here: [www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/30424…0143119623/]

You can learn more about and purchase 'Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race' here: [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/617884/self-portrait-in-black-and-white-by-thomas-chatterton-williams/9780393608861]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1BgSLfw03l5_ti8lxZFYfipOusT-k0Z/view?usp=sharing]

'Unlearning Race' with Thomas Chatterton Williams

In the past 6 months (or maybe the last 5 years) Americans have been thinking about democracy and its fragility in entirely new ways. At the same time -- whether we’re talking about Poland, Turkey, or India -- it feels like democracy is on the edge around the world. But how big are these threats to democracy, actually? And how helpful is it to talk about all these different countries' experiences in the same discussion? 

On this episode Sarah Baldwin '87 talks with Rob Blair, a political scientist at Watson and founder of the Democratic Erosion Consortium. He’s been thinking about all these questions, and thankfully he has answers. 

You can learn more about the Democratic Erosion Consortium here: [https://www.democratic-erosion.com/]

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here: [https://watson.brown.edu/news/podcasts]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BilnjHGXlg8n2cbmjErS7TFTXwErhlxu/view?usp=sharing]

Do America’s Political Parties Need Couples Therapy? (And Other Questions About Democracy)

On this episode, we’re sharing one of our favorite conversations from another podcast produced by the Watson Institute: ‘The Rhodes Center Podcast,’ hosted by political economist Mark Blyth. Mark recently talked with economist and Brown professor John Friedman about 'Bidenomics': what it is, what it isn't, and what it can tell us about our precarious economic recovery.

You can watch the video of John and Mark's full conversation here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brxJXr7V1dE]

You can subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast here: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rhodes-center-podcast/id1436607891]

You can read a transcript of this episode here:[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bNZH_pXo54ImSiwRiEfJxRsR_L7oEd_f/view?usp=sharing]

What Exactly Is 'Bidenomics'?

Between Covid-19 and America’s racial reckoning over that past 12 months, there’s never been a more important time to understand how race and racism affect both the reporting and the consumption of news in America. In the leadup to Juneteenth, Watson held an event exploring these issues with some of the leading voices covering race today: New York Times reporter John Eligon and CNN Senior Correspondent Sara Sidner. They were interviewed by former President of CNN Jon Klein ’80. It was a fascinating event that we thought our listeners at Trending Globally would love, so on this episode we’re broadcasting an edited version of their conversation. 

[Link to video of their full conversation forthcoming]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZWcis5385gDbqZS_5C8BRI-yl2fCuAA/view?usp=sharing]

Reporting on Race in a Year of Racial Reckoning

SOUNDCLOUD LISTENERS: We've moved Trending Globally to a new podcast platform and new website, so starting this fall, episodes will no longer be available on Soundcloud. You can still listen by subscribing to Trending Globally on your favorite podcast app, or online here: [trending-globally.captivate.fm/]. Thanks!

The past 18 months have been a strange time for art lovers. Museums and galleries have sat empty. Artistic communities have, like all of us, learned to live in isolation. At the same time, though, there’s been a revolution in how we think of public space in our cities and towns. Streets, parks, and even alleyways have turned into our storefronts, our classrooms, and our museums. 

What do these changes mean for the art world, and for arts’ relationship to the rest of the world?

On this episode, Trending Globally partnered with ‘Providence Curates’ to explore this question. Providence Curates is a nonprofit made up of artists, writers, and curators, dedicated to expanding and diversifying artistic communities in the region and to reimagining how art can enter the public realm. 

This conversation was put together for PVDFest Ideas 2021, an Arts and Ideas festival in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Guests on this week’s show: 

Jonny Skye is a gallerist based in Providence, RI, and a board member of Providence Curates. 
Spencer Evans is an artist, a professor of drawing at RISD, and a board member of Providence Curates. 
Melaine Ferdinand King is a 4th-year doctoral candidate in Africana Studies at Brown University
Judith Tolnick Champa is an artist, curator, and founder of Providence Curates and the Providence Biennale. 
‘Providence Curates: Cultivating a Transformative Experiment,’ is an offshoot of the Providence Biennale. You can learn more on their website, and contact them directly at providencebiennial@gmail.com. 

Special thanks to Stephanie Fortunato, Director, and Dr. Micah Salkind, Special Projects Manager of the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism (ACT) PVDFest Ideas 2021, for making this collaboration possible. You can find a list of all of this year’s PVDFest Ideas events (both live and virtual) on their website.

Expand - Ignite - Invite: What Does a More Inclusive Art World Look Like?

SOUNDCLOUD LISTENERS: We've moved Trending Globally to a new podcast platform and new website, so starting this fall, episodes will no longer be available on Soundcloud. You can still listen by subscribing to Trending Globally on your favorite podcast app, or online here: [trending-globally.captivate.fm/]. Thanks!

Remember when talking about the weather was boring? Not so anymore. Extreme weather events are becoming more common, and more extreme, with no sign of letting up. 

On this episode Sarah Baldwin ’87 talks with homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem about what these changes mean for humans: Where should we live? How should we live? How should we think about our place on this planet? 

Juliette Kayyem served under President Obama as an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she teaches crisis management and homeland security. Her upcoming book, The Devil Never Sleeps, reframes how to think about crisis management in an age of disasters, from the level of the individual up through the federal government. And if a conversation with an expert like this sounds too depressing, don’t worry: talking with Juliette is anything but. 

Transcript coming soon.

Extreme Weather is Getting Worse. How Do We Learn to Live With It?

This episode is a little different than the type of conversation you normally have on the show. 

Last year, Mark spoke with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity, a long-run take on why humanity changed so little for so long, and then all of sudden changed tremendously, mostly for the better. 

It’s a fascinating idea, but of course nobody actually experiences that long-run journey, or compares their daily life to distant ancestors. People typically think on the much shorter timescale of a lifetime, maybe a generation or two. 

At that scale, for many people in America today, it can seem like much of life has gotten worse, and are continuing to do so. 

Put another way: it looks like the American Dream is dead.

But is that true? What does it mean for a dream to die, anyway? And if it is dead, is there a way to revive it? 

These sound like questions for a philosopher. 

Someone who has thought about this a great deal is Josh Preiss. He’s a philosopher, Professor at Minnesota State University, and author of Just Work For All: The American Dream in the 21st Century. 

On this episode, Mark talks with Josh about the ideas behind what we call ‘The American Dream,’ and looks at the reality behind its decline: what’s gotten worse for who, and what’s needed to make things better. 

Find more information about all our episodes, including transcripts, on our website [https://rhodes-center-podcast.captivate.fm/]

Learn more about and purchase Josh Preiss’s book: [https://www.amazon.com/Just-Work-All-American-Century/dp/0367694883]

Watch Josh’s talk at the Rhodes Center: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXt1NyHscCg]

This Week in ‘Ask a Philosopher’: Is the ‘American Dream' Dead?

Rhodes Center

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