January 17, 2020
“If you want to reduce violence, you need to focus directly on the violence.”
Thomas Abt is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and author of Bleeding Out, The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence–and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets. We talk about why violence must be tackled first, how it is the lynchpin of concentrated urban poverty, and what effective violence reduction strategies should look like.
December 20, 2019
“It’s important to be practical and hard-nosed about equality and justice.”
Robert L. Tsai is a law professor at American University and an expert in constitutional law. His latest book, Practical Equality, is a call to arms for equality and social progress. We discuss why equality is essential for citizens in a democracy and how the law can often serve as the primary mechanism to ensure justice.
November 29, 2019
“The search for truth is its own reward.”
David Greising is the President and CEO of the Better Government Association, Illinois’ only non-partisan full-service watchdog organization. Through investigative reporting and policy advocacy, BGA works towards transparency, efficiency, and accountability in government. We discuss the value of exposing corruption and empowering citizens to engage and act.
August 9, 2019
“The cash bail system is a humanitarian crisis that unfolds in real time.”
Robing Steinberg is the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, an unprecedented national effort to combat mass incarceration by transforming the pretrial system in the US. We discuss how cash bail has been used to incarcerate millions of innocent people, what the collateral cost of this system is to our society, and how we should reconceive it.
June 14, 2019
“Just bearing witness is important.”
Jackie Zammuto leads the programmatic work in the United States of WITNESS, an organization that makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. We discuss how to use video more strategically and effectively for change, and how videos bring a human perspective to big complex challenges.
March 8, 2019
“Without housing, nothing else is truly possible.”
Maria Foscarinis is the founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and has advocated for solutions to homelessness at the national level since 1985. We discuss why housing is a human right, how criminalization of the homeless is both perverse and ineffective, and examine the leading reasons behind the affordable housing crisis.
March 2, 2019
“Education is not a process of checking a box along the course of someone's life but a deep investment in the future.”
Max Kenner is the founder and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative, a college that is spread across six interconnected prisons in New York State. We discuss the enduring value of the liberal arts, the immense power of an education on reducing recidivism, and the critical importance of deep investments in human beings.
February 22, 2019
"All the people on death row are poor."
Stephen Bright served as the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, and is currently a lecturer at Yale Law School, as well as professor of practice at Georgia State College of Law. We discuss the death penalty in the United States and its relationship to poverty, race, and disadvantage.