In her new book of essays, author Janet Cheatham Bell shares her unique insights into lessons learned from growing up black in America. Henry Louis Gates Jr. called her a “pioneer.” She talks about how much progress has, or hasn’t, been made in race re…

Though it’s dropped out of the headlines recently, the situation in Ukraine and Russia is remarkably dangerous for the west. And according to our guest, Patrick L Smith, columnist for Salon and a veteran of the International Herald Tribune, most of the…

Teachers today face intense pressure to avoid politically controversial issues in their classrooms. But according to our guest, Diana Hess, author of The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education, the need to do this is great. Am…

How and when the media got put on a short corporate leash? When we had an activist FCC, it was understood that the airwaves were being leased from the public and that the public had to be served. How far we have come.
On today’s show, guest is V…

You’ve probably heard of the Christmas Truce 100 years ago between the trenches of the British and German soldiers. These were indeed brave men. Today it seems anyone with a uniform is dubbed a hero, but what about the peacemakers? On this show Adam Ho…

There is a widely recognized crisis in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education. There is a huge demand for such educated kids but a very low supply. And it’s also now known that if schools don’t grab kids interest in K-2, it probabl…

Preserving democracy is even more important than ice cream. On this show, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s, talks about his new effort to literally stamp money out of politics. As he describes, the Stamp Stampede is a campaign to stamp messages…

It’s about power: not just generation of electricity. The story of nuclear power is one of citizen power: big money and tremendous political power one one side and average citizens organizing at the local level on the other. And guess what; despite the…

Potential presidential candidate VT Senator Bernie Sanders talks about his just released 12 point Economic Agenda for America. He believes Americans are at last hungry for real solutions to our challenges. People need work, and there is a lot of work t…

As the first president Bush exclaimed after the first Gulf War, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.” Powerful political forces remain determined that we never learn any lessons from America’s disastrous …

With multiple opportunities to learn and make a course correction, it seems national Democrats remain committed to a course which has proven to be political suicide. On this show, Michael Brenner, senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic relations…

Prisons are a very old concept and it’s time to ask: Do they still work? Do they accomplish the goals for which they were created? What can we do with dangerous people if we do away with prisons, how can we protect society? Maya Schenwar is guest on th…

 After any defeat, it’s an important opportunity to listen and learn any lessons. Most of the Democratic losses in the 2014 election were among Blue Dog, “centrist” Democrats. On part one of today’s show, Elias Isquith of Salon argues that it is E…

Peter Van Buren spent 24 years at the State Department and a year in Iraq. He has great knowledge of the players in the region, and on this show we focus on what’s possible in the new war against ISIS. There are not a lot of options at this point, and …

No doubt you’ve seen the current near-worship of all things military. All men and women in the military are called heroes. But what does that really do? On this show, Will Hopkins, who was decorated for valor in Fallujah 2004 and now serves as executiv…

What happened? With the Republicans now in the driver’s seat, does this actually improve chances for Democrats in 2016? Or might that just be sour grapes talk? Guest on this discussion of New Hampshire and the nation is Republican political consultant …

On election day 2014 The Burt Cohen Show examinest the intent of America’s founders. The far right has too often gotten away with claiming the mantle of the values of America’s founders. Even Glenn Beck has stolen the title of Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamph…

Remember the boisterous chants of “We’re Number 1!” and “USA! USA” when Osama binLaden was taken out? Exceptionalism is beyond mere national pride, it is an insistence that we are above the normal rules and that we are God’s gift to the world. Of cours…

But will congress give it to them? FBI Director James Comey recently went to congress asking to change the law to enable them to get a back-door access to our cell phone and computer communications data. But according to guest Jake Laperruque, Fellow o…

There have been many clampdowns on free speech in America lately, a sudden radical and highly disturbing new trend has emerged. If you dare to criticize Israeli policies, watch out for your job. Today’s guest Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for…

You’ve probably had the gut feeling there’s more than meets the eye regarding the ISIS story. Guest today is Nicolas J. S. Davies who has done significant research and written about the subject in his book, Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion an …

Do you oppose the concentration and centralization of power and authority? Prefer natural, locally grown foods. Want top end American imperialism and militarism? Sounds like typical left stuff, right? Today there are petitions from more than 30 states …

As he embarked on a book tour in 2011, Henry Kissinger was met with protests. And you know the tour did not include  Spain or France, where there are warrants out for his arrest. Guests on this show are Joyce Horman, who blames the murder of her h…

Thomas Jefferson said: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Maybe that’s exactly why some authoritarian political interests try to ban many books. The last week of September is the annual Banned Books Week an…

Freedom is very appealing. Especially in the case of over zealous and ill focused police work. On the first part of this show, Benjamin Domenech of The Federalist talks about the mood of the so-called millennials, people born from 1980 to 2000. They de…

Ink on paper, books, have always been subversive. They lead to critical thinking. On the first part of this show, Ken Gloss,  proprietor of the internationally renowned Brattle Book Shop talks about the role of books in the 21st century. And he is…

Freedom of speech; we take it for granted. But after the Reverend Bruce Shipman wrote short, a fairly mild letter to the NYTimes, recognizing that Israels devastation of Gaza probably fanned flames of anti-Semitism, he was forced to resign from his pos…

Talk about making history! On Thursday September 18, Scotland votes on whether or not to declare independence from the United Kingdom. My guest is Bob Campbell, a Scot who is in the north of England. He doesn’t want a Yes vote because Campbell figures …

The State of Israel and it’s defenders have been very adept at intimindating Jewish Americans from speaking out against their brutality in Gaza by labeling critics as “self hating Jews.” On this show, “self respecting Jew” Eric Mann takes this charge h…

So much of what we love about American culture has roots in Africa. Today some Americans fear the unknown Islamic world of the region. But there really is nothing to fear and a lot to gain. There is a West African music and culture festival coming up o…