The Recount Daily Pod

Severe staff shortages at Georgia prisons have contributed to a huge spike in violence, including at least 44 likely homicides since last year. In September, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the violence and possible constitutional violations by the correctional system. Separately, a lawsuit filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights called the prison conditions “abysmal.” Sara Totonchi is the organization’...

Climate envoy John Kerry described it as “the last best chance the world has" — this weekend world leaders and thousands of negotiators, journalists, and activists converge on Glasgow for COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. In the span of two weeks, can world leaders pull off what they never have, committing to realistic carbon-cutting policies in order to limit the planet's disastrous warming? Those who fear ...

George Will was the first political columnist to call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment, and he's lent a leading conservative voice to the Washington Post and other publications ever since. Most recently, he’s out with a collection of his work — "American Happiness and Discontents" — first published between 2008 and 2020. He joins the podcast to talk about polarization in America; former President Donald Trump's hold on the...

Andrew Yang drew attention to universal basic income as a Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election, and earlier this year in his run for mayor of New York City. Since then, he’s announced he’s leaving the Democratic Party to start a new one. The Forward Party will back certain candidates — Democrats and Republicans alike, Yang says — in favor of open primaries and ranked-choice voting, two policies he believes would f...

More than 40 million Americans are in debt for getting an education. The federal government holds $1.6 trillion in student loan debts, a sum roughly on par with Canada’s GDP. President Biden has canceled billions of dollars of debt, but plenty more remains. Plus, a freeze on payments, put in place by President Trump at the start of the pandemic, expires in late January. Unless Biden extends it, as he has done before, loan repayment...

In 2013, Mark and DeAnne Stidham founded LuLaRoe, a multi-level marketing firm that still sells women's clothing today. Pushing a feminist image, the company claims to give women the opportunity to become independent retailers. But it's faced plenty of lawsuits, including one from the state of Washington accusing it of operating a pyramid scheme. Amazon's documentary series "LuLaRich" uncovers the company's glamorous rise and empty...

Nearly two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is seeing a sustained drop in new COVID cases. And recent forecast models by researchers advising the CDC suggest we could see a steady decline in cases throughout the winter and into spring, rather than a seasonal surge. Is the country really edging toward an end to the crisis? Two leading voices in COVID research and analysis — Dr. Bill Ku (retired scientist and a former senior lecture...

Surprise: very little of the plastic you dutifully put in your recycling bin ends up actually being used again. The costs to successful recycling are prohibitive. And even then, recycling is a market with fewer and fewer buyers. So how can we really cut down on waste? Michael Cyr is the co-founder of Cup Zero, a company that seeks to cut down on waste, starting with all those cups we use and throw away at public events. He joins Th...

A presidential assassination, a devastating earthquake and criminal gangs engaging in mass kidnappings. The problems plaguing Haiti today are many — and they’re often misunderstood. How can the U.S. and the international community help bring stability and economic renewal to the country? Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and publisher of The Haitian Times, joins The Recount Daily Pod to share his insights.

The iconic Miss America pageant turned 100 this year, having crowned dozens of women who proudly went on to represent the institution across the U.S. But the contest was not without its controversies, including years of forcing women to walk across the stage in swimsuits. Is Miss America still relevant? Today we're talking with Amy Argetsinger, editor and staff writer for the Washington Post and author of "There She Was: The Secret...

The pandemic has exposed glaring inequalities in the healthcare industry. From access to medicine and providers to a lack of trust between doctors and patients, COVID revealed that systemic racism has a dramatic impact on the health and well-being of minority communities. What can be done to fix this? Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of MLK Community Healthcare, joined us to share her experiences and insights.

The infamous prison camp at the US Navy Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was opened in early 2002 to house alleged terrorists the U.S. apprehended in Afghanistan. The camp became notorious as a symbol of U.S. human rights abuses. President Joe Biden has pledged to finally close it. Will he succeed? Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, joins us today to break it all down.

Line 3, a once-decommissioned oil pipeline, was put into operation again earlier this month. The $4 billion dollar project, announced in 2014, met with fierce opposition from both environmentalists and Indigenous American tribes. Now, it's transporting over 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to the American Midwest. Nick Martin, editor of the Indigenous Affairs desk at High Country News — and a member of the Sappo...

Facebook was all over the news this week for good reason: They knew they were harming our kids and they did it anyway. An explosive series published by The Wall Street Journal last week revealed the extent to which Facebook maintained silence while fully aware that flaws in its platform were hurting its users. Georgia Wells, one of the authors of that series, joins us to share her thoughts.

 One of the few Trump administration policies that President Joe Biden has kept in place is a tough approach toward China. For one, Trump's tariffs are still in place. But China's recent military demonstrations against Taiwan haven't helped ease tensions. What does the future hold for US-China relations? Yukon Huang, a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins us to share his insight...

When New Yorker Staff Writer Evan Osnos, a veteran foreign correspondent, returned to the U.S. in 2013 he found a country that was unrecognizable from the one he'd left 11 years earlier. Suddenly, it was a place with deep political fissures and little to no common ground. Evan's new book "Wildland: The Making of America's Fury" is the result of his efforts to explain what had happened.

On September 15th, the first all-civilian spaceflight took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The commercial mission run by SpaceX successfully reached orbit and splashed down in the Atlantic three days later. Could the future of spaceflight be within reach for the non-wealthy? Christian Davenport, staff writer at The Washington Post, joins us to break it all down.

Big Tech wields enormous power in today's global economy, from driving advances in technology to influencing our political and cultural conversations. Should that power be more tightly regulated and if so, how? Cat Zakrzewski, technology policy reporter at The Washington Post, joins us to share her insights.

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