Bob Collins
Thursday Nov. 8, 2018
(Subject to change as events dictate)
9 a.m. – MPR News with Kerri Miller
Jeff Sessions has resigned at President Trump’s request. What does that mean for the attorney general’s office and the Mueller investigation?
Guest: Randall Eliason, law professor at George Washington School of Law
9:20 a.m. – Are women more swayed by gender or party? A recent NPR/IPSOS poll found that “partisanship is the biggest driver of differences in perceptions regarding sexual harassment and assault.”
Guests: Teresa Vescio, professor of psychology, Penn State University; Susan Chira, New York Times senior correspondent and editor, gender issues.
10 a.m.- 1A with Joshua Johnson
On November 9, 1938, violent mobs attacked Jewish homes and businesses in Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. The pogrom is known as Kristsallnacht, or the “night of broken glass.” Nearly 100 Jews were murdered, tens of thousands taken to concentration camps and thousands of synagogues and businesses were destroyed, looted and desecrated.
Eighty years later, anti-Semitic actions are on the rise in the United States. A shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in late October was the most violent incident, but cemeteries have been vandalized, and swastikas painted on community centers. Slurs and conspiratorial whispers spread online.
In his book ‘Night,’ Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote that “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” The youngest survivors are now in their 70s. As the years since the atrocities of that time pass, and as firsthand survivors grow older, how can the world keep remembering what must never be forgotten? As Wiesel also wrote: “For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”
Guests: Irene “Reni” Butter, Holocaust survivor; Author of the memoir “Shores Beyond Shores: From Holocaust To Hope, My True Story“; Alexandra Zapruder, author of Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust; Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
11 a.m. – MPR News at 11
Climate change was not a central issue in the 2018 midterm elections, despite the explosive study from the IPCC. The report signals that we’re at a point where we can no longer put this off, but for many the consequences of climate change still feel far away. What efforts are being made to address climate change in this political environment?
Guests: J. Drake Hamilton, Fresh Energy’s science policy director; Richard B. Alley, geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University.
11:45 a.m.- Host Mike Edgerly will talk to the executive director of the Raptor CenterJulia Ponder about how using lead bullets to hunt can harm the ecosystem.
12 p.m. – MPR News Presents
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who spoke Monday at the National Press Club about her new book, “Leadership in Turbulent Times.”
1 p.m. – The Takeaway
Newly elected district attorneys and ballot measures across the country are tackling criminal justice reform.
2 p.m. – BBC NewsHour
Ahead of a proposed ceasefire at the end of November, a battle is raging for control of a vital Yemeni port. And Iraq’s prime minister picks five ministers from online applications from the public. And the latest in our special series of reports on climate change.
3 p.m. – All Things Considered
The future of the Affordable Care Act; US-North Korea talks stall; what sadness looks like in the brain; 40 years of the 401-K; Climate Cast with Paul Huttner.
6:00 p.m. – Marketplace
Extracting natural gas by fracking has returned to England. A look at how the process will play out in the face of delays, protest and much debate.
6:30 p.m. – The Daily
After more than a year of mocking his attorney general, President Trump has forced Jeff Sessions to resign. The timing — only hours after the midterm elections — is not a coincidence.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, who covers national security and federal investigations for The New York Times.
7 p.m. – The World
The president’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the appointment of Matthew Whitaker to replace him on an interim basis, is raising concern over the future of the Russia investigation. Democrats are calling the move an attempt by the White House to impede independent counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing inquiry into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Host Marco Werman talks with Harvard University legal scholar Lawrence Tribe, who thinks Whitaker’s appointment is illegal.
Another question we’re tackling today: is President Trump behaving like an authoritarian leader? That’s what some of the president’s critics are saying in the wake of the Sessions firing and the president’s attacks on the media at his press conference yesterday. But is it really fair to compare Trump to authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Marco asks Sheri Berman, who studies democracies and authoritarian regimes at Barnard College in New York.
Also on today’s show, we hear from Anna Eskamani, who’s just been elected to the Florida House. When she takes office, she will become Florida’s first Iranian-American state lawmaker.
Plus, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency has a new “artificial intelligence” TV news anchor. And as you’ll hear on the show, he doesn’t quite sound like a real human.
8 p.m. – Fresh Air
Journalist Robert Worth is a contributor for The New York Times Magazine. In September he traveled to Yemen, a place he first traveled to 12 years ago. His story How The War in Yemen Became a Bloody Stalemate – and the worst humanitarian crisis in the world was the cover story of last Sunday’s edition of the magazine. He’ll talk about the origins of the war there, the extent of U.S. involvement, and what he saw when he was there.
