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Science fiction is full of stories about communication and contact with civilizations beyond the stars.  Andrew Siemion leads a multi-national effort to scan the heavens for indications of intelligent life. Dr. Andrew Siemion is an astrophysicist and director of the Berkeley Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research Center. His research interests include high-energy time-variable celestial phenomena, astronomical instrumentation and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Siemion is the Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen program, the “largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.” In 2018, he was named the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and was elected to the International Academy of Astronautics as a Corresponding Member for Basic Sciences. In September 2015, he testified on the current status of astrobiology to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the United States Congress. He is jointly affiliated with Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Malta.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is one of the cruel realities of life for every nation and every individual: we all suffer loss and disappointment.  Maggie Smith is a poet whose new book offers wisdom—and hope—for anyone who knows that pain. Smith is the author of four books of poetry, including “Good Bones,” “The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison” and “Lamp of the Body.”  Her latest book, “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change,” a collection of essays and quotes, was released in October.  She is also the author of three prizewinning chapbooks.  Her poems are widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, POETRY, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  In 2016, her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.  Public Radio International called it “the official poem of 2016.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the pantheon of American presidents, perhaps none was better prepared for the job than Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Susan Eisenhower shares with us the principles that guided Ike in war and in peace. Eisenhower is the CEO and Chairman of The Eisenhower Group, Inc., a Washington D.C. based consulting company founded in 1986, which has provided strategic counsel on business development, public affairs and communications projects for more than twenty-five years.  She is the Chairman Emeritus at the Eisenhower Institute of Gettysburg College, where she served as president twice.  She has also had a distinguished career as a policy analyst and has been a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Distinguished Fellow at the Nixon Center, now the Center for National Interest.  She is the author of the recently published biography, “How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions.”  In addition to “How Ike Led,” Eisenhower has written four trade press books, two of which were on regional best seller lists and has co-authored or co-edited four other books on international security issues and has authored hundreds of op-eds for newspapers such as the Washington Post and the LA Times.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whatever the final count of fatalities is in the United States from the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost is already far too high.  Dr. Ashish Jha reminds us that there are still simple things that Americans can do to stay safe, to stay healthy, and to help fight the pandemic. Jha is a practicing physician and is the Dean of the Brown School of Public Health and professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice after serving as the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and teaching at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.  He has been recognized as a global expert on pandemic preparedness and response in addition to health policy research and practice.  He has led groundbreaking research around Ebola and is now on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response, leading national and international analysis of key issues and advising state and federal policy makers. Jha has published more than two hundred original research publications in prestigious journals including the BMJ and New England Journal of Medicine and is a frequent contributor to a range of public media. He has conducted extensive research on improving the quality of health care and the reduction of its costs, focusing on the impact of public health policy both nationally and globally.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pandemic, social unrest–Americans of every age are coping with the mental health consequences of this era.  Dr. Gayani DeSilva cautions that the challenges of being a child or adolescent currently poses special health risks. DeSilva has been a psychiatrist for 15 years and focusses on enhancing the mental health of children and adolescents and their families.  Much of her work addresses the complex array of needs with adolescent and young adult criminal and violent offenders to understand the interplay between mental illness, societal factors, and interpersonal issues.  She is the author of “A Psychiatrist’s Guide: Helping Parents Reach Their Depressed Tween,” and “A Psychiatrist’s Guide: Stop Teen Addiction Before It Starts.”  DeSilva obtained her medical training at Albany Medical College and completed her internship at Brown University, and her residency at Harvard University.  She holds numerous awards and citations, and currently is on volunteer faculty at the University of California-Irvine and is Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Inland Empire Health Plan.  DeSilva also co-hosts the podcast, “Chat and Chai,” which consists of 13 episodes, including “A Candid Conversation on Racism,” “A Discussion on Suicide, Warning Signs, Myths and More,” and “COVID-19 & Loneliness.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COVID-19 has put America’s top doctors on the frontlines of a battle to save lives.  Dr. Megan Ranney spends her days at the front, working in an urban emergency room where her training in public health and emergency medicine give her unique insights about the pandemic and the nation’s response. Ranney is a practicing emergency physician and researcher, focusing on the intersection between digital health, violence prevention, and public health.  She is the current Warren Alpert Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Alpert Medical School of Brown University.  Ranney is also the founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health and Chief Research Officer for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine, the country’s only non-profit committed to using the public health approach to reduce firearm injury.  She a founding partner of GetUsPPE.org, dedicated to matching donors to health systems in need of protective equipment.  She completed her internship and residency in Emergency Medicine, Master of Public Health, and fellowship in Injury Prevention Research at Brown University.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd, rejecting racism in all its forms. Tricia Rose explains that structural racism has a long history in the United States—and so do the efforts to combat it. Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale and Brown University, Rose authored “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America,” “Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy,” and “The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters.” She sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc.. Focusing on issues related to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings. She co-hosts the weekly “The Tight Rope” podcast with Dr. Cornel West, covering a range of topics from pop culture and art and music, to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The artist’s role in society is to challenge us, to shine a mirror on our strengths and to expose our weaknesses.  Through a remarkable body of work—poetry, visual arts, rigorous scholarship on race and society, as well as ground breaking work in comic books, Eve Ewing does just that. Ewing is an Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.  She is a qualitative sociologist of education whose work is centered around two primary issues.  First, how racism and other large-scale structures of social inequality impact the everyday lives and experiences of young people, and second, the ways public school systems serve to interrupt or perpetuate these social problems, and the role educators, policymakers, families, community members, and young people themselves play in understanding, acknowledging, and disrupting them.  Ewing’s scholarship, community work, and classroom teaching are aimed at expanding the ways that urban school stakeholders, other researchers, and the broader public can be equipped to understand, respond to, and ultimately dismantle white supremacy, and to make school systems institutions of liberation, rather than oppression.  Ewing is the author of “Electric Arches,” which received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the American Library Association and and was named one of the year’s best books by NPR and the Chicago Tribune. She is also author of “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side,” “1919” and the co-author of “No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Journalists often have a front row seat as history unfolds. Over the last 30 years, David Shuster has witnessed a scandal in Arkansas that reverberated in Washington, the attacks of 911, America’s Wars and every presidential campaign in between. Shuster is an Emmy award winning broadcast journalist who is best known for his work at NBC News and MSNBC where he hosted his own news shows and served as the primary backup host for “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”  Shuster anchored the channel’s prime time coverage of breaking news stories including politics, natural disasters, and the death of Michael Jackson.  As a field correspondent, his assignments included the Iraq war, the selection of a Pope, and Hurricane Katrina.  Shuster was an evening news anchor for Al Jazeera America, where he guided the network’s political coverage.  He most recently served as Anchor and Managing Editor for i24News, where he co-anchored prime time shows with Tal Heinrich.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While national media coverage often swoops in to cover local stories with national significance, local reporters are typically there from the beginning.  They know the details.  They know the sequence of events.  And they know the community in which they are reporting.  Noelle Crombie knows Portland as well as anyone and she’s been reporting on the protests and violence in that beautiful city. Crombie is a senior staff writer at The Oregonian. She writes extensively about criminal justice issues in Oregon. She was the lead reporter on “Ghosts of Highway 20,” a narrative series and 5-part documentary that won 5 regional Emmys and Oregon’s top investigative journalism award.  Crombie led a 10-month investigation into sexual abuse allegations against a founder of Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian relief organization based in Portland.  The Oregonian’s reporting prompted the immediate resignation of the organization’s CEO, one of its top lawyers and a veteran board member.  The series won two regional Emmys and captured a top prize in the prestigious Pictures of the Year International competition.  Previously, she worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Connecticut.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Empathy is a recurring theme on “Story in the Public Square,” because it is central to the crafting of compelling stories—whether set in fiction or non-fiction.  Paul Tremblay uses empathy to draw readers in to the strange and often terrifying worlds that he imagines.  Tremblay is one of the best writers of horror and psychological thrillers today.  He is the author of “The Cabin at the End of the World,” “Disappearance at Devil’s Rock,” “A Head Full of Ghosts,” the crime novels “The Little Sleep and No Sleep ‘Till Wonderland,” and the short story collection, “Growing Things and Other Stories.”  His latest book is “Survivor Song,” set in a pandemic plagued world.  He has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and currently serves a member of the board of directors of the Shirley Jackson Awards.  His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly online, and numerous years’ best anthologies.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you grew up in a household that prized reading, you probably recall a book from childhood that shaped your view of the world.  Candace Fleming writes those books with an unflinching honesty about the subjects she presents.  Candace Fleming is an educator, and speaker and author, who writes both fiction and non-fiction.  She has written more than twenty books for children and young adults, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize honored “Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of the Russian Empire,” Boston Globe/Horn Book Award-winning biography, “The Lincolns,” the bestselling picture book, “Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!,” and the beloved “Boxes for Katje.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The history of the American presidency is full of accomplishments and compromises, successes and failures.  Robert Dallek argues that the giants from both parties in the last 120 years draw a sharp contrast with the characteristics of the Trump presidency.  Robert Dallek is the author of several bestselling presidential histories, including “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power; An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963,” and the classic two-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, “Lone Star Rising” and “Flawed Giant.”  His latest book is “How Did We Get Here? From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump.”  Dallek has taught at Columbia, Oxford, UCLA, Boston University, and Dartmouth, and has won the Bancroft Prize, among numerous other awards for scholarship and teaching.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whether you love them or hate them, beauty pageants continue to play a significant role in American popular culture.  Hillary Levey Friedman argues that their evolution is wrapped up in the history of feminism in the United States.  Hilary Levey Friedman is a sociologist and expert on beauty pageants, childhood and parenting, competitive afterschool activities, and popular culture.  She is Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University.  Her new book, “Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America, uses beauty pageants to trace the arc of American feminism from the 1840s to the present.  Her first book, “Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture,” followed families with elementary school-age children involved in chess, dance, and soccer covering the history of the activities, what they mean to parents and children, and implications for inequality and gender in the educational system.  Levey Friedman is the President of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women (RI NOW).  She also serves on the Public Policy Committee of the United Way of Rhode Island and is a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).  She holds degrees from Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Cambridge. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are some really great dead people.  Mo Rocca helps us remember them in part through his own appreciation of the obituary.  Humorist, journalist and actor Mo Rocca is best known for his off-beat news reports and satirical commentary.  He is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, Rocca and the host of CBS’s series The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation.  The show features stories about some of the world’s greatest inventions—past and present—and the effort it took to create them, educating and inspiring audiences with stories of creativity, hard work, and passion.  Rocca created and hosted the Cooking Channel’s show, My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in which he learned to cook from grandparents across America.  He is also a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The coronavirus pandemic has affected some communities worse than others—drawing into specific relief decades of data on health disparities.  Dr. Donald Warne warns that the impact has been particularly grave for Native Americans.  Donald Warne, MD, MPH is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as well as the Director of the Indians Into Medicine (INMED) and Master of Public Health Programs, and Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota.  He also serves as the Senior Policy Advisor to the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Warne is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe from Pine Ridge, South Dakota and comes from a long line of traditional healers and medicine men.  He received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and his master’s in public health from Harvard School of Public Health.  He has been a primary care physician with the Gila River Health Care Corporation in Arizona, a Staff Clinician with the National Institutes of Health, Indian Legal Program Faculty with the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, the Health Policy Research Director for Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, the Executive Director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board and Chair of the Department of Public Health at North Dakota State University.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of Americans feel like the 2020s have already been a grueling decade—and we’re barely half-way through the first year of it.  While the narrative of this experience will take some time to be written, Maddie McGarvey is among the photo journalists already capturing the images of this era and beginning to tell those stories. McGarvey is a freelance photographer based in Columbus, Ohio. She worked as a staff photographer at the Burlington Free Press in Vermont before returning to the Midwest. She was named an Emerging Talent for Getty Reportage and selected as one of Magnum’s 30 Photographers under 30 and was chosen as one of TIME Magazine’s 51 Instagram Photographers to follow in the United States and was recognized by Picture of the Year International for her campaign work.  She frequently photographs for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, AARP, NPR, and ESPN.  Her work has also appeared in Mother Jones Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and FiveThirtyEight, among others.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sports play a giant role in American public life—and their absence has been a much-discussed part of the pandemic.  Ken Belson covers the National Football League for The New York Times.  Belson writes about teams, stadiums, medical issues, lawsuits and more in his coverage of the National Football League (NFL) for The Times.  Mr. Belson joined the Sports section in 2009 after spending three years writing for the Metro and Business sections.  From 2001 to 2004, he wrote about business in Japan while working in The New York Times’ Tokyo bureau.  Prior to joining The Times, Belson wrote for Bloomberg, Reuters and Business Week, all in Tokyo, and many other publications as a freelancer.  He is the co-author of “Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon.”  He attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism on a Japan-America Friendship Commission Fellowship and won the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship, which he used to travel to the Cook Islands to write about the effects of bankruptcy on a country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A treatise on the future of technology and security usually is thick and often inaccessible, but P.W. Singer and August Cole turn their expertise on emerging technology and national security into a page-turning techno-thriller set in the not-too-distant future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fables are ancient tools for delivering big lessons to human audiences.  In his work, Karey Kirkpatrick applies modern story-telling technology to this ancient tradition.  Kirkpatrick is a writer, director, composer and lyricist whose films include “Chicken Run,” “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Over the Hedge” “Charlotte’s Web,” and the 2018 animated musical “Smallfoot” among others.  He and his brother, Wayne Kirkpatrick, were nominated for a 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for “Something Rotten!”  This was just one of many honors for Kirkpatrick, who has won four Annie Awards for television and movie animation.  He has also won a Saturn Award, a Hugo Award, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, among others.  He directed the computer-animated feature films “Over the Hedge” and “Smallfoot,” from Warner Bros., and co-wrote the story and screenplay, and his brother Wayne, wrote the songs. “Smallfoot” featured the voices of Channing Tatum, Zendaya, James Corden, LeBron James, and Danny DeVito among others.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.