As state after state passes laws regulating the use of cannabis, a booming industry has sprung up. Many people believe that this momentum — which they see as analogous to sweeping tides of civil rights legislation — will ultimately result in the passage of federal laws. Cannabis lobbyist and attorney Joshua Sanderlin believes that this optimism is misplaced and fails to account for the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. However, Joshua also offers clear pointers on how to mobilize the groundswell of support required to make changes to federal law.
Emerging technology is disrupting social norms. On October 24th, 2017 fintech investor Melissa Frakman, DC Tech Search president Adam Solomon, and RIAA head of research Josh Friedlander joined host Gideon Culman to discuss current disruptions, future threats and opportunities, and actions we can take ride the increasingly rapid waves of innovation.
We couldn't have a clearer case for action to address the plight of the Rohingya, because of the level of persecution, because of the concerns of genocide. There is so much moral and legal clarity to do something. But what we can actually do, and the scope of it, seems nebulous and complicated in this particular context. But, that being said, it shouldn't paralyze us into doing nothing.
— Katherine Southwick
Katherine Southwick is a Visiting Scholar at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She focuses on rule of law, ethnic conflict, and statelessness. In this interview we discuss the political conflict in Myanmar with a spotlight on the Rohingya minority.
"It's not like there's a Latino voice, or Latino voices and Jewish voices. You have in front of you people who are the combination of the Jewish with the Latino and the Latin American. So it's not like we put on a hat, 'and now we're speaking Latino,' and then we put on another hat, 'and now we're speaking Jewish.' . . . That orchestration is done by bridges: By being bridges and by building bridges."
— Stephanie Guiloff
Dina Siegel Vann and Stephanie Guiloff lead the American Jewish Committee's Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs. We discuss the fluidity of American identity, the richness that this fluidity engenders, and the power we wield when we unite the many facets of our American identity in the political arena.
Ajla Delkic is the executive director for the Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this conversation we discuss the Council's work advocating on behalf of Bosnia's inclusion in NATO as well as countering genocide denial and the revision of history.
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is the Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the United States of the America. In this interview we talk about, how throughout living memory, the Kurdish story has been told by people other than the Kurds. We discuss the many ways this has been changing since 2003.
"We're now in a situation where we need diversity and we need people who like to break things on the good guys' side . . . to understand the mindset of the people who are doing these things to us."
— Michael Echols
Michael Echols is the CEO of the International Association of Certified ISAOs and the CEO of Max Cybersecurity, LLC. In this interview Michael paints a picture of how technological innovation is transforming the landscape of our lives as safety concerns, policy, and leadership lag behind. What new threats are we unable to imagine and how are these threats and our responses to them disrupting our society's norms?
Mohamed Abubakr is the president of the African Middle Eastern Leadership Project. As modern life chips away at the distances between countries, Mohamed sees grassroots activists from Africa and the Middle East as the people best equipped to inform U.S. engagement within their countries. His work with the African Middle Eastern Leadership Project is to connect these grassroots activists directly to U.S. policymakers.
Peter Weltman is an activist sommelier with a vision for borderless wine. In pursuit of this vision, Peter challenges us to venture outside of traditional wine regions, discover less known viticultural gems, and spend our money on wines whose production makes the world a better place.
John K. Glenn is the director of policy at the US Global Leadership Coalition. In this interview we discuss how the aims of US foreign policy have evolved from the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, through the end of communism in the 1990s and the response to 9/11 throughout the 2000s, and the advent of polarization that makes it so hard for people to talk to each other today.
Allison Shapira is the president and founder of Global Public Speaking. Most people are deathly afraid of speaking in public. In this episode, we discuss what gets in our way of public speaking and how we can remove these obstacles. The result is a clarity about who we are and a confidence in what we have to say.
Christopher McAuliffe is the founder of Accomplishment Coaching. In this interview we discuss Christopher’s journey into coaching, his vision to train over a thousand coaches, and his quest to design a coach training program of unparalleled quality. As the world around us transforms and the only reliable constant is a breath-taking pace of change, what role do coaches like play in society?
As we become increasingly enmeshed in the technology all around us — our phones, our tablets, human contact, dating, our hours of leisure — how do we break free? And while we drop the ball on facing this question, what kind of behavior are we modeling for our kids? Tech<br>eak founder Ali Maresh discusses what we can do to loosen the stranglehold that our devices have on our everyday lives.
Further reading Ali recommends:
"The Shallows" by Nick Carr - http://amzn.to/2ui5AEC
There's nothing more important than being true to your community, knowing how you fit in to your community, and what your responsibilities are to your community.
— Anka Lee
Anka Lee is a senior director at the Albright Stonebridge Group. In this interview we discuss how pivotal events like the Great Depression, the Vietnam War and the September 11th attacks have the power to shape the mindset of an entire generation. Questions we cover: What are the long-term policy implications of these formative events? How do different generations who see the world through very different eyes engage each other on the political stage? What does it mean to be an American?
Josh Friedlander is the head of research at the Recording Industry Association of America. In this interview we discuss shifts that the music industry has undergone in recent decades, including how new talent is identified, how sales have evolved from a strict ownership model to a more flexible model with an emphasis on access, and what jobs exist in music today
This conversation about music serves as a useful starting point to think about the accelerating rate of change in any industry that touches our lives daily in both obvious and imperceptible ways.
Today survival — peace, nonviolence — really depends not just on the internal communities you belong to but the communities we can form that are global communities.
— Justin Hefter
Ammoun Dissi and Justin Hefter discovered that people on opposite sides of the same conflict, in regional conflicts around the world, are more likely to be playing the same computer games than gamers in other parts of the world. Recognizing an opportunity to exploit this common ground their company Bandura Games develops cooperative gaming platforms that enable gamers who might otherwise view each other as enemies to come together as friends.
I have come to think that the word "Blockchain technology" is just a really great way to part an investor from his money.
— Adella Toulon-Foerster
There’s a lot of buzz these days about virtual currencies and Blockchain technology. How are we to approach this tide of monetary innovation? As the range of options we have to transmit monetary value continues to expand, legal professional Adella Toulon-Foerster urges us to be curious, to stay informed, and to become familiar with the everything that is out there.
If you don’t embrace it, you’re going to get left behind.
— Garreth Fitzsimons
Garreth Fitzsimons manages American operations for e-learning company Olive Learning. In this interview Garreth discusses how e-learning, gamification, as well as augmented and virtual reality technologies are changing the ways we acquire new skills and knowledge.
Cryptocurrency is for people who don’t trust their governments . . . with good reason.
— Geoffrey Mason
Geoffrey Mason is an intellectual property lawyer who is a senior partner for the Cogent Law Group. In this interview Geoffrey discusses ways in which cryptocurrencies differ from each other and explores its role vis-à-vis the nation state.
Learn how cryptocurrency is transforming our economy and what you can do to keep up with its evolution.
You cannot find safety in a degree. You cannot find safety in a particular job anymore. It just doesn't exist.
— Adam Solomon
Adam Solomon runs the IT talent acquisition firm DC Tech Search. In this interview Adam talks about current trends into tech hiring. As artificial intelligence ushers in a wave of automation that is making even the most skilled professionals redundant, is it time to rethink society's relationship to work?
Glean ideas in this episode for what you'll need to navigate the upheaval of a rapidly transforming 21st-century labor market.
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The History of Japanese-American incarceration in the United States is, I think, one of the clearest examples of what happens when we ignore the United States Constitution.
— Rose Masters
Rose Masters is a Park Ranger specializing in oral history at Manzanar National Historic Site. In this interview Rose talks about the conditions that led to the signing of Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the eviction of ethnically Japanese Americans from the Western United States and the incarceration of nearly 70,000 American citizens.
Learn how this episode destroyed a pioneering American agricultural community and what we can do to avoid repeating in the future what President Gerald Ford called a "setback to fundamental American principles."
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We brought a leadership group together that wants to get things done. We quickly decided to be very pragmatic. And people from other countries don’t get this. I promise you, they don’t get this — I don’t care whether they’re from the Middle East or from Europe: They think that we have to discuss, as a first matter, and solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, otherwise these two communities can’t get together. And that turns out to be false.
— Bob Silverman
Bob Silverman is the American Jewish Committee's U.S. Director of Muslim-Jewish Relations. In this interview Bob discusses the doctrinal similarities between Judaism and Islam, his work forming the national Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, and concrete actions you can take to build and maintain strong and useful interfaith bridges in your own community.
Throughout our conversation Bob underscores the power of pragmatism that allows people who may hold strong differences of opinion on one set of issues to nevertheless cooperate on separate issues of shared concern.
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During his 12th year in the House of Representatives, Jim Kolbe became the first Republican congressman to come out as gay. In this interview, Jim describes how it happened: first leveling with himself about his own identity and then going public after receiving notice that a magazine would out him.
Anything and everything you say, whether it was a gaffe or something on point, can be cut, misconstrued, or marketed in a way that can go and hurt the candidate's position in the race. — Ben Sparks
What are politicians telling us? Why do campaigns go negative? *
Political operative Ben Sparks discusses the art and craft of campaign communication. Ben has directed campaign communications and managed campaigns for a variety of household names, including several sitting governors and senators. *
In this interview, we face uncomfortable truths about how campaign messages we despise are simply hideous reflections of ourselves. *
Further readings Ben recommends include: *
"The Iliad" by Homer - http://amzn.to/2lUaamo *
"All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren - http://amzn.to/2l9ojyV *
"Face the Nation" by Bob Schieffer - http://amzn.to/2mdmSzd *
Online harassment degrades and can violently suppress our freedom of expression. When we equate online abuse with bullying, we miss its complex and dynamic underpinnings.
Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly), director of the Women's Media Center Speech Project, illustrates how online abuse, particularly of girls and women, mirrors age-old antisocial behavior that occurs offline. She presents this as a social problem that we can't expect victims to solve individually.
Learn in this episode what role you can play to influence your own online communities to promote equality and democracy, addressing challenges to these values in real-time.