America Trends Podcast

America Trends
  • 4.6 (21)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

A podcast focusing on the social and political trends shaping our future.

  1. 23h ago

    EP 977 Macho Men and Bro Culture Dominate Military Education

    Secretary of Defense (or ‘War’, as he prefers) Pete Hegseth is a poster child for the way military education likes to inculcate recruits and students into a macho culture of masculinity.  The Pentagon has a vast educational network through which to teach these lessons.  It includes basic training, service academies like West Point, JROTC, ROTC and dozens of military schools and war colleges.  This has given the military brass outsized power in shaping our young men and, by extension, society at large.  In “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood,” investigative journalist Jasper Craven explores how the military formed and fuels increasingly volatile strains of American masculinity. While many people benefit greatly from the structure and discipline of military training, others have scars from it having been cut off from the development of the other traits that define men, like empathy and caring for others.  It’s provocative exploration of men in our society as the messaging about the training and service focuses more and more on a warrior culture.

    37 min

  2. 3d ago

    EP 976 Does America Have Too Many Free Speech Pessimists?

    America’s First Amendment is a model of free speech protection unparalleled across the globe.  Yet, the United States saw the third largest decline in free speech between 2021 and 2024.  And 2024 marked the 19th consecutive year in which civil and political rights declined globally.  While it may seem paradoxical that while the new voices who are speaking out on unregulated platforms seem to proliferate daily so are attempts to monitor, filter and block content. Or at least encouraging people with large platforms to give their audiences over to purveyors to speech which is objectionable to many.  Our guest, Jeff Kosseff, and his co-author, Jacob Mchangama, in their new book “The Future of Free Speech,” call on us to become better informed consumers of what we read and watch but to avoid the desire to have the government censor content.  More speech is the antidote to what is a growing public sentiment about our public discourse.  As one who grew up in an era of fewer choices and more gatekeepers, who curated our news, I am torn between the benefits of our ‘say anything’ culture and the perils of out and out censorship.  Clearly, I do not want government limiting speech, but I do wish that those who platform certain speech, and we as consumers, were able to develop policies and make decisions that do not further inflame our fragile democracy at this moment.  Civil discourse anyone?  We try here.

    36 min

  3. 5d ago

    EP 975 Rifkin’s Songwriting Takes on New Colors on Third Album

    The host of America Trends, Larry Rifkin, has in the later stages of life taken up keyboards and songwriting.  He is putting out his third album of originals, in collaboration with Alasdair MacKenzie, as part of the music project he calls Rockaway.  The album, titled “Wrong Side of Love”, contains 16 songs that still offer political and social messaging, as in the first two albums, but redirects much of its focus toward love–its textures, complications and quiet endurance.  Jon Krofssik, the technical director behind the podcast, steps out of the shadows to conduct the interview with his long-time friend and broadcast partner. Rifkin discusses how he and the much younger and multi-talented, Alasdair MacKenzie, formed this interesting collaboration, thanks to the kindness of his daughter, Leora, and son-in-law, Peter, and how another young man, Matt Terribile, of Ace Tone Productions, gave Rifkin the confidence to put these tunes out as demos some years back.  The story is interesting and the songs of a yacht rock flavor with a contemporary sound, are different one to the next.  You’ll hear a number of them on this podcast.  The album will be available in digital stores, including Spotify and Apple Music, on Tuesday, June 9.

    1h 16m

  4. Jun 3

    EP 974 Pardon Me is the New White House Mantra

    The pardon power that the President has is, as Constitutional prerogatives go, about as absolute as it can be.  Coupled with the friendly majority Donald Trump has on the United States Supreme Court, which gave him immunity from prosecution for many crimes charged in connection with his pardons, and you have what some call a pardon-palooza going on in his second term.  Most egregious to some, like this observer, was the blanket pardon of all those involved in the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol (not to mention the ‘stupid on stilts’ weaponization fund.) Remember when his former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, in her confirmation hearing, said that such pardons would be handled on a case -by- case basis.  President Trump has been doling out pardons for political loyalty, pay-to-play corruption, and even state prosecutions, over which he has no say.  It boggles the mind how far we’ve come from the framers’ intent which was to give the President the ability to show mercy and heal national wounds.  This President isn’t the first to expand its use to miscreants, but as tens of thousands of requests for clemency go unanswered the friends and family plan grows and metastasizes.  Now he’s telling staff not to worry about whatever questionable actions he requests because they will be pardoned on his way out of the Oval Office.  To discuss this trend is Professor Mark Osler of the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, an expert on the topic.

    37 min

  5. Jun 1

    EP 973 Medical Insurance Claims Are Being Denied at Astounding Rates–and With a Human Toll

    Deborah Schwartz, a healthcare attorney, saw how medical insurance companies put profit over patient and the impacts it had.  While inside the health insurance industry, she tried to change the practices she saw which were antithetical to better health outcomes, but since leaving the field, she’s writing about in her new novel, “EmmaCare” and sounding the alarm about what she saw.  By whatever measure, claim denials, coupled with prior authorizations and other practices, are growing and put the onus on the patient to fight for and appeal judgments from the insurers even when their doctor prescribes various drugs and procedures.  It’s a maze that leads to financial strain and bankruptcy, delayed or denied care and mental and emotional stress.  We all know that our health care system is broken.  These practices are chief among the issues, though there are many more.  So, what can we do?  Aside from a universal health care model which is unlikely in this country at this time, how do we proceed?  We’ll discuss on this podcast.

    42 min

  6. May 27

    EP 972 Are Companies Responding to the Needs and Skills Working Parents Bring to the Workplace?

    Most families require two incomes these days to survive.  Thus, by definition the working parent is populating every workplace.  And while accommodating the needs of working parents may be difficult for some small companies with not a person to spare at any time, what about the larger companies that have infrastructure to do so?  Are they waking up to the types of policies and approaches that allow the working parent to thrive in their corporate environments?  And why should they?  Our guest Mason Donovan, along with Mark Kaplan, have written a book titled ” The Parenthood Advantage:  Building Corporate Cultures that Value Working Parents.”  Their cogent argument is that working parents have skills that make them MORE valuable.  Things like adaptability, efficiency and empathy.  And yet most workplaces have yet to figure out how meaningfully to accommodate them.  And the legal culture in America has never significantly strengthened laws around parental leave, daycare and other practices which might support these dual roles, so they harmonize better on a day- to- day basis.  It’s an important subject that we explain in depth on this podcast.

    37 min

  7. May 25

    EP 971 Older Americans are Hanging on to Power, Privilege and Resources Longer than Ever

    Have you ever heard the word gerontocracy?  Well, according to our guest, you’re living in one.  The point may be best illustrated by the last two presidential campaigns where we elected an elderly man, Joe Biden, to be our president in 2020 and when feeling that he was too old to serve another term, we replaced him with another old man, Donald Trump.  It’s not only happening in our politics among the candidates, funders and voters (oh it’s true that older Americans outvote and other demographic groups), but also in business and other endeavors.  Many of them, baby boomers, were brought up on the youth culture of the 1960’s and cannot see themselves giving up their positions and privileges.  This trend has an impact on many things, including the ability of young people to move on up, the differential in social safety nets between young and old and the types of short- term issues our politics might address at the expense of long-term ones, like the warming of the planet.  It’s a fascinating topic and our guest, Samuel Moyn, a Yale professor describes its many implications in detail in his new book, “Gerontocracy in America:  How the Old are Hoarding Power and Wealth–and What to Do About It.”  He is our guest today.

    39 min

  8. May 20

    EP 970 Higher Education Will Change Dramatically in the Coming Years

    Our guest feels that we are in the midst of the greatest transformation in high education in over a hundred years. The factors at play are the demographic shifts in the country, the economy and technology.  Arthur Levine, President of Brandeis University and co-author of the new book, “From Upheaval to Action:  What Works in Changing Higher Ed,” says that we can even look at twenty percent of colleges closing their doors in the period ahead.  COVID was an accelerant in this process, but certainly not the only reason.  The person we think of as a college student–between 18-24 living on campus seeking a four- year bachelor’s degree–is no longer the prototypical one.  And new approaches to getting what he calls a ‘just in time’ education’ will supersede the old model of a ‘just in case’ approach.  He explains.  There are new certificates and badges for competency that colleges offer, as do online providers and employers. The competition to engage the learning process beyond high school is vitally necessary in this era of constant change and the competition to provide it is getting fiercer.  Much of it is online.  President Levine wrote this book with Scott Van Pelt.

    35 min

  9. May 18

    EP 969 USAID and Much Global Good Works and Goodwill, Destroyed by DOGE

    Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders on day one of his second term in 2025. One of those executive orders was the beginning of the end for the agency known as USAID.  It was started in 1961 by President Kennedy in order to advance human survival around the world, stabilize economies in the developing world and make the path to peaceful democracy smoother.  It was, and for all these intervening years remained, a noble cause credited with saving the lives of tens of millions around the world by treating and preventing serious health issues such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, tuberculosis, malaria and more.  And while not a focus of Project 2025, somehow it became a target for dissolution by President Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE team.  Decades long dedicated staff, with expertise in this field, were summarily fired with the new Administration caring little of past success and future necessity.  Nicholas Enrich, a former civil servant who worked at USAID through four administrations, focusing on Global Health initiatives, had seen enough before he, too, was dismissed and had written some powerful memos that became part of the public record.  He documents what happened and why he continued the fight in his new book, “Into the Woodchipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID.”

    38 min

  10. May 13

    EP 968 Are Corporate Disclosures Meant to Reveal or Hide Their Employment Practices?

    The 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests that pushed many institutions, including corporations, to confront racial inequality.  Looking back at 2020 to 2024, companies issued public statements embracing racial justice causes in the hopes of protecting their reputations from claims that their practices perpetuate inequality, particularly in regard to race.  In response to a furious conservative backlash, many began to withdraw those commitments.  The pendulum of retraction has swung quickly.  Our guest, Fordham Law Professor, Atinuke Adediran, author of “Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress,” notes that even when companies pledge to hire and promote people of color or fund racial equity causes, those pledges often serve to narrow the scope of social responsibility. Often, these public pronouncements are put in place to preserve corporate financial interests while appearing responsive.  It’s an interesting discussion in these times of pushback against DEI practices in America.

    40 min
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4.6
out of 5
21 Ratings

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A podcast focusing on the social and political trends shaping our future.

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