Ways & Means Duke University

The question of whether and how to compensate descendants of people formerly enslaved in the United States has hung over the country since the end of the Civil War. It’s getting new traction in the 2020 election. Duke Professor William "Sandy" Darity has created a Reparations Planning Committee to flesh out the details of how a reparations program would work.

This season of Ways & Means is supported by Polis: the Center for Politics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

Season 5 of Ways & Means returns Wednesday February 19, 2020. This season we are partnering with Polis, the Center for Politics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy to look at big ideas related to the 2020 election.

Four-year-olds are expected to be able to behave in the classroom, but more and more preschools are kicking children out for bad behavior. In this episode: new research into how to best help children control themselves in the classroom.

Read a transcript of this episode.

Music: Theme music by David Schulman. "Rate Sheet," "Lina My Queen," "Tiny Putty," "Rose Ornamental," by Blue Dot Sessions. Music licensed under Creative Commons attribution.

On this episode we go inside an innovative, free public program that helps new moms and dads adjust to life with a newborn. In each location where the Family Connects program is offered, all families, rich and poor, are eligible to have a visiting nurse come right to the home after the birth of a child. The program has been shown to improve parenting behavior and reduce emergency medical care for infants.

Climate change is affecting both nature and the economy. Who will take the hardest hit financially as the world heats up, and can anything be done about it? We meet a commercial clammer in Maine who is figuring out how to deal with the effect climate change is having on his industry. And environmental economist Billy Pizer has been calculating the future costs of climate change. Pizer is Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

A research team from Duke University treks into the Himalayas to investigate why a promising way to deliver electricity to those who need it, the micro-hydro minigrid, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. This is the third of a four-part series on understanding and dealing with a changing climate.