#80 Why Science & Reason Are Under Assault: Michael Shermer

This week we go deep and we go long, considering the tide of human history. How science, reason, and rational inquiry contribute to human progress.

Dr. Michael Shermer is our guest. He's the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and a regular contributor to Time.com.

In his latest book, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, he claims that we are living in the most moral period of our history.

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#79 Beyond Obamacare: Smart Fixes for the Healthcare System:Dr. Joe Habboushe

The U.S. spends more than $3 trillion a year on healthcare, or nearly $10,000 a year for every man, woman and child. But are we getting a bang for our buck? In many cases, the answer has to be no. And this goes well beyond the raging debate over Obamacare and whether all Americans should have access to coverage.

About a third of money spent on healthcare is now simply wasted or spent on poor decisions, says our guest, emergency room physician and entrepreneur, Dr. Joe Habboushe. The crisis includes clinical waste, excessive prices, fraud and bureaucracy.

Dr. Habboushe shares his moving personal story and passion for reducing waste and improving patient outcomes through his work as a physician and as CEO of MDCalc - an online diagnostic app used by about 50% of American doctors.

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#78 How Games Can Help All of Us: Dan Grech

This show is about the benefits adults, especially business owners can get from playing games.

This year's huge success of Pokemon Go helped bring gamification and augmented reality into the mainstream - with many small businesses using the mobile app to raise engagement with consumers. Dan Grech, OfferCraft, tells us how governments, businesses, and even parents use games to boost participation and change behavior.

Dan Grech is a former journalist who works for OfferCraft, a Florida company that designs games for companies and other clients.

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#77 Fixes for Feminists in a Time of Trump: Sallie Krawcheck

Anyone who cares about diversity, feminism and closing the gender gap should be fired up about this show.

Author, entrepreneur and - yes provocateur - Sallie Krawcheck is our guest. Her forthcoming 2017 book is "Own It: The Power of Women at Work." Sallie is CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest, a digital investment platform and wealth management site for women.

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#7 Fix It Shorts: Why Trump Won. What Should Happen Next?

We recorded this the day after the stunning U.S. Presidential election. This show is our attempt to explain the reasons for Donald Trump's win.

Despite his deeply divisive rhetoric and attacks on Muslims and undocumented Mexican immigrants that deeply offended many voters, Trump emerged victorious.

We examine why Trump won the election but also solutions and takeaways from his surprise victory.

Solutions:

  • Infrastructure: Large parts of America feel overlooked. One solution is investing in infrastructure, which would increase productivity and create more jobs.

  • Reform business regulation: “It’s a lot harder to enter a new occupation than it should be,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. How can we fix that? We can reform occupational licensing laws which have increased five-times in the past sixty years. These laws make it especially hard for people without a college degree to change careers.

  • Congress should meet before the new Administration takes office and discuss bipartisan reform, including taxes, trade, infrastructure and justice reform.

  • Americans who are deeply distressed by the election can commit themselves to constructive change where they live, volunteering and rebuilding the public square.

  • We need a civility revolution: stop vilifying people you disagree with. Let's heal our divided nation one conversation at a time.

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#75 How Can We Get Better At Forecasting the Future: Mark Earls

Almost all of us do a poor job of predicting the future.

This show looks at how we can adapt to the disruption and change the future inevitably brings. Using examples from business and our personal lives, we consider how to be smarter and more successful.

"We over-estimate how bad we might feel if we lose something, and under-estimate how we will feel if something good happens,” says our guest, Mark Earls.

Mark joins Jim and Richard at our living room table in New York. Usually, Mark is based in London where he's a well-known author and consultant on marketing, communications and behavioral change. His books include “Copy Copy Copy”, "HERD: How to Change Mass Behavior by Harnessing Our True Nature” and “I’ll Have What She’s Having

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#74 Fixes for an Insular World: Talk to Strangers. Kio Stark

"There are genuine emotional benefits when we connect with strangers," says our guest, Kio Stark. These fleeting interactions are important interruptions in the steady routine of our lives. "They bring connectedness and belonging."

Kio is the author of "When Strangers Meet: How People You Don't Know Can Transform You." Her popular TED Talk has received more than 1,450,000 views. "My own interactions with strangers resonate with meaning for me," she writes in her book. "You find questions whose answers you thought you knew. You reject the ideas that make us so suspicious of each other."

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#73 Why Nonprofits Need to Stop Begging: Jennifer McCrea

Do you believe you can make a difference? What improvements to the world have been made by nonprofit organizations? What lessons have been learnt by philanthropists about delivering services and furthering their cause?

These and many more questions are answered here by our guest, Jennifer McCrea. She's a leading global expert on giving and fundraising. Jennifer works to transform the practice of philanthropy She discusses her important work with the Born Free Africa collaborative, which works for the eradication of mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V.

"While of course we have to get money moving in support of the work we are doing," Jennifer tells us, "it's not about money at the center of the relationship."

In her course at Harvard University, Jennifer has worked with leaders from the nonprofit and social enterprise sectors to improve their organizations results from fundraising.

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#6 Fix It Shorts: Election 2016:The Problem is Us.We The Voters

The news media have bombarded us with stories about the candidates, the contest and - to a lesser extent - the crucial issues America faces as people vote for the next President.

This podcast is about the voters.

We went back to four past episodes of "How Do We Fix It?" pulling extracts about how we make decisions and why the information that you and I receive from internet search engines and other sources may be radically different than the news and views our friends and neighbors are hearing.

On episode 24 podcast host and author David McRaney told us "we are not so smart," using confirmation bias as a defining example. "It would do us all good to actually think what are we wrong about," said David, who argues in favor of challenging our own personal biases. "Whenever you have an understanding of something, create an alternate explanation."

Psychologist Robert Epstein joined us on episode 11 to discuss whether Google is too powerful for our democracy. The former Editor-in-Chief of "Psychology Today" has done extensive research on Google's search rankings and algorithms. "There is a problem is the monopoly in search" that Google holds in most of the world, Robert said. "They're customizing what people see."

Search rankings can have a big influence on how people vote. We are not getting challenged by ideas that we haven't heard before.

Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations aims to bring people together. A progressive herself, Joan has engaged with evangelical conservatives and leaders of the tea party in lively, but respectful dialog about climate change, criminal justice reform and other questions.

"We've become increasingly divided," Joan told us on episode 43. "We don't even share the same facts." Joan explained some of the ground rules of having conversations with those you disagree with.

This brief "Fix It Shorts" podcast also features John Gable of AllSides. This news website puts stories from different sources next to each other - columns from left, right and center-leaning news newspapers and online sites.

"We want people to be able to see quickly the differences," John said in episode 49. "What we started doing with All Sides is breaking that filter bubble."

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#71 How to Reduce Cyclist and Pedestrian Deaths: Nicole Gelinas

“Vision Zero” is the highly ambitious plan put in place two years ago by New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio. The goal: no traffic deaths by 2024.

America's largest city is nowhere near reducing fatal crashes to zero, but great progress has been made since 1990. "The good news is that we've gone from 701 deaths back then to an average of 245 deaths a year under the de Blasio Administration," says urban economics and transportation researcher Nicole Gelinas in this "Fix It" episode.

Nicole is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She writes for City Journal, The Washington Post, LA Times and a bunch of other publications.

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#70 Electile Dysfunction: A Cure For Our Campaign: Alan Dershowitz

Electile Dysfunction (is), “a terrible pun plus insightful commentary" is how TV host and wit Seth Myers describes" the new book by Professor Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz became a professor at Harvard Law when he was 25 years old. In his long and distinguished career, Newsweek described Dershowitz as "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights." We recorded this episode of "How Do We Fix It?" at his Manhattan home. "Electile Dysfunction" is his 35th book.

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#69 Migrants and Refugees: Our Response to a Global Crisis. Leonard Doyle

Too often, migrants and refugees are viewed as "other" - not like us. In recent days Donald Trump Jr. compared the Syrian refugee problem to a bowl of Skittles

In this episode, Leonard Doyle of the International Organization for Migration walks us through the worldwide crisis of tens of millions of displaced people, from families fleeing from war and terrorism to young men and women who overstay their visas in search of a better life. We look at the definitions of these terms - so often glossed over in our discussions of the crisis.

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#68 Why Economic Growth Is Slowing Down: Ruchir Sharma

Get ready for slower economic growth and de-globalization, says investor and writer Ruchir Sharma.

Ruchir invited us to his New York office, where he is the head of emerging markets and chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. He is also the author of "The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World."

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#67 How Gratitude Can Transform Your Life - Janice Kaplan

On New Year's Eve, journalist and former Parade Editor-in-Chief Janice Kaplan made a promise to herself to be grateful during the coming year and look on the bright side of whatever happens.

As we find out in this episode, it made a big difference to her life. Janice discovered that how she feels has less to do with events than with her own attitude and perspective on life.

Her recent book "The Gratitude Diaries" began after a survey she had done found that 94% of Americans thought people who are grateful live richer lives. But less than half those surveyed say they practiced gratitude on any regular basis.

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#66 Fixing Everyday Money Mistakes: ABC News Correspondent, Rebecca Jarvis

How much do you know about money? Many of us make simple mistakes that cost us hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year.

According to a recent study by The FINRA Investor Education Foundation, only 37% of Americans have high financial literacy. 29% of 18-34 year-olds with a mortgage have been late with a monthly payment and more than one in four people use high-cost forms of borrowing like pawn shops and payday loans.

And even worse, many of us think we know much more about personal finance than we do.

In this episode we have simple fixes for money mistakes. Our guest, ABC News Chief Business, Technology and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis, explains how a few simple steps will improve our chances of staying out debt and avoiding scams.

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#65 Moms Clean Air Force: Gretchen Dahlkemper

From "nap-time activists" and mommy bloggers to a "stroller march" on Washington, Moms Clean Air Force is using creative and highly effective ways to advance their cause to get dangerous pollutants out of the air.

In this "How Do We Fix It?" episode we speak about solutions with the group's National Field Director, Gretchen Dahlkemper, a Pennsylvania mom who became an activist - fired up about the threat to her children's health. Her daughter has asthma. So for her, this campaign is personal.

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#5 Fix It Shorts: Technology: How Children Learn and Play

Following on from our recent episodes about high schools and playdates, this week we explore children's learning, technology and play with three "How Do We Fix It?" guests.

Science evangelist Ainissa Ramirez explains why all young kids are fascinated by science. But school often gets in the way of exploration and curiosity. Ainissa explains how parents and other caregivers can spark interest in science.

Psychology professor Abigail Baird shares insights and tips for parents about a healthy balance between computers, mobile devices and children's play. Toy industry and play consultant Richard Gottlieb has creative and - yes - playful ideas about technology, behavior and learning.

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#63 Obesity & Diabetes- One City's Solution: Dr. Rose Gowen

The obesity rate is 52% in Brownsville, Texas - far higher than the national average. Nearly one in three residents have diabetes - three times the rate elsewhere. Brownsville also has a very high rate of poverty where more half the residents are not covered by health insurance.

This city and other largely hispanic communities along the U.S. - Mexico border are facing a health emergency.

Brownsville decided to tackle the crisis head on, with an innovative mix of public initiatives - including a new farmer's market, many miles of bike lanes, changes to zoning regulations, and a community-wide health challenge.

Our guest is obstetrician-gynecologist, Rose Gowen, a City Commissioner in Brownsville. We hear her personal story and what Brownsville is doing to transform itself into a more active, prosperous and healthy community.

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#62 Playdates & Class Divisions? Tamara Mose How Do We Fix It?

Remember when kids were allowed to play without supervision, when did that change? When did play turn into a playdate?

Today many parents organize playdates. Play is arranged, supervised, and has the parental seal of approval. "

I think we could add more diversity into how our children play with other children,"says our guest, Tamara Mose, Associate Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College.

Tamara is the author of the new book "The Playdate: Parents, Children and the New Expectations of Play" In this episode we look at how the shift to structured playdates reflects changes in parenting and class. "Let's listen to our children's desires," Tamara urges parents. "I think we've lost the ability to do that because we're so afraid of everything our children interact with.'

We discuss other solutions, including tips for successful playdates and being open to a greater range of children from diverse backgrounds.

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#4 Fix It Shorts: Why Hacking & Online Attacks Threaten All of Us: Adam Levin

The release of nearly 19,000 e-mails from the Democratic National Committee rocked party leaders and forced the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

We look at how this happened, why Russia was probably involved and how many other organizations, businesses and government agencies are at risk of cyber break-ins.

Adam Levin, co-founder of Credit.com and the online security firm IDT911 says the power grid and financial system are at risk. He warns of a possible "Cyber-geddon."

In this episode of "Fix It Shorts" Adam tells Richard and Jim how all of us can reduce our threat of identity theft and hacking attacks.

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