Boston Public Radio

One year after Jamal Khashoggi's death, Charlie Sennott said the US needs to send a message to Saudi Arabia that murdering journalists is unacceptable.

The Harvard University president's comment about the 13th Amendment indicates the problem of historical ignorance, the reverends said.

Thompson's best, worst, and what to watch this week all come from network TV.

Goldstein's new season of the Love Letters podcast explores how to tell if you've found 'the one.'

The roller-coaster controversy has some people wondering how far "cancel culture" will go.

Even with housing assistance, many families need more help to move into high-opportunity areas, Chetty said.

National security expert Juliette Kayyem made her weekly appearance on Boston Public Radio Wednesday, where she touched on reporting from veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Rage,” which includes an acknowledgment from President Trump that he understood the looming severity of the COVID-19 pandemic back in February, at the same time he was publicly claiming the virus would “disappear." "Trump never likes to be wrong,” she said. "And so what was interesting to me about his claim that he always knew how bad it was going to be, is that even though it’s against self-interest… in some ways it satisfies his own narrative about himself, which is ‘I’m never wrong.’" "I think that that’s so interesting… deadly interesting, that that’s how his brain actually works,” she said. “He’d rather be accused of lying than be accused of being wrong." Kayyem also discussed her latest piece in The Atlantic, "The Emotionally Challenging Next Phase of the Pandemic," and whether she believes the president's latest string of scandals will influence swing voters in November. Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and faculty chair of the homeland security program at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio on Wednesday, where he discussed new data from the Massachusetts Restaurant Association indicating the state has already lost a fifth of its restaurants to revenue losses resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Kummer warned that while the numbers are tragic, this forthcoming winter season could prove even grimmer for Mass. restaurants. "Until Spring… we’re not going to have an accurate count, an accurate figure – and I think that’s the news we’re going to be bracing for,” he said. “Many restaurants this winter, unless something changes dramatically, will die." During the interview, Kummer also touched on his recent New York Times review of Tom Philpott’s “Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It,” and an NPR report about the alarming percentage of low-income kids not getting government-subsidized meals through the pandemic. Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has halted the late stage trial for a COVID-19 vaccine this week due to a suspected adverse reaction in a participant. Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan told Boston Public Radio on Wednesday the participant developed an inflammation of the spinal cord and had to be hospitalized, causing the company to pause the trial in order to conduct a safety review and determine whether the reaction was in fact caused by the vaccine. Caplan said the takeaway from this latest development is that medical trials cannot be rushed, no matter the political pressure to quickly develop a vaccine. “We want to vaccinate our way out of this thing and people keep spinning tales it’ll be here in October,” he said. “I keep saying no it wont, it’ll be here next year, and I don’t know when, but maybe the end of the year … because you’ve got to collect this data.” Art Caplan is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty chair and the director of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Today on Boston Public Radio: We opened our lines to talk with listeners about the 11 Northeastern University students suspended, without tuition reimbursement, for violating the school’s social distancing rules. NBC Sports Boston reporter and anchor Trenni Kusnierek talked about the disqualification of tennis icon Novak Djokovic from the US Open, and a new opinion piece in the Boston Globe from Celtics center Enes Kanter, titled “Why I won’t shut up and play basketball." WGBH News analyst and GroundTruth Project CEO Charlie Sennott discussed ongoing pro-democracy protests in Belarus, and muted reaction from President Trump to the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett Price, hosts of WGBH’s All Rev’d Up, discussed a new report showing Black girls are nearly four times as likely to be disciplined in school as their white peers, and President Trump's order that federal agencies end training on white privilege and critical race theory. TV expert Bob Thompson weighed in on data analytics giant Nielsen’s embrace of streaming, the piling controversy around Disney’s "Mulan" reboot, and “Women Make Film,” an ongoing film series airing on TCM. CNN’s John King talked about the latest news on the presidential race, eight weeks away from Election Day, and ongoing federal debate around further coronavirus relief funding. We reopened lines to talk with listeners about the recent Atlantic piece alleging that President Trump called dead U.S veterans “suckers” and “losers.”

Note: We’re on tape today, replaying some of our favorite conversations. On today’s episode of Boston Public Radio: ESPN’s Howard Bryant discussed his book "The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.” Writer Michael Eric Dyson discussed his book “What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America.” Harvard historian Stephen Greenblatt talked about his book "Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.” Journalist and naturalist Sy Montgomery discussed her book "The Hyena Scientist.” Writer and humorist John Hodgman discussed his book, titled "Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches.” Actor and activist George Takei discussed the musical “Allegiance," which is based on his real life experience of living in a Japanese-American internment camp.