Boston Public Radio

After Barack Obama left Office, Pete Souza made sure he still remained a part of the national dialogue.

Richard Blanco, the nation's fifth inaugural poet, shared poems that seize on the changing of the seasons as an opportunity to reflect on death, rebirth, and the passage of time.

As the world watched Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testify, another major Me Too moment was happening: Bill Cosby was sentenced Tuesday to three to 10 years in prison.

A restaurant in Maine gives new meaning to 'blunt instrument' by getting the lobsters high so that their death is more humane

The congressman and sports reporter will co-host a forum next week about mental health in the U.S.

Like much of his presidency, President Donald Trump is offering to solve a problem his predecessors couldn’t in a manner that bucks the conventional wisdom.

Today on Boston Public Radio: NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd discussed former President Barack Obama’s rebuke of President Trump in a Wednesday stump speech for former Vice President Joe Biden. He also talked about the stakes for Thursday’s presidential debate, moderated by his NBC colleague Kristen Welker. We opened our lines to hear your thoughts on former President Obama joining the campaign trail for Joe Biden, and to talk about your feelings heading into the final presidential debate. Former Suffolk County sheriff and secretary of public safety Andrea Cabral discussed voter suppression in the U.S., and why she’s not optimistic about the future of voting rights in the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court decision protecting late-arriving absentee ballots in Penn. She also touched on recent statements from an anonymous juror in the Breonna Taylor case, who said this week that the grand jury did not agree on whether Taylor's shooting was fully justified. Matthew Teitelbaum, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, discussed how the MFA is adapting to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as how they're working to confront issues of race in the art space. He also gave a debrief on the opening of the MFA's long-awaited exhibit showcasing the work of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Next, we turned to callers to hear your thoughts on the censorship of art, in a conversation about a series of postponed exhibits of artist Philip Guston. Tech writer Andy Ihnatko weighed in on the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit brought against Google, as well as Apple’s buyout of the Charlie Brown TV specials, and new AI-powered "neural filters” coming on the latest edition of Adobe Photoshop. Ihnatko is a tech writer and blogger, posting at Ihnatko.com. Former Mass. Education Secretary Paul Reville talked about Wednesday's decision by city officials to bring Boston Public Schools back to all-remote learning, and other headlines around the shaky return to classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Boston School Committee decided unanimously to ditch the exam schools admission test for one year due to the challenges presented by administering an exam during a pandemic. The new plan instead will rely on grades, MCAS scores, and ZIP codes to determine eligibility and acceptance. While the School Committee accepted the new plan 7-0, former Education Secretary Paul Reville told Boston Public Radio Thursday it is an imperfect solution to the problem. “It’s not going to go away as a controversy,” said Reville. “This is a flawed plan, but any plan would be flawed in these times. To get a fair calculation of merit in the absence of a tool that applies to all students … to do that in this environment of coronavirus is impossible to do, so they’re settling for the next best thing.” The newly-approved system reserves the first 20 percent of seats at Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the O'Bryant School of Mathematics for Boston students with the highest pre-COVID grades in BPS, charter, private and religious schools in the city. The remaining 80 percent would be offered in rounds based on grades in individual zip codes, starting with those zip codes with the lowest median incomes. Paul Reville is former Secretary of Education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab. His latest book, co-authored with Elaine Weiss, is “Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty.”

Today on Boston Public Radio: We kicked off the show by opening lines to talk with listeners about Coronavirus and the classroom, and Wednesday’s news that Boston Public Schools will be returning to fully remote learning. Tiffany Faison, chef and owner of Sweet Cheeks, Tiger Mama, Fool’s Errand, and Orfano, checked in to talk about how her restaurants are holding up, seven months into the coronavirus pandemic. CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem discussed the 545 migrant children who’ve yet to be reunited with their parents after getting separated by U.S. officials at the U.S. Mexico border. She also weighed in on President Trump’s refusal to tone down rhetoric around Mich. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, despite the recent attempt on her life by a right-wing militia. MassLive reporter Steph Solis broke down Mass. ballot Question 1, concerning the state’s "Right to Repair" law, and talked about the often confusing campaigns for and against it. Medical ethicist Art Caplan ran through the latest coronavirus headlines, including president Trump’s sustained attacks on his own COVID-19 task force advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and new polling showing Americans are increasingly skeptical about a fast-tracked vaccine from the Trump Administration. He also weighed in on a new law, proposed in the Netherlands, that would allow doctors to facilitate the deaths of terminally ill children. Closing out the show, we reopened lines to discuss schooling in the era of COVID with teachers, parents, and students.

Medical ethicist Art Caplan spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s behavior towards a potential COVID-19 vaccine. “Trump has really done severe damage - he’s beaten up the CDC, he’s beaten up the FDA, he’s gone after Fauci, and he definitely has put on the sidelines his own coronavirus task force,” he said. “He’s basically said, ‘I’m going on the anti-science platform.’” Caplan worries about anti-vaxxers, regarding COVID-19. “If we get a vaccine and we don’t get a lot of people taking it then a lot of the impact of the vaccine is gone,” he said. “When people start to say ‘Forget it, I’m not taking a vaccine,’ that’s horrible news for science.” Art Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Joe Biden has blamed President Donald Trump for inciting the alleged domestic terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Trump tweeted "liberate Michigan" back in April, and this past Saturday joined in on ‘lock her up’ chants, referring to Whitmer, at a rally in Muskegon. Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about Trump’s behavior. “It’s not enough to say that Trump incites violence; he incites a particular kind of violence known as terrorism that’s the use or threatened use of violence for political or social purposes,” she said. “He’s been doing this for years, but the Michigan thing made it take off, and we need to call it terrorism.” Trump incites violence in a particular way, such that he can have plausible deniability, Kayyem noted. “It’s called stochastic terrorism - you can call it random terrorism - which is simply a way of describing how a leader uses his words and platforms to incite his followers in which it’s vague enough that he can have plausible deniability and say it was just a joke,” she said. “But his listeners hear what he’s saying as a calling card.” Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.