America Trends Podcast

America Trends Podcast


Latest Episodes

EP 900 The Flames of California Will One Day Affect Most Americans Wherever You Live
September 17, 2025

We like to imagine that we are safe and immune from much of what we see on the news. In the case of wildfires, people on the east coast might see it as a west coast phenomenon. Yet, there have bee

EP 899 Animal Festivals and Other Human Behaviors: When Do the Animals Have Their Say?
September 15, 2025

As a dog parent, I bristle at doggie dress-ups at the local pet supply store, yet I still eat meat. Call me a hypocrite. I accept the critique. And yet when it comes to animals, there is a stratifi

EP 898 Are Forever Chemicals a Forever Problem?
September 10, 2025

Lets start with the basics. What are forever chemicals? And so this podcast begins with Professor Matt Simcik, an environmental chemist from the University of Minnesota, trying to explain to me,

EP 897 Why Noise Pollution Isn’t Just Annoying but Bad for Our Health
September 08, 2025

Pneumatic drilling from building sites. The dull roar of planes overhead. Your fellow workers phone conversations in an otherwise silent office. The suburban drone of lawn mowers and blowers. No

EP 896 Gerrymandering Is on Full Display and Ahead of Schedule in Texas
September 03, 2025

While both parties have long histories with gerrymandering Congressional districts for partisan advantage, its fair to say Republicans have taken it to a new low by interrupting the every ten -year p

EP 895 Independent Voters are Little Discussed and Yet the Key to Many of Our Elections
September 02, 2025

When political discussions take place, they are often focused on how Democrats or Republicans, conservatives versus liberals or red in relation to blue look at an issue. They leave out a component o

EP 894 College Sports Governance and Economics Have Become the Wild, Wild West
August 30, 2025

Can your star quarterback on a powerhouse Division 1 football program get paid as it stands today? After the recent $2.8 billion settlement in House v. NCAA, which enables universities to directly p

EP 893 A Little Discussed Law Still Hard at Work to Expand Home Ownership in America
August 27, 2025

The U.S. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)in 1977 with the key objective of ending redlining, the decades-old practice of neighborhood discrimination by banks against African Americ

EP 892 Strongman Presidency Has a Clear Goal
August 25, 2025

There is irony in a man determined to use the powers of the presidency and the administrative state capacity to disassemble the administrative state, aka the deep state. Yet that is what we are s

EP 891 A Longtime Washington Insider Provides His Perspective on How D.C. is Functioning
August 22, 2025

Attorney Ira Shapiro is a man who has seen it all in Washington. As a long-time U.S. Senate staffer, he has written three books about the upper chamber. The collection has been described by one sch