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© 2024 TWO REPORTERS
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David K. Shipler & Daniel Zwerdling have spent their lives investigating thorny and neglected issues, winning journalism’s top awards along the way. Now join Dave and Danny on TWO REPORTERS, as they interview stellar guests about pressing social problems and solutions - and just fascinating stuff - in ways you haven’t heard before. Advisory: Episodes may contain laughing, arguing and moments of irreverence.
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David Tatel - who retired recently from the U.S. Court of Appeals - has led what he calls a "braided life" that intertwines hardship and accomplishment. With his wife, Edie, he describes how he struggled to hide his gradual loss of sight from friends and colleagues alike - including tricks like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels. Meanwhile, David became an accomplished lawyer who fought landmark civil rights cases. You can read their full story i...
Lewis Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting, in collaboration with colleagues, helped spark an international scandal and topple a corrupt dictator; he tells us in this episode how they did it. Lew also gives us remarkable insight into how he could do his work - taking notes as people got beaten to death and blown up in front of him - and survive emotionally. And finally, a roving correspondent talks honestly about the toll that constant traveling took on his spouse. After hearing Lew, you ...
Next time you hear details of the horrific wars in Ukraine and Gaza, think about how you're learning them: journalists are risking their lives to report from the front lines. Lewis Simons won the Pulitzer Prize during decades of reporting on the Vietnam war and other conflicts across Asia. He lived by a motto: "Whatever the threat or danger, I had to be there."
Now Trump and the Republican party are following their autocratic playbooks, whether by design or by instinct: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and vermin. Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority, tells us why it could take many years to rescue America's democracy - even if Trump loses the next election.
When you learned about the American explorers who claimed to discover the North Pole, the answer seems to be, "Yes." In fact, the fabled drama of Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook was an early example of how powerful newspapers - in this case The New York Times and New York Herald - spread fake news (although critics still debate whether the newspaper owners knew it was fake or didn't bother to corroborate the explorers' stories). Journalist Darrell Hartman tells us life and death tales from...
It could happen to you: police mistakenly suspect or arrest you, because an app's location data show you were near the scene of a crime. The ACLU's Nathan Wessler returns to explain how geolocation, voice recognition and other high-tech tracking methods - including the way you walk! - could disrupt your life in ways you hardly expect.
America's surveillance network is nowhere near as pervasive and chilling as China's, but U.S. companies and government agencies are already using high-tech tools like facial recognition to track you more than you might think. As the ACLU's Nathan Wessler tells us, the facial recognition software sometimes goofs - and ordinary, innocent people like you end up in jail.
Presidents have drawn up plans to wield sweeping emergency powers - and some of those plans are so secret that even Congress has never seen them. Elizabeth Goitein, of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, has unearthed dozens of emergency presidential powers. Voters should understand the potential powers they could give any president, before they cast their ballot.
David K. Shipler (aka "Dave," our podcast co-host) is not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist: He's a poet, and just published his debut volume of poems, The Wind is Invisible. Given the grim news in the world, Dave's lovely poetry - glimpses of nature, reflections on family, moving insights about love - is a refreshing antidote. It's also (according to Danny) a surprising change from Dave's tough-minded journalism. Dave reads some of his poems and explains what influences his work - inc...
Shekar Krishnan just got re-elected to the New York City Council with three times as many votes as the runner-up. And so far, he's showing how politics and government can actually make people's lives better. Shekar fights for immigrant taxi drivers, the LGBTQ community, and minorities who need good low-income housing; he went briefly to jail and got smeared by the Proud Boys, along the way. Oh - and he's doing the usual political things like getting potholes fixed.
As the horrific war between Israel and Hamas continues, US and Iranian officials are sending each other warnings, just as they have for decades: Back off. When you hear this episode, it will help remind you one reason why Iran's government learned to hate the US long ago: The US and Britain secretly ran the plot to topple its leader in the 1950s. Why? For Iran's oil. Filmmakers Taghi Amirani and Walter Murch discuss their riveting documentary, Coup 53 - which shows step by step how the CIA an...
As we publish this, Congressional Republicans have just elected their new Speaker - a right-wing extremist who led the fight, which many consider seditious, to overthrow Joseph Biden’s 2020 democratic election. So it’s more astonishing than ever to revisit the presidency of Republican Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. His granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, describes some of Ike's visionary and controversial policies - which many if not most Republicans would likely oppose today.
Railroad supervisors ignore safety problems. Railroad executives lay off thousands of workers and see accident rates soar. Railroad corporations make record profits while their customers complain about lousy freight service. Marilee Taylor and Ron Kaminkow, veteran train engineers and labor organizers, have encountered those problems just about every day they've climbed aboard a locomotive - and they describe them in vivid detail. Still, they get a thrill from driving trains, if things go wel...
The freight railroad industry is crucial, but companies have slashed tens of thousands of workers in recent years while trains have become less reliable and derailments have threatened entire towns. Meanwhile, railroad companies have reported record and near-record profits. Historian Peter Rachleff and train engineer Ron Kaminkow, who’s also a labor leader, guide us through the colorful, brutal history of America’s railroads - built by “oligarchs” on the backs of Black convicts, slaves and Ch...
1Boris Bondarev says he wanted to quit his job as a Russian diplomat long ago, to protest Putin's policies, but it took years to gather courage to take that life-changing step. Putin's war in Ukraine pushed him to act - and now he and his wife are living under protection in Switzerland (with their cat; more about that in our episode). In Part 2 of this introspective conversation, Boris explains why resigning was a moral act of “redemption” after a career serving policies that he gradually deci...
Boris Bondarev represented Russia as a diplomat for more than 20 years. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, he took a rare and potentially dangerous step: he resigned, to protest the horrors of Vladimir Putin's "fascist state." In Part 1 of this candid chat, Boris explains why he overlooked Putin's crimes for years - and why the invasion of Ukraine propelled him to act. His actions have turned his own family's life upside down.
Darrin Bell won the Pulitzer Prize for doing exactly that - depicting Trump as a shrieking infant, a naked tyrant, and as a god giving life to racists instead of to Adam. Darrin explains how his own encounters with racism pushed him to draw, as an emotional escape. And he tells why his cartoons attack not only Trump but sometimes leaders he likes. HINT: young people should hear this interview to learn how perseverance can pay off!
Darrin Bell's white, wealthy classmates bullied him because he had big lips, and store clerks automatically assumed he was shoplifting. Today, Darrin has transformed his struggles into a brilliant and acclaimed graphic memoir, "The Talk" - named for the conversation that parents of color often have with their children to explain why the world likely won't treat them the same as whites.
Republicans and their allies are banning books, courses and even brief classroom chats about "divisive topics" - and passing laws to punish teachers who disobey. They're also spending big money to elect school boards that embrace their extremist visions. Jonathan Friedman of PEN America describes some of the most threatening developments across the country.
You've heard that it's happening - and now two librarians tell us in this moving episode how they became targets of extremists. When Suzette Baker refused to ban books on racial and LGBTQ issues, right-wing parents and local officials in Texas got her fired. Meanwhile, librarian Martha Hickson was fighting her own battle against censorship, 2000 miles away in New Jersey - but she managed to organize supporters to rally against censorship. And they won.
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