bedrosiancenter

Using the case of Thames Town, an English-like village in Shanghai, The Real Fake looks at Chinese ideas of spacial construction and what authenticity means in (re)making spaces. In today's episode, host Lisa Schweitzer talks with the author of the new book The Real Fake: Authenticity and the Production of Space, Maria Francesca Piazzoni.

Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

Lisa on Twitter: @drschweitzer

For more on the Bookclub, check out the showpage.

Democracy & Inequality of Political Influence

In this episode of the PS You’re Interesting podcast, Jeff Jenkins talks  economic and political inequality in democracies with Martin Gilens, Professor of Public Policy at UCLA Luskin. The degree of political influence is dramatically unequal for people within the United States, public policy can help increase democratic representation and Gilens walks us through a some history as he expresses policy options to get us to more democracy, rather than less.

Email: bedrosian.center@usc.edu
Twitter: @BedrosianCenter

One of the larger problems for government, is that taking risks is difficult. Risks are expensive, and can lead to a host of problems when those risks don't give desired results. 

Here's where social innovation is taking a chance. In the UK you have pay for results programs, called pay for success here in the states. How do these programs work? Who takes on the economic risk? How do we measure success? Can pay for success and social impact bonds help solve some of the wicked problems?

Host Lisa Schweitzer talks with two of the co-authors of the new book Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds, Gary Painter and Christopher Fox. 

Read along with us - next month, Antigone! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

Lisa on Twitter: @drschweitzer
Gary on Twitter: @GaryDeanPainter 
Christopher (Policy Evaluation& Research Unit) : @MMUPolicyEval

PS You’re Busted: How bridging silos in research & practice can impact human trafficking irl

In this episode of the PS You’re Interesting podcast, Jeff Jenkins talks about human trafficking with Greg DeAngelo, Associate Professor of Economic Studies at Claremont Graduate University. How does an economist get data on human trafficking, and other black market enterprises? What are the pressing questions law enforcement have that academics could help? What are the larger impacts of black market economies? How can we use technology and interdisciplinary work to capture meaningful data?

Email: bedrosian.center@usc.edu
Twitter: @BedrosianCenter

Showpage: https://bedrosian.usc.edu/ps/deangelo

This month, Lisa, Richard, and Aubrey discuss the new book of sonnets from Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin. Hayes' sonnets are "acrid with tear gas, and they unravel with desire." For the poetry doubters everywhere.

Read along for next month : Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward 

You can email us at bedrosian.center@usc.edu.

Follow us on Twitter. Please like the Bedrosian Bookclub on Facebook.

Check out the showpage for what we're reading and more.

This podcast was produced by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz. Sound production by the Brothers Hedden.

This month, Aubrey, Ange-Marie, Jeff, and David discuss the new book from renowned literary critic Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth : Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. Or, perhaps ... death by a thousand "realities."

Read along for next month : Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Find what we're reading and more on the showpage. 

You can email us at bedrosian.center@usc.edu.

This podcast was produced by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz. Sound production by the Brothers Hedden.

Follow us on Twitter. Please like the Bedrosian Bookclub on Facebook.

Social Network Roles in Foreign Capital and Research 

In this episode of the PS You’re Interesting podcast, Jeff Jenkins and Benjamin A. T. Graham, assistant professor in the School of International Relations at USC, discuss the role that migrants can play in bringing foreign capital into countries. He uses case studies from the Philippines and Georgia to get at what kinds of social networks evolve in developing countries. 

Migrant affiliated firms have capabilities that other foreign forms can't match, as the social ties between the firm and local people are extremely important in getting things accomplished.

Email: bedrosian.center@usc.edu
Twitter: @BedrosianCenter, @jaj7d, @SPECLabUSC, @uscpoir

Podcast production by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz. Sound editing by the Brothers Hedden.

Political Influence of Public Protest In this episode of the PS You’re Interesting podcast, Jeff Jenkins and LaGina Gause, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego, discuss the pro-democracy (small d) results of her study on legislative responsiveness to collective action by marginalized groups. Her findings seem counterintuitive, in that the relationship between the costs faced by protesters and legislative action. "Evaluating contemporary collective action data, I find that following protest, legislators are more likely to support the interests of racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, and other groups that face greater costs to participation than they are to support groups with greater access to the political system."

Email: bedrosian.center@usc.edu

Twitter: @BedrosianCenter, @jaj7d, @LaGina_Gause

Podcast production by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz. Sound editing by the Brothers Hedden.

Using contemporary examples, Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, explores the definitions of misogyny and its contrast with sexism. The book is a philosophical examination of misogyny as the policing of the patriarchal state, serving to punish women who might step out of the assigned giver role.

An important read, it is also not a book for the faint of heart, as David Sloane says this is a dispirited look into the state of misogyny in the US (and the author's native Australia).

Host Lisa Schweitzer, joined by Jennifer Bravo (MPP '06), Stacy Patterson (EML '12), and David Sloane to delve into conversation about the book and how we all play a part in the continuity of the patriarchy. How men and women, all of us, contribute to the policing of women in the form of misogyny.

Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

Lisa on Twitter: @drschweitzer
Jennifer on Twitter @vitagraphia 
Stacy on Twitter @stacypatt614
David on Twitter  @dcsloane53

A quick update from our Producers: 

We will use this feed, for the Our American Discourse podcast, to bring you a new series of conversations. We will change the title to PS You’re Interesting. PS will be a series of conversations on new and novel research in political science. We’re conceiving this as a way to keep Anthony’s amazing work alive, and continue on in his tradition. The Our American Discourse podcast will still live on his website and ours. So the archive of episodes will remain on all the different platforms to give other humans a chance to discover.

Since you’re already a subscriber, we wanted to make sure you had a chance to check out the new series.

We’ll pivot to this new conversation series with host and director of the Bedrosian center, Jeffery A. Jenkins. Jeff will be a tad more focused on political science rather than everything we do at the Price school. We hope you’ll like what we’re doing to keep this idea alive and that you’ll let us know what you think about it.

Look for our first episode on September 26th.

The first episode will feature Jeff in conversation with Ben Newman from UC Riverside. Ben is doing experimental work to look at discrimination in the policing of anti-immigrant hate crimes. We hope you’ll give it a listen and send in feedback!

Follow us on social media:

https://twitter.com/BedrosianCenter

https://www.facebook.com/BedrosianCenter

https://www.instagram.com/bedrosiancenter/ 

Email us if you have questions or ideas: bedrosian.center@usc.edu

In 2017 two lectures presented in the London Review of Books’ Winter Lecture series were published together in Mary Beard’s Women & Power. The first lecture put into context the idea and resonance of women’s public voice, with the second lecture focusing on power.

Host Lisa Schweitzer, joined by Aubrey L. Hicks and Pamela Clouser McCann discuss these two lectures, their experiences as women in the academy, as well as the state of women in institutions of power today.

Eva Dolan's This Is How It Ends is a thriller set in an anti-gentrification activist community in the middle of a rapidly gentrifying London. Dolan tackles the huge issue of gentrification through the story of two women engaged in the anti-gentrification movement. How do we define ourselves in places? How do we protect the self in social media, public, activist movements? 

In today’s episode, we marvel at Dolan's ability to mirror the gentrification fight with the relationship between young activist Ella and the older mentor Molly. We think about mentoring, gentrification, family, policing, and so many other themes as we discuss this tight thriller which is also social commentary. 

Lisa Schweitzer (@drschweitzer), Brettany Shannon (@brettanyshannon), and David Sloane (@dcsloane53) join Aubrey Hicks (@AubreyHi) for this episode.

For links and more, check out the showpage.

Though we are sad to bid farewell to “Our American Discourse,” we welcome the opportunity to talk about farewells—indeed, the hardest farewells of all: those that happen after death. How do we say goodbye to the past? And what does our farewell mean for the lives gone before us and for the future that will come after them? It is time to break the “death taboo” and have one last real conversation about the one last real experience we all must confront.

In this episode, David Charles Sloane tells the history of the American cemetery, and in that story, we find the evolution of our own existential approach to life, death, and beyond.

For links and more, check out the showpage.

Anyone who reads or watches the news might feel like we are in a news assault. The news happens so fast, technology helps us disseminate and consume with speed, and media outlets are in a relatively new competition: a competition for relevancy. As “papers of record” are being attacked as “fake,” the question of how to communicate with fairness about important issues has never been more relevant.

John McPhee has had a long, storied career in writing for magazines “of record” using in-depth long-form journalism. Draft No. 4 is McPhee’s 32^nd book of nonfiction. It is a series of essays on his writing process.

In today’s episode, we use McPhee’s thoughts on structure and nonfiction to discuss some of the difficulties of communicating policy and research in today’s frenetic climate of news and propaganda and anti-elitism.  Policy communication should be nuanced and deep, how can we do this in an age of immediate consumption and tribalism?

Power is up for grabs in Washington. A controversial President, an unpopular Congress, and a midterm election all make 2018 a battleground for political control. Who will win? How will they do it? And what role do you play? This is story of the most consequential game ever played, and it’s told by one of the leading Congressional experts of our time.

In this episode, Jeffery A. Jenkins teaches us the strategy of legislative power: who has it, how they get it, what they do with it, and why we should care.

For more, check out the showpage.

Think of all the public policy problems that the government hasn’t been able to solve. Now imagine that you had a solution for one of them. The government should be interested, right? If your solution really works, they should want to invest in it. They should want to encourage you to make it happen, perhaps monetarily if possible. Well, until recently, they didn’t have many avenues to do so. Enter…“social impact bonds,” and the new system of “payment by results.”

In this episode, Gary Painter walks us through some examples of these new “outcome-based” payment systems to encourage innovative risk-taking to solve wicked problems in public policy.

For links and more, check out the showpage.

Special bonus track!

An interview with one of the co-authors of Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, E. Glen Weyl. (Follow Glen on Twitter: @glenweyl)

As part of a nationwide book tour for this new book, full of radical ideas, Glen stopped by USC for a book talk to some of our Econ, PoliSci, and Public Policy students, faculty, and staff. While here in sunny SoCal, Glen was also gracious enough to spend some time with our Executive Director, Aubrey Hicks. The conversation covers some of the radical ideas in the book, as well as some of the books which have influenced the author. 

Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

For links and more, check out the showpage.

At long last, Millennials have begun buying homes. Will they ever catch up to previous generations? Or will the market continue to hold them back with high rents, lingering student debt, and opposing pressure from Baby Boomers? Believe it or not, these forces are neither inevitable nor insurmountable. There is a third way, a bridge between the generations, a new social contract that’s mutually beneficial for all…if we choose to see with enlightened eyes.

In this episode, Dowell Myers questions the fate of a generation grasping at the mantle of opportunity and projects the possible future scenarios they are rapidly approaching.

How It’s Possible to Talk About and Improve Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion sound like universally accepted ideas, but when we try to talk about how we fall short of them and how we can improve, they become two of the most controversial political sparks in the fire that rages around our American discourse. Many people believe they can’t speak the truth in their hearts, and so they see no path forward. At the USC Price School, we have been challenging this assumption and lifting up these voices to unfurl a path that had been blocked until only recently.

In this episode, LaVonna B. Lewis tells the story of this new effort, known as the Initiative on Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice, and she implores us to follow the Price School’s lead in our everyday lives.

Prof. Lewis is a teaching professor in the Sol Price of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where she currently serves as Director of Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives. You can read more about these initiatives on the “Moving Forward” website at pricediversity.usc.edu.

To listen to this episode of Our American Discourse, click the arrow in the player here. Or  download it and subscribe through ApplePodcasts, Soundcloud, Google Play,  Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app – click the links or search “usc bedrosian.”

Follow us on Twitter!

@BedrosianCenter, @AnthonyWOrlando

 For links and more, check out the showpage.

With Donald Trump’s approval ratings at record lows, it’s worth asking how much this one number matters…and whether the people who approve really are better represented by him than the people who don’t. If our politicians really do represent some Americans better than others, it calls into question the very foundational ideals of our representative democracy.

In this episode, Brian Newman uncovers who’s represented, who’s not, and how it affects their view of government.

Prof. Newman is the Frank R. Seaver Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University and co-author of the book Minority Report: Evaluating Political Equality in America.

To listen to this episode of Our American Discourse, click the arrow in the player here. Or download it and subscribe through ApplePodcasts, Soundcloud, Google Play,  Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app – click the links or search “usc bedrosian.”

Follow us on Twitter!

@BedrosianCenter, @AnthonyWOrlando

For links and more, check out the showpage.