What do San Francisco, Chicago, and Albany, NY have in common? They’re sanctuary cities – among hundreds of other U.S. cities, states, and counties that have declared their support for immigrant populations, often by limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement – otherwise known as ICE. Safe havens to some, crime-infested danger zones to others – sanctuary cities have become the topic of heated partisan debate. Particularly since President Donald Trump took office,...

President Donald Trump’s promise of a border wall has divided many on both sides of the issue. This summer, the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy brought about the removal of thousands of migrant children from their parents to child detention centers across the United States. The move sent shockwaves throughout the country, but for many, it’s deja vu. document.createElement('audio'); https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ee_internment.mp3 (more…)

Net Neutrality is a mess of divisive, confusing, and controversial opinion. And the clutter has only worsened over the last few months. After the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of the Obama-era rules in December of 2017, chat forums, comment sections, and news articles about the repeal sprang up in every corner of the exact place that Net Neutrality was attempting to regulate – the Internet. Now, the beginning of the repeal process will start on April...

What is Cambridge Analytica? The recent word that 50 million Facebook users had their personal information collected during the 2016 presidential campaign by a data analytics firm has brought new and intense scrutiny on Facebook and social media. Posting privately to your friends, liking and disliking posts and pages may seem harmless enough, but that seemingly benign information can be mined, studied, analyzed, and transformed into political campaign ammunition. Everything Explained’s Brian...

Electoral districts ebb and flow. The ever-changing population in different areas across the country creates the challenge of drawing the districts as close to accurately representative as possible. When drawing, the lines can get a little blurry, communities can become divided, and the way the edges of the districts are formed can determine the outcome of an election. At least, this is what legal teams across the country are trying to prove. The process of making the districts is called...

If you live in New York state, you’ve seen the signs. Vote to elect. Vote to re-elect. Vote YES. Vote NO on the Constitutional Convention. But what is … the Constitutional Convention? https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/eexplained-con-con.mp3 (more…)

DACA – or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – it’s a program set up during the Obama administration designed to protect the children of undocumented people who crossed the border into the United States. Today, Sarah Rogerson, Professor at Albany Law, helps us to break down the ins and outs of the program. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EE_DACA-1.mp3 Informational Links: Video above and more information is listed on the New York City Mayor’s website. Additional...

Eco-tourism. It’s not about renting an electric-powered car or staying in a solar-powered Airbnb during your getaway. For an example of what I mean lets head to Ramblewild in Western Massachusetts. It’s treetop adventure course allows visitors to swing, ride and hang roughly 50 feet in the air, but its other points of interests may not seem like tourist attractions at first glance. This is the first episode in our new sustainable series on the pod. Our Jim Levulis swung through the aerial...

Since the outcome of the 2016 election, as with many high-profile elections before it, people upset with the outcome have alleged voter fraud. But unlike in the past, this time the allegations are coming from the winning party. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/eexplainedvoterfraudfinal_NEW.mp3 Vice President Mike Pence was appointed Chairman of President Donald Trump’s election commission. The goal of the group was officially to “study the registration and voting processes...

What is anime? The question itself even confuses fans of Japanese animation. Does the animation need to be from Japan to be anime? Or can it come from places like in the U.S. where shows such as the Boondocks, Avatar, and RWBY challenge the notion. This week on Everything Explained we dive into what makes this ever growing Japanese industry just so compelling and… complicated…. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/eexplainedanimeboston.mp3

What are pink-collar jobs? Well… Pink-collar jobs are technically defined as roles in the service industry such as teaching, nursing, or waitressing. These jobs, most often filled by women, pay less than what men typically see for blue-collar jobs in manufacturing. But as blue-collar jobs are disappearing and pink-collar jobs are on the rise, men are not exactly bursting down the doors for the latter. To find out why, I spoke with Claire Cain Miller from the New York Times about her article...

What is passive-aggression? When we talk about passive-aggressive behavior it often of a friend, family member or colleague. It’s rarely mentioned when talking about someone you don’t know. That hidden anger comes out indirectly and can undermine these close relationships. When people feel compelled to conceal their true beliefs and emotions, there can be serious physical and psychological results for everyone involved. In Overcoming Passive-Aggression, Revised Edition: How to Stop Hidden...

It hasn’t been a great season for those with a fear of clowns. But what is a clown? Like what really makes a clown… a clown? I talked to Ragliacci, a clown out of Troy, New York about his experiences as a clown, the fear behind the clown epidemic and some of the history regarding where clowns came from. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/EverythingExplained7_mixdown.mp3

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs are controversial at their roots. But what exactly are they? Listen to WAMC’s Joe Donahue on the Roundtable talk with a journalist and author of a new book on the subject. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/EverythingExplained6.mp3

It’s 2010. The Supreme Court is hearing the infamous case that decided elections law in the United States… Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. You’ll often hear political candidates cite the case when talking about how campaigns are funded and thus sometimes unjustly balanced. This week’s episode comes from WAMC Programming Intern, Stefan Lembo Stolba.   https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/EverythingExplained5.mp3

We’ve all heard plenty about the Zika virus by now, but it’s hard to know how worried to be. What are our chances of getting it? Should we postpone travel plans? Donald G. McNeil Jr. is a science writer for the New York Times, and he attempts to answer those questions and more in his new book Zika: The Emerging Epidemic. WAMC’s Ian Pickus spoke with the author about the virus. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EverythingExplained4_mixdown.mp3

For our third episode, we talk to Victoria Bassetti, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School about the electoral college. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/EverythingExplained3new.mp3

A podcast within a podcast. Is it a podcastception? Maybe we can get into dreams a little later on. For our second episode, we talk to WNYC’s Chief Content Officer Dean Capello about podcasts. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eeep2.mp3

Everything Explained is a podcast aimed at helping to decipher what we talk about in the news. We always start off with a basic question before the deeper dive into figuring out the gritty details in what something is. In our first episode, we talk to Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University about high fructose corn...