What’s on MPR News – 8/14/18

Tuesday August 14, 2018
(Subject to change as events dictate)

9 a.m. – MPR News with Kerri Miller (Marianne Combs hosts)
America’s population is diversifying. Why aren’t newsrooms doing the same? Why is diversity a persistent problem in the media?

Guests: Alesha Williams Boyd, senior digital editor, USA Today Network; Luis Clemens, senior editor for diversity, NPR News.

10 a.m.- 1A with Joshua Johnson
Over the course of her press tour promoting her book, Omarosa Manigault Newman has made some astonishing claims. But senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway confirmed one of them last Sunday, when she said that senior administration officials had been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs. And on Monday, the president confirmed it, too.
We’ve heard about NDA’s being used in private companies during the ongoing coverage of the #MeToo movement. But what about their usage in the public sector? As Warren suggests, should we be skeptical of their legality?

Guests: Neal Katyal, law professor, Georgetown University; former Acting Solicitor General (1999).

10:30 a.m. – In defense of liberal arts. Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, wrote in The Atlantic in 2012: “We keep telling young Americans that a bachelor’s degree in history is as valuable as, say, a chemical engineering degree — but it’s just not true anymore. All degrees are not created equal. And if we — parents, educators, entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders — maintain this narrow-minded approach, then we are not just failing young indebted Americans and their families. We are harming the long-term vitality of our economy.”

So, what’s the purpose of liberal arts colleges today? Are they changing to meet the needs of a 21st-century student?

Guests: Gerry Greenberg, associate professor of Russian and linguistics and senior associate dean for academic affairs, humanities, curriculum, instruction, and programs at Syracuse University; Graziella Parati, professor of Italian, comparative literature and women’s and gender studies, Dartmouth; John Horgan, science journalist; director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology.

11 a.m. – MPR News at 11 (Marianne Combs hosts)
Primaries and off-year elections can be uneventful, with low turnout. But this year Minnesota elections are heated and turnout will be high.

Guest: Secretary of State Steve Simon.

11:20 a.m.– According to reporting from the Star Tribune, churches are closing in the face of dropping attendance. The population of churchgoers are aging, and even if people identify at Christian, only about one in four show up in the pews on Sunday.

Guest: Jean Hopfensperger, reporter for the Star Tribune series, “Test Of Faith: The Unchurching Of America” ; Natalia Terfa, associate pastor, Prince at Peace in Brooklyn Park.

12 p.m. – MPR News Presents
Minnesota native Dan Buettner and Boulder, Col., mayor Suzanne Jones speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival about the “Blue Zones” where the world’s healthiest and happiest people live.

1 p.m. – The Takeaway
Techies say our election infrastructure is vulnerable. State and local officials say it’s not that simple. Who is right?

2 p.m. – BBC NewsHour
The Turkish economy remains unstable as the spat between Washington and Ankara continues.

3 p.m. – All Things Considered
A day of primary elections; the ground game in the Kavanaugh Supreme Court fight; printing guns; speed dating on a Wisconsin dairy farm; the Lake Superior algae bloom.

6:00 p.m. – Marketplace
Slavery in the United States was a business. Morally reprehensible, and extremely profitable. A look at plantation business practices, and what they can teach us about America’s dark past.

6:30 p.m. – The Daily
Myanmar is accused of waging a state-sponsored campaign of massacre, rape and arson against Rohingya Muslims. Why, then, did the government allow a New York Times journalist to tour the epicenter of the reported atrocities?

Guest: Hannah Beech, the Southeast Asia bureau chief of The New York Times, who recently visited Rakhine State, where many Rohingya Muslims once lived.

7 p.m. – The World
Coffee to go, without the waste. American style take-out coffee is popular in Germany, but it’s also creating a trash problem. Now, there’s an effort in Munich to replace throwaway coffee cups with cups that you borrow and then return.

8 p.m. – Fresh Air
Writer Karen Piper’s new memoir is “A Girl’s Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America’s Secret Desert.” It’s about being raised on a secret Naval weapons testing site in the Mojave Desert. Both her parents worked for the complex, beginning in the early 1970s. Piper teaches literature and geography at the University of Missouri and is the author of the previous book, “The Price of Thirst: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos.”

9 p.m. – MPR election coverage
Hosted by Mike Mulcahy and Tom Crann, with MPR political commentators Maureen Shaver (R) and Todd Rapp (DFL).