COVID-19 and Low-Income Workers, Black Opera, For Life

Workers Most at Risk for Catching, Spreading Coronavirus (0:31) Guest: Marissa Baker, Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington  Congress is wrangling over how best to prop up the US economy as coronavirus shutdowns drive businesses and individuals into dangerous financial territory. The $2 trillion proposal currently being debated would send $1,200 checks to most adults and $500 to most children. Hundreds of billions of dollars would be available to help small businesses meet payroll costs. Low income workers with low-wage jobs are at particular risk of contracting and spreading the coronavirus right now. How to Spot Misinformation Online (16:25) Guest: Alex Mahadevan, Senior Multimedia Reporter, MediaWise, Poynter Institute Bad information about the novel coronavirus is all over the internet - Facebook has been working hard to take down misinformation. But we’re not that great at spotting bad information online even when we’re not in crisis. Half of Americans admit they’ve shared made-up news, but didn’t know it was fake at the time. That’s where MediaWise steps in – it’s a group at the Poynter Institute dedicated to helping teenagers be more media literate. How Blackness Is Portrayed on the Opera Stage (32:12) Guest: Naomi Andre, Scholar in Residence at the Seattle Opera, Professor at the University of Michigan, and Author of the 2018 Book “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement.” It was barely five years ago, that America’s most prestigious opera company – the Met in New York – stopped putting blackface makeup on tenors performing the lead role in Verdi’s Otello. Until then, few of opera’s fans or participants raised any concern about the idea of a white man darkening his face to play the famous Shakespeare’s character. The performance of white South African tenor Johan Botha as Othello, wearing blackface in the Met’s 2012 production of the opera, launched musicologist Naomi Andre into the research that became her 2018 book, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement.” The Effects of School Closure Due to Coronavirus (50:39) Guest: Thad Domina, Professor of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hundreds of thousands of kids are at home now with school closures across the country and many Americans being asked not to leave their homes. Some students may think it’s a fun, unexpected vacation, but not having kids in a school building negatively affects students from lower income families. SLAPP Suits (1:06:21) Guest: Susan Seager Is a Media Defense Lawyer, and Lecturer and Head of The Press Freedom and Transparency Practice at University of California, Irvine.  In the last month, President Trump’s campaign has filed lawsuits against both the New York Times and the Washington Post over opinion columns that the Trump campaign says are defamatory. Legal experts say there’s little chance the President will win in court because he’s a public figure and the articles he’s complaining about were opinion pieces that get a lot of protection under the First Amendment. But winning is not usually the point when it comes to lawsuits like this. People and companies with money to spare can do a lot to silence critics by slapping them with lawsuits that are expensive and time consuming to fight in court. These kinds of suits even have a name – SLAPP, which stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Emotional Expression Database (1:17:40) Suzy Scherf, PhD, associate professor of psychology, principal investigator of the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience, Pennsylvania State University I work with the toddler class at my church on Sundays and we sing that song about turning a frown upside down. Even before kids can speak fluently, they somehow become fluent in facial expressions – at least the basics like happy and sad. Researchers at Penn State University have created a database of what more complex expressions like jealous or flirtatious look like to help scientists study them, too.   The True Story Behind ABC’s "For Life" (1:27:13) Guest: Isaac Wright Jr, Attorney, Executive Producer of “For Life” on ABC Television The new ABC drama "For Life" is about a wrongfully convicted man who studies law in prison and represents fellow-inmates while bringing down the corrupt prosecutor who put him behind bars. The TV show is loosely based on Isaac Wright Junior, the first person to ever be sentenced to life in prison, secure his own release and exoneration, and then be granted a license to practice law in the same court where he was convicted. It’s a pretty amazing story.