Downstairs at the White House, A.I. Music, Policewomen

Downstairs at the White House (0:38) Guest: Donald Stinson, Author, “Downstairs at the White House” Media outlets these days have entire teams dedicated to sniffing out the intrigue going on inside the White House: Who’s meeting with whom. Who’s feuding with whom. And every one who leaves a job inside the eventually writes a tell-all memoir, but I’ve never read one quite like Donald Stinson’s. In 1973, when he was 17 years old, Stinson talked his way into a series of low-level jobs making copies and delivering mail in the White House. He wasn’t important, but he met lots of important people – often by loitering outside the Oval Office, which did not amuse the Secret Service. In the end, Don Stinson got himself a front row seat to the most momentous political events of the time, including the resignation of President Nixon. (Originally aired: 4/16/2018) A New Way to Counter the Generic Drug Shortage (27:39) Guest: Dan Liljenquist, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Intermountain Healthcare, Board Chair of Civica Rx While the coronavirus dominates public health concerns in America right now, there are patients all across the country with serious conditions that are not new or mysterious who are struggling to get the medicine they need. Virtually every hospital in the US has had to delay surgery or come up with a treatment workaround because of chronic drug shortages. Most of the time these are generic drugs, so, you’d think they’d be plentiful and cheap. A group of about 750 hospitals decided they’d had enough of those shortages and formed a nonprofit drug manufacturer to be their supplier. (Originally aired 8/21/19) Artificial Music and Google Magenta (50:40) Guest: Douglas Eck, PhD, Principal Scientist, Google, Creator of the Google Magenta Project Could a computer listen to so much music that it learns how to compose its own – and do it even better than humans? Google has a research project called Magenta that’s been working on this for years. (Originally aired 10/30/2018) Getting More