Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the recent visit to Iran by Turkey’s President Erdogan, after an earlier visit to Saudi Arabia, and look into a possible shift in regional alliances as Saudi Arabian military involvement in Yemen deepens and warnings from Iran are ignored. Henri Barkey, a Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University and a former member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, joins us to discuss whether the rumored talks between the Saudis and Turkey in Qatar, aimed at removing Syria’s Assad, indicate a new boldness from the Saudis or paranoia over a possible U.S. rapprochement with Iran.

Part 2

Then as the just-announced presidential candidate Hillary Clinton heads to Iowa in a van on a road trip across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, we speak with someone who has known her since she first met her husband Bill. Ambassador Derek Shearer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Finland who is currently a Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College, joins us to discuss whether in a country whose politics are dominated by a plutocracy, there is still an American meritocracy, and whether his old friend Hillary, could become the first female president of the United States.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the remarks made by Pope Francis that the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20^th Century and that Turkey’s concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding. Ronald Suny, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago and the author of a new book, just out, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide”, joins us. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the White House’s attempt, ahead of the summit of the Americas, to backpedal on its recent designation of Venezuela as “an extraordinary threat to U.S. national security”. Virginia Lopez, a Caracas-based journalist who covers Latin America and Venezuela for Al Jazeera English, joins us to discuss the meeting between an emissary of Secretary of State Kerry and Venezuela’s Foreign Minister and the ten million signatures that Venezuela’s President Maduro will present to President Obama at the summit in Panama demanding that Obama rescind his executive order sanctioning Venezuela.

Part 2

Then we look into the possible lessons that could be learned from the sentencing of the surviving Boston bomber who will likely get the death penalty for an act of terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. Haroon Moghul, a Fellow at Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center, joins us.  He has an op-ed at CNN “How to Prevent More Tsarnaevs” and we discuss how there are many young men and women like Tsarnaev in many countries, including the United States, who threaten America and Americans and will continue to do so, unless we understand what radicalizes Muslims.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the best-selling author Les Standiford, about his new book “Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles”. With California and much of the South-West in a prolonged drought, we will examine the repercussions of having vast metropolises in the desert which depend on imported water that we are running of.