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North Carolina has passed the country’s worst voter ID bill. It’s provoked widespread protest: thousands have marched in the “Moral Monday” movement, and more than 700 have been arrested. We will talk to two of them, both history professors in North Carolina, both former presidents of the Organization of American Historians: JACQUELYN DOWD HALL of UNC-Chapel Hill and WILLIAM CHAFE of Duke. READ their op-ed about being arrested: HERE.
Also: “Life and Death in Assisted Living”: the shocking story of the multi-billion dollar for-profit elder care industry. We’ll speak with investigative reporter A.C. THOMPSON on the revelations from ProPublica and PBS Frontline. WATCH the Frontline documentary by Carl Byker HERE.
Plus: “The Act of Killing” is a chilling documentary about the death squads in Indonesia that killed more than a million people in 1965. In the film, some of the leading executioners reenact real-life mass-killings for our benefit—in the style of the Hollywood movies they love. The film is playing now in LA at the Nuart, and moves to the Landmark on Friday. We’ll speak with filmmaker JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER. WATCH “The Act of Killing” trailer HERE.
Today’s news from Edward Snowden & Glenn Greewald: XKeyscore, the NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’ — HERE.
Gore Vidal died a year ago on Wednesday — his FBI file begins not with his political activism, or his homosexuality, but with a report that he made disparaging remarks about J. Edgar Hoover.
Reza Aslan: Crucifixion was a punishment that Rome reserved exclusively for the crime of sedition, for crimes against the state. If you know nothing else about Jesus except that his life ended on the cross at Golgotha, you know enough to understand who he was and what kind of threat he posed to Rome.
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Also: Big news in the art world: Jeffrey Deitch is resigning as head of MOCA, the Museum of Contemoprary Art in LA. CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT explains why Deitch failed–also why MOCA matters, and what’s next for the struggling museum. Christopher is art critic for the
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Also: The summer of 1964: that was Mississippi Freedom Summer, the tuirning point in the Vietnam War, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Republican convention nominating Barry Goldwater—and a magnificent new song, “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas.
LISTEN online
LISTEN online
Plus: The greatest generation? After the WWII Normandy invasion, after the heroism and sacrifice, American GIs’ violent sexual assaults on French women horrified the French.
Fifty years ago — on June 25, 1963 — Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 had its US premiere in New York City. It’s a transparently autobiographical film about a world famous director unable to finish his next film, beset by doubts, anxieties, and nightmares. As the film opens, our hero Guido, Fellini’s alter ego, played by Marcello Mastroianni, faces a dilemma that may be familiar to many: What if your deadline arrived, but you had written nothing? What if people came to hear you, but you had nothing to say? What would happen if you ran out of ideas?
