October 30 - A Reality Check on the Ebola Hysteria; How the Red Cross Really Responded to Super-Storm Sandy; The Exploding Space Station Supply Mission Could Have Been Worse; The Filmmaker of "The Great Invisible"

Full Program

Part 1

As increasing numbers of states ignore America’s chief public health organization the CDC, who recommend the daily monitoring of healthcare worker exposed to Ebola instead of isolation, we begin with Dr Charles van der Horst, a Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Infectious Diseases, and discuss the case of nurse Kaci Hickox who has no symptoms and has tested negative for Ebola. After being forcibly held in a makeshift isolation ward by New Jersey’s Governor Christie, she defied the quarantine on healthcare workers imposed on her in Maine, by riding her bike surrounded by police officers. We also discuss different approaches other nations have taken to controlling the outbreak in West Africa with Cuba setting a positive example while Australia offers the worst example.

Part 2

Then, on the second anniversary of the devastation of the northeast by super-storm Sandy, we speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning senior reporter with ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, who has investigated the role of the American Red Cross whose response to the disaster is at odds with the hundreds of millions of dollars the American people gave them in donations. We discuss his new article at ProPublica, “The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster” and how the charity, under the leadership of a former marketing executive from AT&T, diverted assets away from relief for public relations purposes.

Part 3

Then finally, we speak with award-winning filmmaker Margaret Brown about her new documentary feature “The Big Invisible” which explores the lasting legacy of the Deep Water Horizon blowout in the Gulf that BP has tried to cover up with a massive PR campaign. Her film tells the human story of how the world’s worst environmental disaster impacted the people in the area, the fishermen as well as the oil workers, and how the truth will eventually surface, just like the oil hidden below on the seabed. 

Part 4

Then we examine the explosive failure of a space station supply mission with Karl Grossman, the author of “The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet”, and look into the consequences of launching nuclear reactors into space, which, had it been the case with Tuesday’s abortive launch, a swath of the coast of Virginia would have been turned into a dead zone for 50,000 years.