April 3 -"Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis"; "Burning Country: Syria in Revolution and War"

We begin with the American Dream in crisis which is the subtitle of Robert Putnam’s new book “Our Kids”, a powerful compendium of social and economic research which gets to the heart of the issues that underlie the current political campaigns. The author of the classic bestseller “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, Robert Putnam addresses the source of the populist anger on the right and left as growing income inequality, the downsized middle class, and the diminishing horizons in the land of opportunity, are making the American Dream increasingly out of reach as America becomes less socially mobile and more of a class society. Robert Putnam, the Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and the former Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who has been consulted by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, joins us to discuss the fate and future of our families, schools and communities.

Part 2

Then we are joined in the studio by Robin Yassin-Kassab, a media commentator on Syria and Leila Al-Shami, a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aims to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. They are the authors of the new book, just out, “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War” and we will look into the modern day political and humanitarian nightmare that Syria has become and explore the slow-motion death of a country before the eyes of the world from the initial grassroots uprising when Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom and dignity, to the present shaky ceasefire and peace talks to end a civil war that has become a proxy war and could explode into a regional war.