January 13 - Police Officers Charged with Murder; The Fall of Putin and Who or What Might Replace Him; Long Hours, No Vacations, Yet When We Are Idle, We Are the Most Creative

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a different outcome from recent police shootings where instead of a grand jury deciding not to indict, a District Attorney decided to file murder charges. Mike Gallagher, an Investigative Reporter with the Albuquerque Journal where he has the front page lead story today “Officers Charged with Murder”, joins us to discuss the charges filed by Albuquerque District Attorney Kari Brandenberg against two police officers who shot and killed a homeless man for camping illegally in the foothills of Albuquerque last spring in a case captured on a police helmet camera that shocked the nation. We discuss the upcoming preliminary hearing which is likely to grab national attention and whether there is some payback at work since the DA who brought murder charges against the Albuquerque Police is herself the subject of a police investigation into bribery and intimidation of a witness.

Part 2

Then we examine whether the steep drop in oil prices that are likely to continue throughout the year, could lead to the fall of the Putin regime in Russia since the Putin kleptocracy depends on revenues from oil and gas to line the pockets of Putin’s cronies first, then trickle-down in sufficient amounts to the people in order to maintain the peace. David Kotz, a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, whose latest book is “The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism”, joins us to discuss his article at The Nation “Plummeting Oil Prices Could Bring Radical Change to Russia” and what political alternatives might emerge out of the chaos in Russia to challenge Putin.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the diminishing returns and human costs of long working hours in America where there are zero mandatory vacation days compared to 30 in France, in a country whose constitution invokes the concept of the pursuit of happiness.  Brigid Shulte, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with The Washington Post and the author of “Overwhelmed; Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time”, joins us to discuss her article at CNN “Leisure is the new productivity” and how neuroscience is discovering that when we are idle, our brains are the most active and we are the most creative.