Snitches Get Stitches with Alexandra Natapoff (S3 Ep.38)

11/20/22 • 53 min

1 Listener

My guest today is Professor Alexandra Natapoff. Alexandra is a law professor at Harvard University. She writes about criminal courts, public defense, plea bargaining, wrongful convictions, and race and inequality in the criminal justice system. Her new book, which is an expanded edition of her older book is called "Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice"

In this episode, Alexandra and I discuss a phenomenon that's rarely encountered outside of shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, which is the use of criminal informants in the American justice system. Not all countries allow cops and prosecutors to reduce an accused criminal sentence in exchange for his cooperation and other investigations. However, Alexandra argues that most local and state agencies in America are allowed to do this with no documentation and no transparency. We talk about the advantages as well as the flaws of this system. We discuss the risk of informants giving false information or even planting evidence to reduce their own sentences. We talk about the triangular relationship between cops, informants, and prosecutors. We talk about the secretive nature of the informant system and how that prevents academics from studying it. I also press Alexandra on whether her proposal for transparency in the informant system would hinder the cops' ability to solve violent crimes and protect unsafe neighborhoods.

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Previous Episode

The Death of The American Coalition with Tim Shenk (S3 Ep.37)

My guest today is Timothy Shenk. Tim is a historian at George Washington University and a co-editor at Dissent magazine. He has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jacobin, among other publications. Tim is also the author of the book "Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy".

In this episode, Tim and I discuss the book that President Obama wrote in the 90s, but never published, which Tim was able to get his hands on. We discuss Obama's early influences, his critique of the left and his critique of expertise. We talk about how Obama's views have changed from the 90s to today. We talk about the legacy of Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader and writer who was a hero to both Tim and myself. We talk about how political parties used to build long-term coalitions and win many elections in a row, and why neither party is able to do that today. We discuss popularism and its critics. We also go on to talk about the midterm elections.

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Next Episode

Can We Trust AI? with Rama Chellappa (S3 Ep.39)

My guest today is Rama Chellappa. Rama Chellappa is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He's a chief scientist at the Johns Hopkins Institute for assured autonomy. Before that, Rama was an assistant Associate Professor and later became the director of the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute. Rama is also the author of the book "Can We Trust AI?"

This episode is all about artificial intelligence. Several recent stories about AI have shocked and worried me. We have deep fakes going viral on Tiktok. AI reaching human levels of gameplay at the game "Diplomacy", which is a language-based game of conquest and deception. Then you have the Generative Adversarial Networks or "GANs" creating images from a line of text that rival and often exceed the work done by human graphic designers. Rama and I discuss all of these topics as well as other topics like neural networks, the difference between narrow intelligence and general intelligence, the use of facial recognition software, the possibility of an AI engaging in racial discrimination, the future of work, the so-called alignment problem, and much more.

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To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase.

All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/coleman.