Deferred Dreams of Brown and Grutter

07/25/19 • 0 min

The Open Mind, Hosted by Alexander Heffner

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Impeachment and the Righteous Republicans

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Brenda Wineapple, author of the recently released and critically acclaimed “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation” heralded as a “riveting and absorbing book” by The New York Times and both “a guidebook” and “cautionary tale for our times” by the Boston Globe.

The subject today: impeachment Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and the righteous Republicans and the first ever impeachment in American history. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the first U.S. president to fall victim to assassination the country entrusted it's survival to an accidental president, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee who had forged a unity ticket with Lincoln for reelection. Despite Lincoln's assessment that Johnson was, in his words, “a good man” or at least he thought the new leader abandoned the promise of emancipation and enfranchisement and defied the protection of America's newest citizens. My guest today will analyze this history and its contemporary relevance.

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The Story of Climate

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Jon Gertner, science writer for the New York Times Magazine. His first book “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation” chronicled the exploits of a generation of scientists at the world's greatest laboratory.

Gertner is here to discuss his newest book by Random House “The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future.” He explores 150 years of exploration and investigation on the Greenland ice sheet, which he says has led to a profound understanding of our current climate crisis. In his investigation of Greenland, Gertner traveled to the island six times and interviewed scientists in Europe and around the United States. “In the Arctic he slept by glaciers, drank from melt water streams, joined with NASA teams, measuring the ice sheet and cruised through iceberg waters in the strange light of Arctic midnight.”