StoryCorps

Thursday, December 29, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For the last meeting of the year, we will get away from the depressing news and listen to inspiring stories by common people from StoryCorps, which won the 2015 TED prize. The winner of the TED prizes gets to address the influential TED audience and make a wish, which is often granted. Here are the links:

• StoryCorps' TED Talk
• StoryCorps' YouTube Channel

If you get a chance to browse the StoryCorps channel and find a good story, let me know so we can share it during the meeting.

Here is an UPDATE of our meeting room renovation in January; the room will not be ready until 1/23/17. This means that our first meeting for 2017 has been pushed back to 1/26/17; so we will actually have a chance to discuss Trump's first week in office for our first meeting of next year.

----------------------------------- Updated 12/24/16 -------------------------------------

HERE is a follow-up on the StoryCorps TED Talk. You can find more stories on the StoryCorps website.

----------------------------------- Updated 12/30/16 -------------------------------------

Here are the StoryCorps animated stories shown at the meeting:

• Lessons her grandmother taught her in the kitchen
• Traffic Stop
• Intro to StoryCorps
• The Bookmobile
• Eyes on the Stars

Obama's Exit Interviews

Thursday, December 22, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

For the last two meetings of this year, we will take a break from Trump. During the first two weeks of next year, our meeting room will be unavailable due to renovations. So our first meeting for next year will be 1/19/17, the day before Inauguration Day. We should have a lot to say about Trump by then.

For the next meeting, we review some of the broad aspects of the Obama presidency by looking at some interviews he gave to popular TV hosts.

• With Steven Colbert, Obama polishes his resume
• With Bill Maher, Obama answers some rarely asked questions
• With Trevor Noah, Obama discusses how he personally handled race as president
• With Samantha Bee, Obama contemplates a scary Halloween scenario

------------------------------- Updated 12/22/16 ---------------------------------

Here are the two additional questions to Obama in the Bill Maher interview:

• On American Empire
• On Atheism

Post-Truth vs Truthiness

Thursday, December 15, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The last election was not only short on issues; it was also loose with the truth and the voters did not seem to care. Have we entered new era of 'post-truth', or is it just a continuation of politics bending the truth, sometime called 'truthiness'. We will examine if we have hit a new low in truth, or if it is just more of the same with the following videos:

• Steven Colbert claims that his word 'truthiness' is the same as 'post-truth'
• An example of truthiness, Jon Stewart vs Fox News
• An example of post-truth, Colbert takes on fake news
• A TED Talk on the Filter Bubble

------------------------------------- Updated 12/15/16 -----------------------------------------------

Here are the other videos shown at the meeting:

• Man Behind Fake Campaign News
• Filtering news is direct threat to First Amendment

Xenophobia

Thursday, December 8, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Xenophobia, the fear of foreigners, was a problem before the election. But with Trump as president, xenophobia may become official policy. Here are the videos for the meeting:

• ‘Xenophobia’ Word of the Year
• Islamophobia killed my brother
• Samatha Bee - Sore Winners
• Mineta: Can't believe talk of registries
• CNN commentators clash over Trump, racism

------------------------------------- Updated 12/8/16 ---------------------------------

Here are the other videos shown at the meeting:

• Richard Spencer's appearance at Texas A&M
• The Daily Show - Muslim Registry