Independent Commentary Episodes

40 % of American adults between the ages of 25 and 54 are single according to the Pew Research Center. That represents a 30% increase since 1990. What implications does this new trend portend for American society ? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Radio and Podcasting seem to be natural allies. In this episode Radio Futurologist James Cridland discusses the future of these two audio mediums, the Power of Voice and the Power of Listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

America's student loan iceberg totals $1.7 Trillion, with one in six Americans -46million- carrying some student debt. The median loan amount is $17,000. But 6% have debt in excess of $100,000 as high cost graduate programs, med school, law school and business school expand at a faster rate than undergrad debt. Is loan forgiveness the best way to curtail this drag on the US Economy ? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

San Francisco's city government has been described as dysfunctional by the influential news magazine, The Economist. And other global newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail, regularly highlight our many travails like homelessness, City Hall corruption, rampant crime, inept school governance and stratospheric housing prices. Yet our civic leadership seems incapable or unwilling to fix them. Sam Singer, one of the nation's top Crisis Manage...

Covid 19 fueled a 2.2 year decrease in US white male life expectancy and over 3 years for black and latino men. That was the largest drop in 75 years. While other Western European countries saw a drop also, the US decline was the largest. Why ? In today's podcast we will explore the treasons. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Male College enrolment in 2020 was 40.5% male and 59.5% female. Since the mid-1980s women have earned more bachelors degrees than men. The good news is that women have excelled in higher education. But men have become disillusioned with the college experience and fewer are enrolling. So how will our society change if that trend continues for another 10 or 20 years ? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, SETI seeks to explore, understand and explain the prevalence of life in the Universe. Its' Allen Telescope Array located 300 miles North of San Francisco, is the ears of SETI, listening for extraterrestrial signals. Seth Shostak predicts by the mid 2030s such contact with Earth will have been made, most likely through advanced, alien Artificial Intelligence (AI). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Reg Kelly discusses the QB3 Life Science incubator, a new mega incubator at UC Berkeley to open in October 2021 and groundbreaking research taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area in the field of BioTechnology. And most importantly, cultivating entrepreneurship among scientists and researchers in the Life Sciences. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

While California has 68% of its population vaccinated, Governor Newsom can hardly run victory laps around the State Capitol. Multiple health crises loom including underfunded public health, single payer insurance, Medicaid for 3 million undocumented aliens and the Covid 19 death toll of 63,490 Californians who died during the pandemic all against the backdrop of a Recall Election in the Fall that arguably he could have avoided.. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/messag...

The Group of 7, the US, Canada, France, Japan, UK, Germany and Italy met in Cornwall, England for three days to co-ordinate economic policies post pandemic, agree a new infrastructure investment plan and discuss the rise of China as a global economic power. But the G7 members represent less than 45% of global GDP versus over 70% in the early 1990s. And China warned that gone are the days when a small group of countries could dictate world economic policies. Trevin Stratton discusses the outcome...

US births in 2020 were actually down by 400,000 by year end 2020 due to the pandemic lockdowns. Professor Levine and his team have identified a correlation between unemployment and the US birth rate: for each 1% increase in the unemployment rate, the birth rate drops by 1%. Instead of the stay at home lockdowns producing a baby boom, they actually have caused a baby bust. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

A young family weighs a difficult decision to leave San Francisco and move to North Carolina. Mixed emotions confront Allison and Neal as they decide to leave their adopted home in San Francisco for North Carolina. A wistful conversation covering complex choices many Californians are facing . --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Since the start of the Covid 19 pandemic one year ago, Asian Americans have faced racist violence at a much higher rate than in previous years. In New York City for instance, hate crimes against Asian Americans have jumped 1900% in 2020. And President Biden has signed an executive order as one of his first acts as President denouncing anti-Asian American discrimination. In today's episode we explore why and how to stop it. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

Spokane, Washington is the site of the Gonzaga University campus and the Institute of Hate Studies. Located not far from the Idaho panhandle where White Supremacist groups and ideology have flourished, the Institute is on the front lines in the battle against Hate. Kristine Hoover the Director outlines the Institute's mission in this episode. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

February is Black History Month when we celebrate and acknowledge the many accomplishments of African Americans throughout the history of the United States. In today's episode, successful Venture Capitalist Jonathan Speed, and a US military historian by avocation, walks us through the sweeping experience of African American service men and women during World War II. The courage, perseverance and dedication of the 2.5 million Black Americans who enlisted during the War is richly honored in today'...

San Francisco has been picked on by the East Coast press for decades. Of late, they have criticized us for our homelessness mess, high cost of housing, City Hall Corruption - I agree with them on that score - and the recent tech exodus to Austin, Seattle and points East because of the high cost of living. They seem to think we live in a Film Noir Warp. But San Francisco always bounces back. In fact the mythical Phoenix, rising from the ashes, adorns our city flag. Don't count us out ! --- Send ...

As awful as 2020 has been been, 1968 was even more momentous with political assassinations, the Viet Nam War, the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as well as major civil unrest throughout America. Amidst all these tectonic changes, a major political realignment occurred with segregationist George Wallace winning four dependably Democrat states. And we even had a mini-Pandemic, the Hong Kong flu. 2020 also witnessed a major political realignment which is still underway. But th...

Governor Gavin Newsom, California's 40th Governor could be facing a recall election in the Spring of 2021 in the midst of the Pandemic. Recall signature gatherers have 850,000 of the 1,500,000 qualified signatures they need to trigger a statewide election. They have 90 days to collect the remaining 650,000 signatures. If he loses, Newsom would be terminated as Governor and a fresh election would be held simultaneous to the recall. Interest in the race has now gone national with Republican leade...

November 22, 2020 marks 57 years since the assassination of the 35th President, John F. Kennedy. Yet key documents remain hidden from the public including 300 pages of files on George Joannides, a CIA operative who managed the Cuban student group DRE that Oswald tried to join. And most historians and scholars are reluctant to write the history as so many of the facts of the assassination are as murky as they were over 50 years ago. The passage of time has not cleared up the morass of the Kenned...

2020 has been marked by extreme political polarization in the United States, and civilian unrest in most American cities. 56% of Americans polled expect political violence to follow the November 3rd presidential election regardless of who wins. While we have seen political violence in our past - 4 Presidents were assassinated and 18 out of the 45 Presidents were threatened with assassination - our elections and their results have been peaceful. Until 2020. --- Send in a voice message: https://an...

The quickening pace of the destruction of California's forests by wildfire is staggering. In the last 3 months four million acres of our 33 million acres of forest have burned. That's 12%. From 2000 to 2019 4 million acres burned and before that it took 66 years - 1933 to 1999- to burn 4 million acres. The exponential increase in the burn rate is an existential threat to the Golden State. Yet we still do not have an overarching strategic plan to bring the wildfire menace under control. The same ...

San Francisco's homeless population numbers approximately 24,000. It breaks down into three discrete segments, namely one third mentally ill, one third economic casualties and one third drug users and addicts. Today's podcast focuses on the drug users and addicts. The City Journal and Erica Sandberg in particular has written a detailed account of the Harm Reduction drug culture in San Francisco. Her chilling account of how they facilitate drug use and abuse among the homeless on our streets is ...

Gonzaga University's Institute of Hate Studies, located in Spokane, Washington is a center focused on understanding the roots of Hate in the public square and working to eradicate it. The ADL's Pyramid of Hate is a graphic visual depiction of the five progressive steps of hate culminating in Genocide. During the 20th Century, 21 genocides were perpetrated with 14 of them in the last four decades of the century, when most of us were alive. (Mount Holyoke College). Hate speech in particular is on...

The recent murder of right wing Patriot Prayer member Jay Danielson by Antifa activist Michael Reinoehl on the streets of Portland, was a dangerous escalation in the street protests of this Summer. Reinoehl was subsequently killed by US Marshals in a gunfight near the Washington state capital Olympia. Does this mark the start of right versus left street killings ? The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks 52 right wing groups in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, but not Antifa. What's wrong with that ...