Radio Harris

Lisa Ellman, MPP/JD'05, shares her journey from Harris student to Obama advisor and drone policy expert - and why she's looking forward to the upcoming Women in Public Leadership program.

Professor Bruce Meyer is working to help Congress usher in a new age of evidence-based policycraft.

Visiting Fellow Alan Wiseman of Vanderbilt University found out what it takes to move bills through Congress.

There's a calculus to factional conflict, Professor Ethan Bueno de Mesquita finds - and it's challenging the conventional wisdom about violence.

Lecturer Rebecca Sive weighs in on the challenges and opportunities that Hillary Clinton faces as the first prominent female in the 2016 presidential race.

When millions of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in 2008, many pointed the finger at two less obvious culprits: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two mega mortgage buyers had been picking up risky loans and selling them with a guarantee of repayment. This amplified the housing crisis and forced the Federal government to bail them out. Ever since, there's been a serious movement to dismantle Fannie and Freddie. But last week, Chicago Harris Professor Benjamin Keys released a paper suggesting that Fannie and Freddie might be doing the economy a hidden favor by redistributing risk and cash - to the tune of $20 billion.

Last month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decided to move its historic Doomsday Clock forward two minutes. Spurred by the growing concerns about climate change and the lack of progress in nuclear disarmament, the clock now sits at three minutes to midnight. Kennette Benedict, director of the Bulletin and lecturer at Chicago Harris, discusses what the decision means - and why she hasn't given up hope.

Kindergarten is supposed to be a year of transition - the time when toddlers become bona fide students. But when it comes to math, American kindergartens are falling way behind. Teachers are focusing on material that kids already know, challenging them little and costing them big in the long run. Assistant Professor Amy Claessens helps us understand why, and what can be done about it.

Bruce Rauner just took office as the 42nd Governor of Illinois - but with that title comes a very tall order. Rauner is inheriting a state in serious financial turmoil. The deficit is expected to nearly double in a year, while revenues are expected to drop by billions. Meanwhile, a $100 billion pension debt looms large in the background. What can be done, and how might Gov. Rauner handle it? Chicago Harris Senior Lecturer Paula Worthington helps sort it all out.

Imperial. Unilateral. Over-reaching. These are just a few of the terms that have been used to describe President Obama's recent actions on immigration. Is this a Constitutional crisis, typical partisan squabbling, or something else entirely? Chicago Harris Professor William Howell, expert on the US presidency and separation of powers, helps navigate this prickly terrain. Hear his take on the immigration debate, how presidents always expand their authority, and why that might not be a bad thing.

How would your school days have been different without access to a bathroom? In India, as in many parts of the world, that's the status quo. But now that's changing, ad the results are promising. In the newest episode of Radio Harris, we hear from Chicago Harris Assistant Professor Anjali Adukia, who has studied the influence of sanitation facilities on student performance in India. Tune in to hear who cares about latrines most, why sanitation is catching on in the developing world, and how an ambitious monkey almost ruined Adukia's research.

Every election season, pundits are fixated on polls and candidates. But as Chicago Harris Assistant Professor Anthony Fowler explains, there's a more fundamental issue that isn't receiving much attention: Who will, or will not, turn out to vote - and what does it mean for the country? In the second installment of Radio Harris, Professor Fowler shares what he's learned about the surprising effects of get-out-the-vote efforts, what the US could learn from Australia, and what it'll all mean on Election Day.

Over the past several weeks, a sense of panic has been building around the outbreak of the Ebola virus. The disease has dominated headlines, conversations and social media feeds, and not necessarily to our benefit. How does the way we get information about threats like this affect how we respond to them? To find out, Chicago Harris Assistant Professor Daniel Bennett and his co-authors looked at the 2003 SARS outbreak in Taiwan. The paper, co-authored by Bennett, Chun-Fang Chiang of National Taiwan University and Anup Malani of the University of Chicago Law School, is forthcoming in the Journal of Development Economics. What they discovered might make you question what, and how, you're really learning about the threat of Ebola.