Diane Rehm: On My Mind

Thousands of years ago humans learned to control the power of water – and civilization was born. Now, in a new book, Jeremy Rifkin argues climate change has shifted that equation, and water is once again controlling us – with floods, droughts, hurricanes and typhoons. “The waters are rebelling,” he says. “They are literally taking down the infrastructure of our civilization in real time.”Rifkin is the author of more than 20 books about the influence of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, and the environment. He has advised governments around the globe on how to adapt economies and infrastructure to a changing world. He joins Diane to talk about his new book, “Planet Aqua,” a plea to radically rethink our relationship to water and its impact on our future.

Earlier this week Diane hosted a special edition of The Diane Rehm Book Club, her monthly series held on ZOOM in front of a live audience. This month she asked some of her favorite book lovers to join her to talk about their favorite reads of year. And they did not disappoint. Her guests were Ann Patchett, novelist and owner of Parnassus Books, Eddie Glaude Jr., professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of several books on race and politics, and Maureen Corrigan, book critic on NPR’s Fresh Air. She also teaches literary criticism at Georgetown University. See below for a list of each guest’s top books of the year, along with all of the titles discussed during this conversation. Maureen Corrigan’s top books of 2024: “James” by Percival Everett “Colored Television” by Danzy Senna “Long Island” by Colm Tóibín “Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner “Cahokia Jazz” by Francis Spufford “The God of the Woods” by Liz Moore “A W

Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.They say they will cut one third of the federal budget, slash regulations, reduce the federal workforce ... and that it “will be easy!”David Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter at The New York Times and has covered government spending for years. He says there are certainly places where government can run more efficiently, and where waste and fraud can be eliminated. However, he adds, “It’s really hard to find places where you can cut a trillion or 2 trillion dollars and not drastically cut back the services people expect from the government. Fahrenthold joins Diane to talk about what the leaders of DOGE have in mind andwhat it will take to accomplish their goals. 

For years experts have warned about a looming crisis facing the Social Security system. According to current estimates, the program will become insolvent by 2034, at which time benefits would be automatically cut.  During the campaign, President-elect Trump positioned himself as an advocate of the program, which remains highly popular among voters. But economist Teresa Ghilarducci says that if you dig into his proposals, a different picture emerges. A recent analysis shows his policies would move up the date of insolvency from 11 years to 9 years. “It’s kind of a shocker,” she says. “He’s very bold in his policies.”Teresa Ghilarducci is a professor of economics at The New School and author of the new book "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy.” She joins Diane to explain the urgency of addressing Social Security’s finances and why Trump’s proposals would make the situation worse.

For years, legendary folk singer Joan Baez wrote poems and tucked them away in notebooks and on scraps of paper. She started this decades ago, around the time memories surfaced of childhood abuse at the hands of her father. Baez says poetry was a way to explore the reasons behind her lifelong phobias, insomnia and panic attacks – and to come to terms with a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, which for her meant she lived with several other voices in her head. Now 83, Baez has taken these musings about her life, her trauma, and her passions for nature and art, and is sharing them with the world. “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance” reads like a diary in verse, and offers deep insight into the experiences and creativity of one of our nation’s most beloved folk musicians.Diane spoke to Joan Baez on Zoom in front of a live audience as part of The Diane Rehm `Book Club in August of this year. They talked about the book, as well as the recent documentary about Baez’s life, “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.”

Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s an appointment that has many public health experts more than a little concerned. For years Kennedy has spread misinformation about vaccines, calling into question their safety and efficacy. He has promoted controversial or debunked medical treatments. He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings. And he has accused the federal agencies he will oversee as having an interest in “mass poisoning the American public.” Dr. Céline Gounder is an infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist and currently the editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. She joins Diane to separate the facts from falsehoods and outline just how much power Kennedy might have over our healthcare system. 

Promises of mass deportations were a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s campaign. His fiery – and false -- rhetoric painted undocumented immigrants as murders, rapists and violent criminals. He vowed to throw them out of the country by the millions starting on day one. Last week’s appointment of Tom Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy send a clear signal that Trump hopes to follow through on those promises. “I think we can expect that something dramatic is likely coming,” says Nick Miroff. He covers immigration enforcement and the department of homeland security for The Washington Post. Miroff joins Diane to explain whether Trump can put his words into action and just how much his policies could transform the nation’s immigration system.

During the run up to the election, Donald Trump made big promises about immigration, about the economy, about remaking the bureaucracy of the United States government. And now it seems he will get a chance to follow through on those promises. “This is a much broader rejection than a rejection of Biden and by extension Harris,” says Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It is a rejection of a larger sense of who has been running the country, all the elites.”Few know the workings of the U.S. government as well as Ornstein and though he says “the elites” (himself included) have much to learn from the extent of Trump’s victory, he warns that people might not understand what they have gotten themselves into. “For a lot of Americans who think that you can get rid of the bureaucracy, get rid of government and all will be fine," he say Ornstein, "they’re going to discover what it does in terms of disruption to their daily lives.” Ornstein joins Diane to make sense of what we saw on

The term “fascist” has been lobbed at Donald Trump since he entered the race for president in 2015 with talk of Mexican rapists and drug dealers. Now the label has become central to the argument against Trump in the closing days of this year’s election. It’s been used to describe him by his former chief of staff John Kelly, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and Vice President Kamala Harris. Jason Stanley is a philosophy professor at Yale University. He’s the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works. His latest is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. He joins Diane to talk about what fascism is and why voters should care. 

Four years ago, Donald Trump spread the lie that Democrats stole the election.  He filed lawsuits, led protests and spearheaded misinformation campaigns in an attempt to overturn the result. Since then, Trump and his allies have been laying the groundwork to question this year’s contest if the numbers don’t go his way. In other words, a Stop the Steal 2.0. “I’m nervous,” says Rick Hasen, a leading expert on election law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA. “But I’m not as nervous as I was in 2020.” Hasen says the chaos created by Trump’s Big Lie taught the country’s lawmakers and election officials valuable lessons about how to secure the vote. He joins Diane to explain why he feels this year’s election will, indeed, be free and fair.