Friday, September 27 – Friday, October 4

Republican strategist Lauren Maddox was communications director for House Speaker Newt Gingrich the last time the federal government shut down, in 1996. Now a senior strategist at the Podesta Group, a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., she compares and contrasts what happened then to the nasty budget battle going on in Congress now.

A study published by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C. indicates that public schools in the United States are more segregated for African Americans today than they were 40 years ago. Richard Rothstein, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law and the author of the report, explains how education policy undermined integration efforts.

Nate Jackson, who spent most of his six seasons in the NFL playing wide receiver and tight end for the Denver Broncos, never achieved real fame. He has a new memoir out called “Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile”. It’s Nate Jackson’s own story, but it’s also the story of every player who isn’t named Peyton Manning or Reggie Bush or Victor Cruz.

Hispanics are the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group, but the entertainment industry hasn’t kept up with the trend. Michael Schwimmer, CEO of NUVOtv, and Carlos Portugal, director of the web series “East Los High” on Hulu, join us to explain why they are creating more English-language programs for what NUVO calls “today’s modern Latinos”.