We Can Do Better – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Détails du podcast

Informations techniques et générales issues du flux RSS du podcast.

We Can Do Better

Fran Quigley

Business & Entrepreneuriat

Sciences

Fréquence : 1 épisode/7j. Total Éps: 12

Fran Quigley is a law professor who goes with his students every week to eviction court, representing people facing forcible removal from their homes. They are among the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who are behind on their rent or already homeless, who are forced to skip filling prescriptions, and who often go hungry—despite living in the richest nation in the world.

We can do better.

Other nations already do far better, and the U.S. has often done better in the past. This podcast lifts up the many people and organizations working to make housing, healthcare, and a decent life enforceable human rights.

Lire plusRéduire

Site

RSS

Apple

Classements récents

Dernières positions dans les classements Apple Podcasts et Spotify.

Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
27/08/2026
#95
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
26/08/2026
#71
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
25/08/2026
#57
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
24/08/2026
#47
🇺🇸 États-Unis - nonProfit
24/08/2026
#50
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
23/08/2026
#40
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
22/08/2026
#29
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - nonProfit
21/08/2026
#16
🇺🇸 États-Unis - nonProfit
26/07/2026
#91
🇺🇸 États-Unis - nonProfit
19/07/2026
#63

Spotify

Aucun classement récent disponible

Liens partagés entre épisodes et podcasts

Liens présents dans les descriptions d'épisodes et autres podcasts les utilisant également.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/reclaiming-pursuit-of-happiness
4 partages
https://racepowerpolicy.org/
2 partages
https://endpovertyinca.org/
2 partages

Qualité et score du flux RSS

Évaluation technique de la qualité et de la structure du flux RSS.

Qualité du flux RSS

À améliorer

Score global : 53%

Historique des publications

Répartition mensuelle des publications d'épisodes au fil des années.

Year

Derniers épisodes publiés

Liste des épisodes récents, avec titres, durées et descriptions.

Ending Poverty in California and Beyond

mercredi 3 juin 2026 • Durée 38:09

Devon Gray is the president of End Poverty in California, EPIC, https://endpovertyinca.org/ In this episode, we talk with Devon about EPIC’s work to change the narrative about poverty, focusing on amplifying the voices of workers through its #Listen2Workers campaign. Check EPIC’s website and social media, @EndPovertyCA, for direct conversations with fast food workers, child care providers, gig drivers, etc.

Devon tells us about his journey from Stanford Law to working with Stockton, CA mayor and EPIC founder Michael Tubbs, who created successful guaranteed income and student scholarship programs. We discuss EPIC’s Blueprint to End Poverty, and the lessons EPIC has learned that apply to all states, including the red ones. The Blueprint is available to read on its site, under the same Issues tab that includes some of the legislation they push, including a $21 minimum wage for healthcare workers, corporate transparency, and limitations on renter security deposits.

Lire plusRéduire

Giving Up Billionaires for Lent

mercredi 10 juin 2026 • Durée 43:52

Sister Emily TeKolste is an organizer for NETWORK Advocates and Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, https://www.networkadvocates.org/ and https://networklobby.org/. Sr. Emily tells us about her journey through activism and service to become a Sister of Providence and organizer for economic justice. Sr. Emily tells us how “giving up billionaires for Lent” is part of the program linking multi-faith values to direct advocacy to lawmakers, an agenda that was a key part of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, and creating and defending the Affordable Care Act. We learn how progressive organizing can take a lesson from conservative movements–which have nurtured activism by emphasizing relationships and community first. Which leads Sr. Emily and colleagues to be nurturing “squad goals” in the push for higher wages, paid family leave, and healthcare for all.

#economicjustice #healthcareforall #workersrights #livingwage #communityorganizing #socialjustice #publicpolicy #faithinaction #wecandobetter

Lire plusRéduire

The Arms Industry: Robbing the Working Class of a Better Life

mercredi 17 juin 2026 • Durée 48:12

Stephen Semler is a self-described “producer of charts & policy analysis for the working class.” As the author of the newsletter Polygraph and a co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, he is the best there is at explaining how the arms industry has used piles of campaign money to take over U.S. budgets via Congress and Presidential administrations, and the price we all pay for this domination. We talk about his journey from a short stint as an arms industry lobbyist himself to now writing amazing articles like, What $1.5 Trillion for the Pentagon Could Fund Instead–a stunning list that includes ending world hunger, ending U.S. homelessness, Medicaid for the uninsured, power half of U.S. households with solar–with plenty of billions left over. Reading that article spurred Fran to become a paid subscriber to Polygraph. For a podcast that insists we can do better, Stephen explains where the money is to accomplish all of our goals.

Lire plusRéduire

How Millions Are Losing Food Assistance

mercredi 24 juin 2026 • Durée 32:14

In this episode, we talk with Catlin Nchako of the topnotch research and policy institute Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Catlin and his colleagues are documenting the devastating impact of the Trump/Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” As Catlin told us, the law has already pushed 3.5 million people off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aka Food Stamps program..

You can see those numbers, and the numbers for your own state on the Center on Budget’s website, specifically an ongoing feature called, SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the Republican Megabill Is Implemented (link below).

Catlin is a data researcher, but he emphasizes here the human cost to children and to our communities. He also explains how to fix this: the federal government needs to press pause on the transfer of SNAP responsibility to the states. That could help ease the very real suffering going on in the short-term, while repealing these mean-spirited barriers (more on the impact of red-tape work requirements here ) is the long-term answer.

🔗: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-as ...
🔗: https://endpovertynow.substack.com/p/...

Lire plusRéduire

Might You Already be a Democratic Socialist?

jeudi 16 juillet 2026 • Durée 52:12

In this episode of We Can Do Better, we interview Jesse Brown, the first openly socialist candidate ever elected to the city council of Indianapolis in the heart of Republican-dominated Indiana. Jesse won his seat in 2023, with the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America , DSA, by defeating the sitting vice president of the council.

Since then, democratic socialists have been on a roll. Zohran Mamdani in New York City and others are winning major mayoral elections and are poised to win more this year. Already in 2026, democratic socialists are defeating incumbents and winning open seats in primary wins that will likely yield a growing number of socialist members of Congress.

Many of us want to see our government respond much better to the struggles of everyday people. And we want wealthy people and corporations to have far less riches and regular people to hold far more political power.

What is “sewer socialism” and how does that service-focused history guide the new wave of elected socialist mayors like Mamdani? How does democratic socialism intersect with the care-for-others religious principles at the core of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religious and moral traditions?

We engage with all these questions with Jesse Brown. Jesse is a former high school teacher, which seems to be good preparation for educating us about what democratic socialism is and is not.

He shares with us how his single mom’s financial struggles and his family’s Christian faith led him to socialism, how he thinks democratic socialists are speaking to the same frustration that has led many voters to embrace Trump in the past, and how the democratic nature of socialism should prevent him or any other elected official from thinking they have all the answers for a community’s needs.

How Public Pharma Can Fix Our Prescription Drug Crisis

jeudi 9 juillet 2026 • Durée 42:43

In this episode, we talk with Mara Heneghan about something called “Public Pharma,” which can fix our current prescription drug prices. Mara is director of the Health and Political Economy Project at the New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, where she works on health-focused policy and programs.

Polling consistently shows a disturbing fact: 4 in every 10 Americans report skipping prescription doses because they can’t afford their cost, something we know can cost lives. Affording prescription drugs always ranks at the top of Americans’ concerns, and certainly a struggle that we see as very real for our low-income clients.

Mara tells us that she and others have been working on a fix: drug manufacturing can and should be treated as essential public infrastructure, instead of a platform for price gouging. In fact, it is already being done.

California’s CalRx is a state-backed initiative that produces CalRx-branded insulin pens, which are offered at pharmacies for approximately $11 per pen – a fraction of the roughly $80 or more per pen that patients typically pay for brand-name long-acting insulin.

CalRx is working on doing the same for albuterol, a medicine that is critical for children with asthma. Michigan and New York are contemplating following California’s lead in public manufacturing of medicines.

The public sector also is starting to leverage its purchasing power to lower drug prices. Not only is all this fully legal, the federal government actually has the right to license patents on critical medicines to generic manufacturers when those medicines are made unaffordable by monopoly-holding corporations. (See an explanation of that “1498 option below.) Our government has done this in the past, and should again.

Celebrating America's 250th: Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness

mercredi 1 juillet 2026 • Durée 31:11

This week, we are doing something different from welcoming an outside guest. For our episode on the week of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to talk about an article Fran recently published on the website Common Dreams: Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness: Let’s Celebrate the Declaration’s 250th by Ending Poverty (https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/reclaiming-pursuit-of-happiness)

To lead our conversation, we pulled out from behind the scenes our podcast’s guru and producer Jack Quigley. Jack is a journalist and writer, now Chief Marketing Officer for 14 Regional Construction Trade Magazines.Jack takes over the questioning and asks Fran about his article, including:

• The historical evidence showing that, by promising that our new government would fulfill “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right, the founders meant a government guarantee of housing, healthcare, and meeting critical needs;

• How civil rights like voting, free speech, etc. are completely dependent on fulfilling economic rights to housing, healthcare, etc.;

• Why the record shows that the U.S. people, now and throughout history, are nowhere near as hostile to guaranteeing economic rights to housing, healthcare, etc. as we have been led to believe;

• Why the U.S. ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights could solve our poverty crisis.

The full article is available here: Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness: Let’s Celebrate the Declaration’s 250th by Ending Poverty (https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/reclaiming-pursuit-of-happiness)

How One Law Change Can Dramatically Reduce Poverty

jeudi 23 juillet 2026 • Durée 47:15

In this episode, we examine a true silver bullet that can dramatically reduce poverty in the United States: pass a proposed law to update and improve our SSI program.

We start out the episode with the story of Dorothy (not her real name), one of our many eviction court clients who is unable to work because of disability. Like 7.4 million Americans, Dorothy’s sole income is her SSI, Supplemental Security Income, check. But that check is only $994–less than the average rent, not to mention other expenses. This amount condemns millions of people to live in poverty and, like Dorothy and so many others, to experience eviction and homelessness.

Our guest Stephen Nuñez, a researcher at the Roosevelt Institute, shows that we can do better. Stephen’s analysis of the SSI Restoration Act, introduced in Congress by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others, would boost the SSI monthly amount and dismantle nonsensical restrictions.

The bottom line: This legislation would do a LOT to help Dorothy and so many others: more deserving people would get SSI, and a lot less people on SSI would be in poverty.

Here is some of the suggested reading mentioned in the episode:

Estimating the Cost and Impacts of the SSI Restoration Act, by Stephen Nuñez, Jack Landry, https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/estimating-the-cost-and-impacts-of-the-ssi-restoration-act/
SSI Restoration Act of 2026 Overview:, Justice in Aging, https://justiceinaging.org/the-supplemental-security-income-ssi-restoration-act/
This One Neat Trick Can Reduce Homelessness https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/increase-ssi-reduce-homelessness

The Fox is Guarding the Henhouse – And We Can Fix That

vendredi 21 août 2026 • Durée 08:38

Last week, on NBC’s Meet the Press, our new U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked “Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?”

His reply? “ No, I’m not going to pledge that.”

Once again, the Trump administration does us a favor. It unmasks the inherent corruption that had been more politely hidden by previous presidents.

As more fully developed in a Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy article I researched and wrote back in 2010, called Torture, Impunity, and the Need for Independent Prosecutorial Oversight of the Executive Branch, our current system de facto grants impunity for the President of the United States. Because the President gets to appoint–and fire at any time– the only person who can initiate federal prosecutions: the Attorney General, the head of the Justice Department.

The fox is guarding the henhouse.

But we can fix that.

Specifically, we can independently elect our Attorney General.

An independently elected prosecutor is already the dominant model in local communities, where 95% of criminal cases are filed and adjudicated. Mayors don’t have control over the person and agency who might file criminal charges against them. State-level attorneys general are also usually elected, so they can similarly hold governors accountable, as can local prosecutors.

At the federal level, it seems very possible that, given our divided electorate, we could be electing a president from one party and an Attorney General from a different party. We have a lot of split ticket voters, and we like putting guardrails around our top leaders.

Voters in States and Cities Get It: Workers Deserve a Living Wage

jeudi 13 août 2026 • Durée 27:53

Many of the people we see in eviction court losing their homes are working long hours at difficult jobs. But they work in retail, the home healthcare sector, in food service work, etc.--where their employers do not pay them wages high enough to keep themselves housed.

So that is why we welcome this week to We Can Do Better David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people.

David shares with us how, at a time when the national minimum wage is stagnant at a shameful sub-living wage of $7.25 per hour, dozens of states and localities are raising the wage themselves, including many this year alone. Among the 30 states with higher wages are several “red” states, reflecting the strong bipartisan public support for living wages for all workers.

David shares with us the reams of evidence countering the false claims that increased wages lead to widespread jobs losses and sharply higher prices. We also discuss the ripple effects of higher minimum wages on public health and safety, including protecting our clients and others from domestic violence.

David tells us why President Trump’s no taxes on tips/overtime changes are “gimmicks,” filled with false promises that usually do not meaningfully help those workers. What would help those workers is guaranteeing that their hard work meets the needs of their households for rent, utility, food, and other necessities. What is needed is a long-overdue national minimum wage increase.

Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu

Découvrez des podcasts liées à We Can Do Better. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !

À propos Méthodologie Contact Me soutenir Politique de confidentialité

We Can Do Better – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Détails du podcast

Classements récents

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Liens partagés entre épisodes et podcasts

Other37

Qualité et score du flux RSS

Historique des publications

Derniers épisodes publiés

Podcasts et contenus similaires

Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu

Other37

The Guardian1