Mark Oppenheimer writes about religion and a whole bunch of other things. Today, he'll be talking about the difficulty Orthodox Jewish women face in obtaining a certain form of cooperation from their husbands and how that difficulty spawned a black market in coercion and violence.
Lastly, Mark and I talk about the recent outbreak of measles and its relationship to the anti-vaccine movement.
He also wanted to talk about a utopian school in Massachusetts which has imitators in other places, including New Britain, Connecticut. The school has no curriculum, no required classes, no letter grades, but still sends 80 percent of its students to college. Is it time to rethink what kids need to learn? We'll talk to Mark on this story very soon.
After that, we're moving on to the launch of the most-awaited website in recent memory, FiveThirtyEight, the new Nate Silver Enterprise. We'll give you some first impressions and talk about why people care so much about Nate.
And then, a look back at David Brenner with an old friend.
GUESTS:
- Mark Oppenheimer is the author of several books and the e-book, Zen Predator of the Upper East Side, available on Amazon. He also writes a religion column for The New York Times.
- Josh Benton is the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab.
- Gram Slaton is the Executive Director of the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado.
