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Back in America

Back in America

Written by: Stan Berteloot
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Interviews from a multicultural perspective that question the way we understand AmericaCopyright 2024 All rights reserved. Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Your Heartbeat Can Convict You
    Mar 12 2026

    A man's house catches fire. He tells police he ran through the flames saving his belongings. Then detectives pull the data from the pacemaker in his chest. His own heartbeat tells a different story.

    Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, a former public defender, and the author of Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. In this conversation, he walks us through the criminal cases, the legal gaps, and the surveillance infrastructure that most Americans don't know they've already built around themselves. We talk about Google search histories used as confessions, smart home cameras that become prosecution witnesses, Palantir's expanding role in immigration enforcement, and what happens when the definition of "criminal" shifts but the data trail stays the same.

    Ferguson proposes something he calls the tyrant test: design your privacy protections by assuming the worst possible leader will have access to your data. He argues it's not a thought experiment. It's the logic the country was founded on.

    Book: Your Data Will Be Used Against You (NYU Press)
    https://nyupress.org/9781479838295/your-data-will-be-used-against-you/
    Guest: Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School

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    37 mins
  • A Pastor Joined the FBI. Then His Kids Came Out.
    Mar 6 2026

    Eric Robinson spent twelve years in Christian ministry before leaving the pulpit for the FBI. For twenty-four years, he served as a special agent and SWAT operator, working counterterrorism, human trafficking, crimes against children, and public corruption. He also raised two transgender children inside one of the most conservative law enforcement cultures in the country.
    In this conversation, Eric talks about planting a church built on grace instead of judgment, why his two-year stress headache vanished the day the Bureau accepted him, and how buying a sandwich for a woman facing a trafficking charge helped him rescue a fifteen-year-old girl. He describes what his body did during a deadly force encounter, what his SWAT teammates said when he told them about his kids, and why he moved from "hate the sin, love the sinner" to just loving. We end with the Constitution, ICE, Christian nationalism, and whether the institution he gave his career to still resembles the one he joined.

    Eric's book, Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI, comes out this fall.
    Find Eric on LinkedIn
    Follow Eric on Instagram

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    33 mins
  • Delphine Horvilleur: "People Whisper to Me What They're Afraid to Say Out Loud" (in French)
    Feb 26 2026

    Recorded on February 25th at the Alliance Francaise in New York, this special French-language episode features Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur in conversation with Emmanuel Saint-Martin at an event organized by French Morning. One of France's very few female rabbis and a bestselling author, Delphine opens up about the firestorm she faced after speaking out on Gaza, the death threats from both sides, the blind spots that trauma creates, and why the art of disagreement may be the most urgent skill of our time. She shares a stunning street encounter with an Iranian woman during the Israel-Iran war, reflects on the Talmudic roots of real debate, and answers a member of the audience who tells her directly: you lost me. Raw, personal, and deeply relevant to anyone trying to hold onto complexity in an era of noise.

    Wiki Page

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    1 hr and 7 mins
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