Juggling Dynamite

Ethics experts say President-elect Donald Trump must divest from his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. “There are hard ethical questions in life, and this is not one of them,” says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, who has written that “Trump’s Conflicts of Interest are Unprecedented in American History.” Also with us in San Francisco is Aaron Glantz, senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, where his latest investigation is headlined “Trump’s Indonesia hotel deals hint at his form of foreign relations.”  Here is a direct video link.

We look at two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks: Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Mnuchin has deep ties on Wall Street, including working as a partner for Goldman Sachs, and his hedge fund played a role in the housing crisis after it scooped up the failing California bank IndyMac in 2008. Trump’s commerce secretary pick, Wilbur Ross, is a billionaire private equity investor who specializes in flipping bankrupt companies for profit, often buying the U.S. companies at low prices and then selling them to overseas investors. He and his companies have sometimes shipped jobs and factories overseas—practices Donald Trump has railed against. We are joined by David Dayen, whose recent article for The Nation is “Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin—Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine—Go to Washington.”  Here is a direct video link.

We discovered this BBC documentary series on Netflix recently and have found it worthwhile.  Not only does it offer insight on how popular substances were discovered and evolved to wide proliferation, but also on the social impacts, brain chemistry, and role in the history of colonialism and global trade. Here is a direct video link for the first episode on Whiskey. Other shows cover tobacco, opium, sugar and more.  Quite illuminating!

In looking at the history of Scottish blended Whisky Brian Cox visits a Master Blender to concoct the his perfect blend of Whisky.