The devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona has re-opened conversations about the unsustainable nature of Puerto Rico’s status as a colonial entity. Many are calling for statehood as a solution to bureaucratic challenges that slow down disaster relief. In revisiting this discussion, we hear from Christina Ponsa-Kraus, a Geroge Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School and Dr. Charles Venator-Santiago, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, about the status of Puerto Rico’s future and the Island’s political possibilities.  

Puerto Rico is still reeling from Hurricane Fiona, which has brought widespread flooding, damage, and power outages across the island.  We speak with Alana Casanova-Burgess, host of the La Brega podcast, about what she's been hearing from Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Fiona, and hear "desahogos," or "vents" from the Puerto Rican diaspora that La Brega has been collecting. La Brega invites Puerto Ricans to share audio memos about how they are feeling following Hurricane Fiona at http://labregapodcast.com/buzon. 

Lynsey Addario has spent more than two decades capturing intimate and human moments in the midst of the world’s most devastating disasters and conflicts. Her stunning photography shines a light on humanitarian issues including war, gender based violence, and climate change. Most recently, she has been documenting the war in Ukraine and its impact on the country’s civilians. Now the School of Visual Arts is honoring her with a career-spanning solo exhibition of her courageous work. Lynsey shares why photojournalism is important, how she braves dangerous situations, and what inspires her through it all.

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we’re thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

Jean-Michel Basquiat remains one of the most impactful artists more than three decades after his tragically untimely death. His boundary-defying artwork has influenced music, fashion, and film and television. It has also completely transformed the contemporary art world. In 2017, his 1982 piece Untitled sold for $110.5 million. This is the Jean-Michel Basquiat the world knows and now his family has decided to share a more personal side of their beloved son and brother. This spring, his sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux opened a 12,000 square foot exhibition that features hundreds of their brother's artwork, photos, and personal artifacts so visitors can get to know him in an entirely new way.