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Medill Podcast: The push to boost confidence in voting by mail

Podcast
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The Fulcrum is partnering with Northwestern University to co-publish content from the Medill School of Journalism's Covid-19 Analyzer, which is investigating the truth about coronavirus-related claims by people in public life — particularly the pandemic's impact on elections. Read more in the Fact Check section.

In this week's episode of the Covid-19 Analyzer Podcast, Medill reporters examine voting and how states are working toward safer election procedures amid coronavirus concerns.


The hosts speak with experts across the country, including a national policy director at Vote At Home, about the debate around mail-in voting, implementing safer voting measures and repercussions from states like Wisconsin that keep voting stations open despite looming fears of the virus.


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Getty Images, athima tongloom

America’s $5.6 Trillion Healthcare Gorilla: Why We’re Blind to the Real Crisis

In the late 1990s, two Harvard psychologists ran a now-famous experiment. In it, students watched a short video of six people passing basketballs. They were told to count the number of passes made by the three players in white shirts.

Halfway through the film, a person in a gorilla suit walks into the frame, beats its chest, and exits. Amazingly, half of viewers — both then and in later versions of the study — never notice the gorilla. They’re so focused on counting passes that they miss the obvious event happening right in front of them.

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A stethoscope, calculator, pills, and cash.

America’s healthcare debate misses the real crisis: soaring care costs. Discover how inattentional blindness hides the $5.6T gorilla reshaping policy, work, and rural communities.

Getty Images, athima tongloom

America’s $5.6 Trillion Healthcare Gorilla: Why We’re Blind to the Real Crisis

In the late 1990s, two Harvard psychologists ran a now-famous experiment. In it, students watched a short video of six people passing basketballs. They were told to count the number of passes made by the three players in white shirts.

Halfway through the film, a person in a gorilla suit walks into the frame, beats its chest, and exits. Amazingly, half of viewers — both then and in later versions of the study — never notice the gorilla. They’re so focused on counting passes that they miss the obvious event happening right in front of them.

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Photo by Billy Pasco on Unsplash

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There is a significant distinction between charity and justice. Charity responds to visible wounds in the community and rushes to bandage them as necessary. Justice, rooted in biblical conviction and prophetic courage, goes further. It questions the sources of suffering: Why are people bleeding in the first place? This tension between crisis response and deeper transformation is at the core of a courageous step recently taken by Atlanta's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

As the nation grapples with democratic strain and institutional fatigue, New Birth's decision to suspend the collection of tithes and offerings during a government shutdown and amid the threatened rollback of social supports is a daring example of moral clarity. It is more than an act of relief; it is a refusal to proceed with business as usual when the most economically vulnerable are again being asked to bear the highest costs. The pause is not merely financial; I believe it is prophetic. An assertion that the church's highest duty is to its people, not its ledger.

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