Yemen is in the midst of civil war, a brutal conflict that has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the United Nations. By some estimates, 75 percent of the people there are in need of humanitarian assistance. Millions have been forced to flee, and more are at risk of starvation. Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, recently returned from a trip to Yemen. She visited camps for displaced people, and has returned to the U.S. determined to help.

Kelly Brownell has stepped away from his role as dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy to launch a new World Food Policy Center at Duke University. He talks with the school's new dean, Judith Kelley, about key challenges that he hopes his new center will begin to address.

For example, he hopes to get people in the food and food policy space talking to each other. The academic field is segmented, he says. "There is a lot of depth around particular topics but not much breadth across them and very little communications across them."

It’s often said that one in 10 people on the planet is hungry, and that number is on the rise. Abigail Bennett is the lead author of a new report from Duke University’s World Food Policy Center, The Environmental Defense Fund, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Duke University Marine Lab on the contribution of fisheries to food and nutrition security. Abby has served as a fellow at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and is a consultant at the World Bank.

Researchers now believe they can predict bad behavior later in life, just from a child's behavior and life circumstances as a toddler. This is the last of a four-part series looking at early childhood.

Guest: Daniel Shaw of the Center for Parents and Children and the Pitt Parents and Children Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh.

There's an intriguing new study that shows a connected between when low-income families receive supplemental nutrition, or SNAP assistance, and student test scores. The study is believed to be the first to show a connection between benefits of this sort and academic performance.

The authors of the study are Anna Gassman-Pines and Laura Bellows. Gassman-Pines is an Associate Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Neuroscience at Duke University. Laura Bellows is a doctoral student at the Sanford School of Public Policy.

It's becoming more and more apparent that the first thousand days of a child's life are crucial. In particular, the nutrition a child receives early in life dictates the kind of life that child will go on to have. But around the world, many women face huge obstacles when it comes to securing proper nutrition for their families.

Journalist Roger Thurow traveled the world to see firsthand the challenges many mothers face as a part of an exploration of a worldwide initiative to end early childhood malnutrition. He met new mothers and babies in Uganda, India, Guatemala, and Chicago, and tells their stories in the book The First Thousand Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children - And the World.

Most experts recommend mothers breastfeed for six months exclusively after birth – but most women don’t do so. In the U.S.. only 27 percent of mothers reach the 6-month mark. In the U.K., it’s less than one percent. Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla of the Yale School of Public Health has been working on a way to boost and sustain breastfeeding rates – and he’s doing it on a country-by-country basis.

“The tragic Parkland, Fla., shooting on February 14th is yet another dreadful reminder that schools are no sanctuary against mass violence. Americans are surely united in wanting reforms … But the reform that is getting the most attention in this bizarro era we live in — arming teachers with concealed handguns — would likely make things worse.” – excerpt from an op-ed by one of this country’s preeminent researchers on gun violence in America, Philip J. Cook.

Cook talks with Kelly Brownell about other, more promising strategies for dealing with gun violence in classrooms than arming teachers.

It's March Madness, but instead of basketball, we’re pitting U.S. presidents from throughout the ages against each other. Who will be crowned the best president?  Will it be Washington or Honest Abe?  Maybe FDR?  What criteria should we be using to determine what makes a great president? Guests include Frederick "Fritz" Mayer and BJ Rudell from POLIS, the Duke Center for Political Leadership, Innovation & Service.
Music: Blue Dot Sessions

James Clapper served as director of national intelligence and Obama’s top security adviser from 2010-2017. He oversaw 200,000 intelligence employees, a $52 billion budget and top security organizations including the CIA, NSA and FBI. In this episode of Policy 360, he discusses threats to the U.S., his decision to speak out against the country's current leadership and his hopes for future leaders.

Music: Blue Dot Sessions/Creative Commons

It’s estimated that 1.2 billion people around the world live without electricity. Another billion have only limited access to electricity. And billions more lack access to clean fuel and technology for cooking. There's an exciting new project designed to address the energy needs of the world’s poor. The Energy Access Project aims to bring an interdisciplinary approach to one of the world's most vexing issues.

In recent years, oil and gas production in the U.S. has increased dramatically, in part because of new technology like hydraulic fracturing or “fracking." Proponents say fracking is helping the country be energy independent. Opponents cite environmental concerns. Daniel Raimi traveled to every major U.S. oil and gas- producing region in the U.S. His book is called The Fracking Debate.

Recently, Jonathan Mattingly has been a detective of sorts, delving into partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina. (Gerrymandering is when one party manipulates voting districts for their own gain.) Mattingly is chair of the math department at Duke and his mathematical analysis of the state’s 13 Congressional districts was used in a court ruling that declared the state's maps unconstitutional. He says what he uncovered in his research could be used to address gerrymandering in other states.

A panel of federal judges recently declared North Carolina's Congressional maps unconstitutional. (Congressional maps divide the state into voting districts.) The maps had been drawn by Republicans and tilted heavily in their favor. The ruling required lawmakers to redraw the maps by the end of January 2018, but the U.S. Supreme Court has put that ruling on hold.

Recently Tom Ross ran a bipartisan simulation which demonstrated how independent redistricting in the state might work. Lessons learned in North Carolina could be applied to other states who are grappling with these issues.

Tom Ross is president of the Volcker Alliance, which is working to rebuild public trust in government. He is the first Terry Sanford Distinguished Fellow at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

The algorithms that determine what we see on social media platforms wield a lot of power, especially when it comes to the news that people see. Facebook made big news recently when the company tweaked its algorithm. And did you know some real news stories are not written by humans, but by smart algorithm?

Kelly Brownell discusses the promise and peril of algorithms with Phil Napoli. Napoli was recently awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to explore this topic more closely.

Phil Napoli's upcoming book is titled "Media Technocracy: The Rise of Algorithmic News and the Future of the Marketplace of Ideas."

A student-led initiative on college campuses  in North Carolina is tackling one of the most important issue of our time - political polarization. The project, called Leaders for Political Dialogue, convenes students from Duke, N.C. State, UNC and N.C. Central. Students spend a weekend learning how to communicate better with those whose political opinions may differ from their own. Kelly Brownell talks with the founder of the project, as well as three participants.

Barney Frank spent 32 years in Congress. He served most recently as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. He sponsored the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which resulted in a sweeping reform of the U.S. financial industry. He is also one of the most prominent gay politicians in the U.S. In this conversation Barney Frank questions which side Donald Trump is rooting for in 2018, talks about the use of humor in politics, and explores the need for pragmatism in the fight for a fairer society.

Barney Frank’s visit to Duke was sponsored by the Samuel & Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions, in collaboration with the Kenan Institute for Ethics; POLIS, the Center for Political Leadership, Innovation and Service, and the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke.

For decades, higher education leaders have supported expanding college education to include disadvantaged groups. Many colleges have embraced policies that fight discrimination. And yet, as the economist Charles Clotfelter shows, America’s system of undergraduate education was unequal in 1970 and is even more so today.

He contends despite a revolution in civil rights, billions spent on financial aid, and the commitment of colleges to greater equality, stratification has grown starker in part because colleges cater largely to children of elites.

Charles Clotfelter's new book is Unequal Colleges in the Age of Disparity (Harvard University Press).

Earlier this week a lone gunman perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Why does the U.S. lack a comprehensive gun control policy? After the violence at Columbine High School, Kristin Goss began studying the gun control movement in America. She talks about why the movement hasn't caught on (it's not the NRA) and how things may be changing.

Lisa Monaco served as President Obama’s chief counterterrorism and homeland security advisor for his entire second term. She was responsible for policy coordination and crisis management on issues ranging from cybersecurity to natural disasters to terrorist attacks at home and abroad. Previously, Lisa helped Robert Mueller transform the FBI after 9/11 into a national security organization focused on preventing terrorist attacks on the United States.

The United Nations estimates more than 400,000 people have lost their lives in the Syrian civil war and millions more have had to leave their homes and the country. Cynthia Viveros-Cano is stationed in Damascus, Syria, as a Humanitarian Affairs Officer for the United Nations. Her role is help ensure aid gets to the people who need it most.

Recently, many have protested the dramatically different direction the U.S. is beginning to take in regards to climate change. Tim Profeta, director of Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, helps sort through the many changes being proposed by the Trump administration.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has become the universal yardstick of progress. GDP judges the value of goods and services produced inside a country’s borders. But the number has a big problem: it only judges output. More car production for example, would seem on the surface as a success, but at what cost? Dirk Philipsen's book is The Little Big Number, How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to do About It.

Recently, a team at the Duke Reporters Lab has been developing a fact-checking app for the Amazon Echo. Owners of the Echo can “ask the fact-checkers” about claims they hear on the news and social media. The development team is led by Bill Adair, founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning site  PolitiFact. Student researcher Julia Donheiser and project manager Rebecca Iannucci join Adair to talk through the promise and pitfalls of the project.

There's a project happening now in North Carolina in which people from across the state who have very different political views are meeting on a regular basis. The idea is this: if we can build relationships between people with differing political views, can mutual understanding – or even solutions - be far behind?