Ross Files With Dave Ross

Dave Ross talks with author and business reporter Christopher Leonard about his seven years of research into the inter-workings of Koch Industries, an American company so big, it's perhaps unknowingly part of your life every day. Leonard's new book is called Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America. He'll be in Seattle for a book event at Town Hall on Friday, Sept. 6th, 7:30 pm.

Jeffery Robinson runs the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality, and for a long time, he's been giving speeches about the way America's history of racism and white supremacy has been hidden from school textbooks throughout the country. Those speeches, which are part of a tour called Who We Are, are being turned into a documentary film. Robinson is also a part-time Seattle resident, so he sits down with Dave Ross in the studio to talk about why this painful part of our nation's history is being hidden from us, and what we stand to gain by confronting it head on. Robinson has an event at Town Hall on Wednesday, August 21st at 4pm. It's sold out, but keep an eye on the Who We Are homepage - a second event will be scheduled soon. 

Who are the people trying to commit mass shootings, and how can they be stopped? Dave talks with Garen Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis in Sacramento. Wintemute and his team, including Julia Schleimer, researched extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), or "red flag laws" - a way for community members and family to alert local police to a would-be assailant's plans and disarm them.  Their resulting study released just yesterday turned up a fascinating array of cases: including one in which the FBI worked with local police. Wintemute and Dave talk legality, and discuss the study's conclusion: that zero of the 21 cases where an ERPO was filed ended in a mass shooting.

How has the sudden rise of social media, full of purposefully misleading information from bad actors, completely shifted the way we get our news and information? Is there such a thing as being too skeptical of what we see and read online? Dave Ross talks with Kate Starbird, a former professional basketball player in the WNBA for the Seattle Storm, and now an associate professor at the University of Washington where she researches online rumors and crisis informatics. Dr. Starbird is also a Co-Principal Investigator at the UW's Center for an Informed Public.

Dave Ross sits down with Pramila Jayapal to discuss everything from a possible impeachment of the president to the Congresswoman's recent op-ed about her personal experience with abortion.

Ari Kohn runs the Post-Prison Education Program, which provides scholarships to former inmates and community mentorship while they earn degrees. Their graduates have a recidivism rate of only 7.8%, compared to the Department of Correction's average of 33.5%. Recently, Facebook miscategorized the group as a political organization, preventing them from advertising one of their fundraising events on the platform. The mistake took months for Kohn to undo, and brings up questions about how Facebook has been watching for Russian interference since the 2016 election. How are stringent standards without seemingly much oversight affecting us on a community level?

Retired Colonel Jeff McCausland is CBS Radio's national security consultant. He visited the studios at KIRO to talk with Dave Ross about cybersecurity, threats from North Korea, Russia and the Middle East, and challenges with modern military recruitment. If you'd like to zoom in on specific analysis, here's what you can expect throughout this episode: Iran 1:48 North Korea 9:50 Middle East 12:50 Russia 15:20 Military Recruitment 17:52

Dave talks with journalist Marshall Allen about his latest investigative piece for ProPublica, in which he uncovers a shockingly easy loophole that allows anyone - including people with criminal backgrounds - to send bills to your health insurance.  Some of the biggest companies, including Aetna, United and Cigna, pay 96-99% of bills automatically. And they lose millions of dollars to fraud each year.  Hear parts of the story that didn't make it on air: like the bizarre way one scammer finally got caught after he managed to charge insurance companies $25 million over the course of four years.

Michael Friedson is the co-founder and executive editor of The Media Line, an American news agency covering the Middle East. He talks with Dave about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become an American political issue, goes over some quick background on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), and discusses what we can expect and hope for if Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is able to arrange a trip to the region.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic, an entirely new neighborhood in South Lake Union and a long line at the original Starbucks. Who on earth would want even more people in Seattle? Well, Tom Norwalk would! He's the President and CEO of Visit Seattle, and he sings the praises of our rainy little city in places as far away as Australia and Tokyo.  He sits down with Dave to talk about why tourism in Seattle is a good thing, gives us a sneak peek of some new tourist attractions coming to town, and talks about some of the reasons that overtourism - which is becoming a major problem in European cities - isn't really an issue in the United States.

Robert Ostrom was happy to retire from his job as a nurse and nurse anesthetist after 20+ years working in operating rooms in Seattle. Then he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The health insurance he had switched to for his retirement considered the cancer a pre-existing condition, and that's when Robert found out that the life-saving medication he was taking, Zytiga, would cost as much as $11,000 out of pocket, every month. Robert talks with Dave about how he found a workaround, and what he wants other people to know if they find themselves in a similar bind.

Dave Ross talks with Nada Bakos, who worked as a "targeter" in the CIA tracking terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They discuss the escalating tension with Iran, why she considers climate change one of our biggest national security threats, and how Trump's tweets are giving volatile foreign leaders like Putin and Kim Jong Un a dangerously intimate view into our nation's psyche. Nada Bakos will discuss her new book The Targeter: My Life in the CIA, Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House at Seattle's Town Hall on Sunday, June 30th.

Anna Fifield gained access to Kim Jong Un's inner circle in hopes of uncovering truths about a man shrouded in myth and propaganda at the front of an authoritarian regime. She talked to the aunt and uncle who posed as his parents when he was growing up in Switzerland, Dennis Rodman's entourage, and the Japanese sushi chef who worked in the royal family's household when Kim Jong Un was a child.  Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post, and her book, The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un is out today. She will be in Seattle for a Town Hall event on Sunday, June 16th at 7:30 pm. 

Malia Burns is the principal of Summit Sierra, a charter school in the International District. Tonight, her very first class of high school seniors is graduating. 98% have been accepted to at least one four-year college or university, and between Summit Sierra and their sister high school in Tacoma, the students have received over $3 million in grants and scholarships. Dave and Malia discuss opening more charter schools, their policy of not allowing teachers to unionize, and the cost of Summit Sierra compared to a traditional public school.

An national survey from the American Medical Association found that 44% of physicians experience burnout.  It's a startlingly high percentage for a profession that we all rely upon to keep ourselves healthy. And it hasn't always been like this. Dave Ross sits down with Dr. Carrie Rose to discuss the leading causes behind physician burnout that make it a distinctly modern phenomenon. Dr. Rose practices family medicine, a specialty that experiences one of the highest rates of burnout at 47%.

Tony Horwitz passed away suddenly on May 27th during his tour for his latest book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide. Horwitz was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he also authored Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.  Dave spoke with Horwitz during the Seattle stop of his book tour just a few weeks ago. They discussed Horwitz's journey retracing the steps of Frederick Law Olmsted across the south, and how to bridge the partisan divide at this particular moment in our nation's history.

Dave talks with Kathleen Belew, whose new book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America gives historical context to the visible white power movement we're seeing resurge during Trump's presidency. This movement is not new. They're militarized. They're extremely organized online, and created an early version of Facebook for themselves years before Zuckerberg went to Harvard. Belew sees the white power movement as a cellular terrorist organization that is fundamentally anti-American. Kathleen Belew is an assistant professor of U.S. History at the University of Chicago. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 2005.

Alexis Hiniker and Jason Yip research the relationships people have with technology, and they have a program where they work alongside children to come up with new designs. They noticed that the kids described lot of technology as "creepy." But what exactly does "creepy" mean? Hiniker and Yip interviewed them about it, and found fascinating answers about what makes kids uncertain or concerned about artificial intelligence and smart home devices. As this technology becomes more deeply integrated into all of our lives and also increasingly complex, how do we make sure it's not, well ... creepy? Hiniker and Yip are both assistant professors at The University of Washington's Information School.

Stephanie Ranade Krider is the Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life, a politically strategic pro-life organization. Dave asks her what life would look like for the most vulnerable women in states like Alabama if the constitutional right to abortion were overturned.

Andrea Rodgers is a senior attorney with Our Children's Trust. She represents the youth plaintiffs in Juliana vs. United States, a constitutional climate lawsuit. The plaintiffs claim that the US government knew about the catastrophic effects of climate change years ago and did not act, and the resulting extreme weather events violate their rights to life, liberty and property. The case will appear before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, June 4th in Portland, Oregon.