The beginning of a new K-12 year across the United States means the continuation of a learning-loss problem that predates COVID’s disruption of America’s educational system, as well as a new concern in more recent times: artificial intelligence interfering with students’ intellectual curiosity and development and teachers’ ability to do their job. Eric Hanushek, the Hoover Institution’s Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow and an education policy expert, revisits a paper he recently co-authored on AI’s promise and perils. Also discussed: lessons learned from Texas’ decade-long experiment with teacher merit and unions’ reluctance to go along with said reform, plus how to close a learning gap that ultimately will compromise future workers’ earning potential.

A divided America agrees on one thing: most folks don’t want new data centers in their communities. But do data centers live up to their sour reputation as water and electricity gluttons? Or are they, in fact, a 21st Century version of the automobile – an innovation deemed dangerous at first, but eventually a means to community advancement and prosperity? Steven Koonin, the Hoover Institution’s Edward Teller Senior Fellow and an energy policy expert, discusses what’s behind data-center NIMBYism and whether America will rise to the challenge of a greater demand for electricity in the near future as artificial intelligence and the needs of an increasingly information-intensive society and economy continue to reshape the nation’s landscape. Also discussed: the US Energy Department’s embrace of a “golden age of nuclear energy” (speaking of technology that once spawned NIMBY discontent), an evolving climate change debate (why does the UN bother to celebrate “climate weeks”?) and an emergency-mode California bracing for an El Niño event that’s expected to submerge vast portions of the Golden State in the coming months.

A vestige of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”, the federal Medicare healthcare program has expanded in ways its architects perhaps didn’t foresee – a growing constituency (nearly 70 million elderly Americans now rely on Medicare for their healthcare needs, with that number climbing as more Americans reach their golden years) and senior healthcare occupying a growing chunk of the federal budget (Medicare now accounting for one in every seven dollars Washington spends). With the entitlement going bankrupt as soon as 2033, what reforms can “rescue” Medicare – not to mention Social Security, which could run out of funding as soon as 2032? Tom Church, a Hoover policy fellow who’s done considerable research on entitlement and healthcare reform, discusses why Medicare reform went nowhere a decade ago, policy avenues for driving down costs, plus limitations imposed by the current political lineup in Washington – a Republican president famously averse to entitlement reform and an opposition party championing a single-payer “Medicare for All” alternative, suggesting the looming crisis will be tabled until 2029 or later. Also discussed: Church’s work with Hoover’s ambitious and bipartisan Tennenbaum Program for Fact-Based Policy.