There has been a lot of confusion about how many people died in Puerto Rico as the result of Hurricane Maria and its aftermath. Several publications reported last week that approximately five-thousand people may have died. They based their reports on a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that reflected more ambiguity than often reported.
Regardless of the confusion, it's likely that many more people died than the official number of sixty-four reported by the government in December. Why did so many die and why is it so hard to gauge the true toll?
Also this hour: Last summer, sponsors pulled support for a controversial staging of Julius Caesar in New York City's Shakespeare in the Park that depicted the murder of Caesar as President Trump. Yet, despite the pain of self-examination, we seek answers to our most vexing problems in the arts.
Today, we take a look at what we can learn from Julius Caesar, which is the first in a series of a new podcastthat looks at the political lessons we might learn from Shakespeare.
Lastly, UConn purchased Connecticut native Sol LeWitt's "Wall Drawing #867" to grace the lobby wall of their new Innovation Partnership Building to fulfill a 1978 Connecticut law requiring one-percent of state-bonded projects be spent on artwork. It cost taxpayers just under a half-million dollars. With looming deficits in our future, is this a good use of state funds?
GUESTS:
- Sheri Fink - Journalist; correspondent at The New York Times; author of Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- Isaac Butler - Writer; theater director; co-author with Dan Kois of The World Only Spins Forward: the Ascent of Angels in America. He’s also the creator of Lend Me Your Ears, a new Slate podcast on Shakespeare and politics.
- Jon Lender - Investigative reporter for the Hartford Courant. He writes the weekly Government Watch column that appears on Sundays.
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Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
