‘Rigged’ Elections, The Long Fight Against Zika, A Culture of Coding

Coming up on today’s show:

• During the primary season, Bernie Sanders supporters suggested that the American political process was “rigged,” and now Donald Trump and his backers are contending the same. But is the electoral system really that easy to manipulate? Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor of The American Spectator, and Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, weigh in.

• Voters in four states — Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin — went to the polls on Tuesday to choose party nominees for a number of political offices. Eli Yokley, politics and campaigns reporter for The Morning Consult, discusses the results, and what they might say about the 2016 election.

• Amy Walters, a reporter for the podcast Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, explains how the Zika virus is affecting communities in Puerto Rico, Miami, and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

• After a computer glitch caused hundreds of Delta flights to be halted this week, The Takeaway explores outdated air travel systems and ;the dangers of relying on a single network with Barbara Peterson, a writer specializing in aviation and travel and author of “Blue Streak: Inside JetBlue, the Upstart that Rocked an Industry.”

• As more and more companies require coding skills, school districts around the U.S. are introducing the practice into classroom curriculums. Is coding a short-term fad, or will it become an enduring part of the modern American workplace and educational system? Amanda Laucher, co-founders of Mined Minds, a free computer coding training program, discusses the shift. 

• What does a rigged election really look like? In the U.S., the closest thing to that might be the electoral college. Our system of winner-take-all state-by-state tallying means that a candidate only needs to worry about a few closely divided states to win. Joe Uscinski, a political science professor at University of Miami and co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories,” examines the electoral college, and what a rigged election actually looks like.