Pakistan

August 08, 2017: While a single-payer healthcare system may feel like a political fantasy now, it’s certainly not far from the minds of many Americans. Today, The Takeaway explores why the political winds may be changing on universal healthcare. Plus, a look at the staffing shake-ups at the White House; Pakistani elections; Vice President Pence’s bargaining in the Baltic States; immigration costs; and culture and identity at the dinner table. 

1. Lawmakers Take on Obama’s Trade Deal and The NSA | 2. Pakistan: America’s Unsteady Ally | 3. Roads, Bridges, Rails: A Plea to Let America Move | 4. Museums Struggle to Compete With The Super Rich | 5. Harry Shearer Leaves ‘The Simpsons’

Each year, 15 million girls are forced into marriage, many of them before they turn 15. How can the practice be stopped?

AK-47s, grenades, water? Earth’s most precious resource doesn’t fire bullets or explode but it is guarded, hoarded, and stolen in a way that ignites political tensions on a local level and an international scale. This month, we travel to Sub Saharan and Pakistan to bring you the stories of those caught up in the struggle to secure clean water. We’ll hear from unapologetic water thieves, reporters turned refugees, and rural residents whose way of life may be completed decimated because of the wording in a decades old international treaty. Also the voices of American officials, NGO’s, and entrepreneurs on what the West can and should do to help those in need.

Film, music and art are often the best ways to capture the will and the mood of the people in times of turmoil. Art sometimes has the power to move millions where politics fails. So in this program we attempt to identify some prominent artistic voices in the Middle East, North Africa and in South Asia and evaluate their take on liberal ideals, on sectarian violence, on terrorism and how they’re being received by audiences in both the Arab and Muslim communities and in the West.