There are two kinds of people in this world right now: those who agree with Matt Damon and those who don’t. At least that seems to be the perspective of the hundreds of stories demanding we take sides ever since Damon waded into the #MeToo discussion on ABC’s “Popcorn with Peter Travers” last week. Damon told Travers that he think's "it's wonderful that women are feeling empowered to tell their stories," but, he adds "there's a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation. Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated, without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.” The backlash was swift. Actress Alyssa Milano wrote on Twitter, "There are different stages of cancer. Some more treatable than others. But it’s still cancer." And Damon's ex, actress Minnie Driver, wrote, "You don’t get to tell women that because some guy only showed them their penis their pain isn't as great as a woman who was raped." But then came articles like the Globe's Joan Vennochi's, arguing "isn't it better to hear what men have to say, than to tell them to shut up, as Damon was angrily urged to do? Adam Reilly was joined by freelance writer Jen Deaderick, who is working on an illustrated history of women’s citizenship, and an assistant professor of management at Babson College, Tina Opie, to discuss.
Three people died and more than one hundred others were hurt Monday when an Amtrak passenger train jumped the tracks outside of Tacoma, Washington, and landed on the highway below. President Trump offered his condolences for the victims, but only after he tweeted that the accident “shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly." Those Washington train tracks were, in fact, funded by a recent infrastructure investment program. And while the president has yet to detail exactly where one-trillion dollars in funds for his infrastructure plan would come from, or where they would go, federal funding for Amtrak developments like this one would actually be cut if the White House’s 2018 budget proposal passed. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor and the author of “Move: How to Rebuild and Reinvent America’s Infrastructure,” joined Adam Reilly to discuss the state of Trump’s infrastructure plan and what can be done to prevent accidents like these in the future.
It has become a Boston police department tradition. For the ninth year in a row, law enforcement officials from across the city played Santa for children. It’s called “Shop with a Cop.”
The Boston Globe has named its 2017 Bostonians of the year — including a nod to the half-dozen Boston teens that uncovered the lack of fundraising TD Garden pledged to their community. “The Sleuths,” as the Globe dubbed them, from the Hyde Square Task Force civic engagement group, were originally tasked with finding funding for a new community recreation center and ice rink’ but the group ended up uncovering a two-decade-old agreement with the owners of the Boston Garden — now the TD Garden — in which they promised to hold three fundraisers a year for the community and never did. The work they did got TD Garden to cough up $1.65 million to the state Department of Conservation and Recreation along with another $3 million collectively from the state and the City of Boston. Adam Reilly was joined by two members of the team responsible for uncovering it all, Lorrie Pearson and Edelind Peguero, to discuss.