Whether on the news or in casual conversation, we’re all talking about sexual misconduct and harassment in a variety of settings--in politics, at bars and in the entertainment industry. But, of course one of the original settings for people to experience sexual harassment has been the workplace.

While the EEOC reports a four-fold increase in visits to their site since Harvey Weinstein story broke - another study done by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision in 2016 found that most trainings fail because they’re focused too much on preventing employer liability - rather than actually changing any kind of workplace culture.

We were joined on the line by PBS Newshour reporter Rhana Natour who recently wrote a piece about sexual harassment in the workplace.

We were also joined on the line by Sharmili Majumdar who is the director of strategic partnerships at Women Employed, a Chicago-based advocacy organization. Brie Van Dam also joined us on the show. She is the environmental data center manager at the Toolik Field Station at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Van Dam helps develop sexual harassment policies and procedures for the remote field station.

Members of Congress are trying to hash out a budget for the federal government by Friday - if not - a potential government shutdown could be in the works.

At issue for many of the Illinois delegation in Washington is funding for our national labs. Illinois is home to the Midwest’s largest federally funded research lab and center - that’s Argonne National Laboratory. That’s 5,000 jobs and $600 million in federal researching funding to Illinois. Fermilab - in Batavia - employs nearly 2,000 people. Both of them have operating budgets of several hundred million dollars.

Congressman Bill Foster is especially interested in this. He’s a Democrat and his 11th Congressional District includes part of Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont. He’s also a PhD scientist who spent more than two decades as a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Lab in Batavia. Rep. Foster joined us on the line to talk about funding for laboratories like Fermi Lab.