Police Training, Satellite Crowding, The Glass Cliff

The One-Day Police Training Program That Worked in Chicago (0:31) Guest: Caroline Sarnoff, Executive Director, The Justice Collaboratory, Yale Law School A repeated refrain in the conversation about policing in America is that officers need more training. Or different training. They need to learn how to de-escalate tense situations. How to recognize when their actions are being driven by hidden biases they harbor. How to use less lethal forms of force. But for all the millions of dollars being spent on police training, people still die unnecessarily in police custody. Is there any form of training that could actually make a difference? NASA’s Plan to Be the Maytag Man for Satellites in Orbit (20:29) Guest: Ben Reed, Chief of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division, NASA There’s a lot of space in Earth’s orbit, but it’s getting more crowded by the day. SpaceX is in the process of launching a fleet of small satellites that will ultimately number in the thousands in hopes of bringing fast internet to every corner of the planet. Amazon plans to do something similar. The more satellite traffic in Earth’s orbit, the higher the chance of collisions. NASA has a division dedicated to developing ways to repair, refuel and even decommission satellites in orbit using robots. Nursing Home Accountability (37:12) Guest: Charlene Harrington, Professor of Social Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco Half of all COVID-19 deaths in the US are estimated to have been in long-term care facilities, like nursing homes. The pandemic has brought to light long-standing problems in the nursing care system. Microplastics Are Airborne, Come Down in Our Rain, and Are Virtually Everywhere (52:53) Guest: Janice Brahney, Professor of Watershed Sciences, Utah State University We’ve got a problem with plastic in our oceans. But now it’s in our wind and rain, too. New research shows that air and water deposit more than 1000 tons of plastic every year in US protected lands – and that’s just in the Western part of t