Hostage Policy, Finnish Education Advantages, Moral Machines

US Hostage Policy (1:06) Guests: Amos Guiora, professor of international law and terrorism at University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Americans held hostage abroad are Top of Mind today. "These families have already suffered enough," said President Obama last week in announcing that families of people held hostage will no longer face threat of prosecution from the government if they pay ransom to free a loved one. Since 9-11, the White House says more than 80 Americans have been taken hostage by groups engaged in terrorism or piracy. Approximately 30 are currently being held captive. The brutal murders of Americans at the hands of ISIS in the last year prompted the Obama Administration to review – and now revise – its hostage policy. International law and terrorism expert Amos Guiora spoke to us about the significance of the change. Advantages of the Finnish Education System (25:17) Guest: Pasi Sahlberg, Ph. D., Visiting Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education School is out, and kids are glad to be done with tests, at least for a couple months. Maybe there is something behind that huge sense of relief kids feel when summer starts—maybe we test them too much. Pasi Sahlberg—a Finnish educator, author and scholar—claims that we do spend too much of our time and resources on testing students, and also that when it comes to evaluating teachers themselves, we could learn a lot from Finland. Moral Machines (51:58) Guest: Colin Allen, Professor of Cognitive Science and the History of the Philosophy of Science at Indiana University at Bloomington There has been a rash of movies recently featuring incredibly intelligent robots as either the hero or villain. The Avengers, Interstellar, Ex Machina, Chappie and even the Oscar-winning Big Hero 6 – in which a large inflatable robot is tasked as a “personal healthcare companion,” for the film’s teenage protagonist. Off the big screen, robots today can vacuum our houses and drive our cars. As we entrust these “artificial intelligenc