How Much Money Can a District Save With a Four-Day School Week?, The Curious Canon on Swamp Sparrow Songs, Airbnb and the Economy

Guest: John Penn, Executive Director of Field Services, Colorado Department of Education As kids head back to class, some schools are considering the trend of shorter weeks. More than 500 school districts in 25 states have at least one school on a four-day week – meaning they take Monday or Friday off and squeeze the week’s instruction into the other four days. Colorado leads the way, with more than half of its school districts on a four-day week.

Guest: Stephen Nowicki, PhD, Professor of Biology, Duke University When a male swamp sparrow sings to a prospective mate, the song sounds more like Frank Sinatra singing “I got you under my skin” than Justin Bieber singing “If I was your boyfriend, never let you go.” Female swamp sparrows prefer males who croon the oldies, as it turns out. And so these birds have become really good at passing down the same successful love songs from one generation to another over centuries. That’s something scientists have long thought was really only possible in humans.

Guest: Craig Coates, PhD, Instructional Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Genetics Member, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Biotechnology, Texas A&M University At large public universities classrooms with 500 students are not unusual. Anything besides multiple choice could take weeks to grade. And cheating has become rampant. To fight back and enliven the classroom, some professors have begun using an Artificial Intelligence tool to keep up with their students’ work.

Guest: Gabriel Rossman, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology, UCLA College, University of California, Los Angeles 12 Years a Slave. Birdman. Spotlight. Moonlight. The Shape of Water. The last five winners of the Best Picture Academy Award were all critically-acclaimed films, but not one of them broke $200 million at the box office. Meanwhile mega-hits like any of the Star Wars or Marvel superhero movies usually only get minor Oscar nominations for things like makeup or special effects. Next year will be different because the Academy says it’s going to give out an Oscar for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film, but the announcement has not gone over well in Hollywood.

Guest: Mohammad Rahman, PhD, Associate Professor of Management at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University The world’s largest hotel isn’t really a hotel at all: it’s a worldwide network of regular people who rent out their spare rooms on Airbnb.com. The house-sharing site claims that it’s an economic boost to neighborhoods outside a city’s typical tourist zone, since Airbnb rentals are often in neighborhoods that don’t have hotels. But new analysis by management professor Mohammad S. Rahman at Purdue University finds that only restaurants and shops in predominantly white neighborhoods get a boost from Airbnb. Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, do not.

Guest: Carrie Wrigley, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Morning Light Counseling About 3 in 10 American adults will have an anxeity disorder at some point in their lives, according to the National Insitute of Mental Health. When anxiety strikes, your mind can start to race, chest can constrict, and breathing can shallow. Many people that experience anxiety feel they've completely lost control. Counselor Carrie Wrigley has some advice to help you or your child overcome anxiety.