Faith and Climate Change, Education Tech, Parkinson's

Guests: Brigham Daniels, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Law at BYU; George Handley, Ph.D., Professor of Humanities. The two are board members of the nonprofit “LDS Earth Stewardship”  Faith and the environment are Top of Mind today. The subtitle to Pope Francis’ sweeping essay released last week calling for global action to combat climate change is “On the care for our common home.” The Pope criticizes political corruption and rampant consumerism for degrading the earth. He blames humanity for climate change, but also writes that “We know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.”

Guest: Kentaro Toyama, Ph.D., W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, Author of “Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology”  Walking down the halls of an American high school you’ll see students with cell-phones in hand and laptops strapped to their backs.  They’re mere clicks away from a vast database of knowledge. Technology has given American students more tools than ever to find success in school. And yet, on the whole, test scores have not improved significantly. Dr. Kentaro Toyama’s forthcoming book tackles the reasons why. It’s called “Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology.”

Guest: Mark VanDam, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences at Washington State University Spokane  One of the side-effects of the neurodegenerative disease known as Parkinson’s is quiet speech. Did you know that? People with Parkinson’s tend not to realize that they’re speaking softly, so conversations are peppered with “What’s that?” “Can you speak up?” Linguistics professor Mark VanDam at Washington State University Spokane is developing a wearable device that could remind people with Parkinson’s to speak up when they’re being too quiet.

Guest: Joseph P. Mohorovic, M.B.A., Commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission  “Child-proofing” a home is a daunting task. The cabinets, the toilet, the stairs. Hazards are everywhere once you start looking for them. And what about the TV or the bookcase? According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission a child ends up in the emergency room injured from a falling piece of furniture every 24 minutes. The commission has a new campaign called “Anchor It” to help raise awareness and create solutions for the dangers of tip-over accidents.

Guests: Kerry Bennett and Rod Gustafson, Film Reviewers at ParentPreviews.com  Our movie this week is Inside Out – the latest form Disney’s Pixar Studios. It’s an emotional journey—literally, because while a young girl named Riley is the human star of the show, it’s her emotions that take center stage.

Guests: Daniel Austin, Professor of Chemistry at BYU  On TV, first responders and crime scene investigators can sniff a mysterious substance or take a sample and on-the-spot know exactly what it is. Real life generally requires the use of a fairly bulky device called a mass spectrometer – which is in a lab somewhere – so it takes some time to know what substance we’re dealing with. It would be better if the analysis could be done in the field, like it is on TV.