International Law, National Parks, Super Lice, Skepticism

Guest: Eric Jensen, J.D., teaches The Law of Armed Conflict, International Criminal Law, and National Security Law at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School  Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing poverty and conflict and Syria are arriving by train, bus and on foot in Austria and Germany. Heart-wrenching images last week of drowned toddlers intensified calls for European nations to do more for the refugees. The president of the European Commission today announced binding quotas for distributing a total of 160,000 refugees between EU nations.  The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA and US Special Operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria—this is part of a targeted killing program that is separate from the military’s broader offensive against the Islamic State.  North and South Korea recently agreed to ease tensions.

Guest: Kurt Repanshek, Founder and Editor of NationalParksTraveler.com—the leading online resource for National Parks-related news  Summer’s in the rearview window now, but there’s still time to visit a National Park—in fact, there are some parks best visited in Fall when Mother Nature’s color palette is on full display.

Guest: Grant Madsen, Ph.D, BYU History Professor  We take time now for our weekly segment called “Our American Heritage.” BYU history professor Grant Madsen shares insights from his US history courses. This week’s discussion is on The New Deal.

Guest: John Clark, Ph.D, Professor of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst  Parents dread getting that note home from their child’s school warning that head lice are making the rounds. Thinking of it might make you itch: the caustic shampooing and careful combing, the endless piles of pre-emptive laundry to make sure the lice aren’t hiding out on linens or clothes.  And now comes news from the lab of Dr. John Clark at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst that a drug-resistant strain of lice have now been found in 25 states.

Guest: Sean Mackinnon, Ph.D, Instructor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University  In the scientific method you form a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, analyze data, and draw conclusions.  The ultimate validation of your results comes when someone else is able to replicate your experiment and get the same—or at least a very similar—outcome.  But this last step of validation happens far too rarely for a group of researchers who’ve formed the Reproducibility Project to reproduce published studies and see if they get the same results.