2018 Predictions, Blazing Black Holes, A Successful Sequel

Guest: Quinn Mecham, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University Professor Quinn Mecham made several predictions at the beginning of 2017. They included more terror attacks by ISIS in places beyond Iraq and Syria, civil conflict to flare up in Turkey, Libya, Yemen, S. Sudan, Congo and Palestine and some sort of major crisis in global security – potentially involving Russia or North Korea. We review those predictions and look at his predictions for 2018.

Guest: Wouter Hoogkamer, PhD, Research Associate of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder  The fastest marathon that’s ever been run took 2 hours, two minutes and 57 seconds. Kenyan Dennis Kimetto set that record at the Berlin marathon in 2014. Getting to a time of less than two hours has bedeviled the running world. Nike has developed a running shoe it believes could help the right runner break the two-hour barrier. Before the Vaporfly 4% show went on the market last summer, Nike funded a study of it at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Guest: Subimal Chatterjee, PhD, Professor of Marketing, Binghamton University, SUNY Every single one of the top ten highest grossing movies in America last year was a sequel, a prequel or a remake. Topping the list? Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, is an important factor in the film’s popularity, especially compared to the Star Wars prequels fans and critics love to hate.

Guest: J. Ward Moody, PhD, Professor of Astronomy, Brigham Young University  Black holes are one of the great mysteries in astronomy because they absorb the light around them, so scientists can’t see them. But younger black holes swallow stars in a messier fashion, which leads to a lot of light in a disk spinning around the black hole and, sometimes, shooting straight out of the center. One particularly rare version of this is called a “blazar” and in late 2016 one flared up in a really big way. An international team of astronomers, including BYU professor J. Ward Moody, caught it in their telescopes and have just published a paper attempting to explain what happened.

Guest: Rod and Donna Gustafson, Parent Previews Inspired by a true story, a female newspaper publisher and her editor go head-to-head against the US Government when officials try to suppress unfavorable stories and attempt to undermine the integrity of the press, in "The Post." Also, in a sequel to the 1995 movie Jumanji, a group of teenagers get sucked into a video game version of the magical board game. This time the players control the characters like they are aviators. And the only way back to reality is to beat the game.

Guest: Jon-Patrick Allem, PhD, Research Scientist of Preventative Medicine, Keck School of Medicine at USC It’s become fairly clear that fake social media accounts and posts by so-called “social bots” had at least some role in amplifying certain political views during the 2016 presidential election. So what else in our lives might social bots be affecting? The way we spend our money? Interact with our friends? Researchers at the University of Southern California are looking at the impact of these fake social media voices on our health. They’ve identified social bots that promote e-cigarettes as a safe way to quit smoking.