GMOs, Wasting Time in America, G.O.P. Politics

Guest: Alan McHughen, PhD, Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside  When you see “all natural” on a package at the grocery store, what do you assume about the food inside? There’s apparently enough confusion about it that the Food and Drug Administration last week began seeking public input on the question.

Guest: Alexis McCrossen, PhD, Professor of US Social and Cultural History at Southern Methodist University  Our relationship to time in America is complicated. It’s immensely valuable to us – “time is money,” right? So we punish people by forcing to spend time locked up. And we brag about how many hours we work and scoff at the Europeans who put in only 35 hours a week.  Yet, we also spend massive amounts of money and time on leisure activities.

Guest: McKay Coppins, Senior Political Writer at BuzzFeed  Another Republican candidate for President – Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal – bowed out of the race. But there’s still an unusually crowded field vying for the GOP nomination: there’s Trump, Carson, Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Christie, Fiorina, Paul, Kasich, Santorum, Graham, Pataki and Gilmore. In the years since Mitt Romney lost the 2012 campaign to Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been in “the wilderness,” says Buzzfeed senior political reporter McKay Coppins.

Guest: Grant Madsen, PhD, BYU History Professor  It’s time for “Our American Heritage.” My colleague Marcus Smith of Thinking Aloud and history professor Grant Madsen sit down each week and discuss a topic from American History, usually one that sheds lights on the world we live in now. This week they discussed the economist Friedrich Hayek and his impact on conservatism in the US.

Guest: Paul Stavast, Director of the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at BYU  All over the country school children are dressing up to re-enact the first Thanksgiving feast when the Pilgrims and the Native American Indians sat down together in harmony. That’s not exactly how it went, though. Which we know, of course. And that’s partly why, in addition to being the month of Thanksgiving, November is also Native American Heritage Month.  It’s in that vein that we dedicate this month’s installment of “From the Vaults” to a selection of Ute artifacts from the Museum of Peoples and Cultures here at BYU. The Ute tribe is indigenous to Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona and, of course, Utah.