Palestinian Hope for Peace, Crane Migration, Web Therapy

Guest: Zaid Malhees, Senior at BYU studying Genetics and Biotechnology  There is so much conflict in the world today, physically and rhetorically. Zaid Malhees is a young Arab born in East Jerusalem, raised in Ramallah in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. Growing up he needed a permit to cross into the part of Jerusalem where his aunt lives, where he was born. He felt treated as a second-class citizen. He understands the hate that has driven decades of violence between Palestinians and Israelis.  But he also has hope – and hearing him talk about it is both inspiring and enlightening.

Guest: John French, PhD, Biologist and Director at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center  The brilliant-white whooping crane is among nature’s most majestic birds and the tallest in North America, standing nearly five feet. They’re also endangered. So for the past 15 years, government biologists have been breeding whopping cranes in captivity and teaching them to migrate south to Florida in what seems like an outlandish experiment: Picture a guy dressed head to toe in a white suit to hide his human-ness – he even has a fake beak on his white-hooded head. And he’s leading a flock of cranes to their southern destination in one of those tiny, super-light-weight aircraft that’s more like a bicycle with wings. And the craziest thing is that it worked, but not without consequences.

Guest: Connie Guille, MD, Psychiatrist and Faculty Member at the Medical University of South Carolina  The people we rely on to save our lives are one to two times more likely to end their own. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says 300 to 400 physicians die by suicide each year.  A web-based therapy program proved effective in reducing the risk of suicide among medical interns and residents studied by psychiatrists at the University of Michigan and the Medical University of South Carolina. Among other things, they found that 30-minutes of web-training on how to identify and copy with negative thoughts and feelings was enough to cut the rate of suicidal thoughts in half for these young doctors.

Guests: Vernon Henshaw, PhD, BYU Education Faculty and Retired Superintendent of Alpine School District; Suzanne Bolingbroke, Director of Literacy for Alpine School District; Suzanne Parker, Instructional Coach and Literacy Specialist for Provo School District  An era ended in mid-December when Congress passed – and the President signed – a law called The Every Student Succeeds Act. It replaces the No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted in 2002 and for more than a decade would come to define – and to some defile – America’s system of educating its youth.