Middle Class Hollowing, Children's IQ, Middle East

Guest: Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director of Research at Pew Research Center  How to win the hearts of middle class voters is on the mind of Republican candidates meeting in their latest Presidential debate tonight. Polls tend to show middle class Americans more confident that Democratic candidates are looking out for them.  But the very essence of America’s middle class is changing, according to a comprehensive report out from the Pew Research Center. A close look at data from the Census Bureau and Federal Reserve finds the majority of Americans can no longer be considered middle class. There’s been a “hollowing” of the class over last forty years. The consequences are significant to the broader US economy.

Guest: Corrine Hanson, PhD, Professor Medical Nutrition Education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center School of Allied Health Professions  People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, rely on inhalers to help them breathe. Emerging research suggests they could also improve lung function with a change in diet.

Guest: John Protzko, PhD, Postdoctoral Research and the University of California, Santa Barbara  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is reading “Quantum Physics for Babies” to his month-old daughter Max. He posted on Facebook about it, of course. And that’s a real book for kids, explaining quantum physics in simple pictures. Reading to babies is a thing among parents eager to boost the IQ of their little ones. There’s evidence it works. But researchers have also long wondered about a phenomenon called the “fadeout effect,” where a child can experience a temporary boost in IQ that fades away over time.

Guests: Steven Lobell, PhD, Political Science Professor at the University of Utah, Author of six books on International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies; Fred Axelgard, PhD, Senior Fellow in International Relations at the Wheatley institution at BYU; John Macfarlane, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Utah Valley University  Our monthly panel of international affairs experts is back to consider the latest from the Middle East. Just as President Obama prepared to give his final State of the Union Address this week, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard captured 10 US sailors in the Persian Gulf. There were immediate fears of a tense hostage crisis, but Iran released the sailors within 24 hours. Secretary of State John Kerry said the quick resolution was thanks to newly-forged diplomatic ties between the US and Iran as they worked out a nuclear agreement.

Guest: James Phillips, JD, Clerk for Utah State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee, Scholar of Judicial Behavior, Former Visiting Professor in BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School  The constitutionality of affirmative action and the rights of labor unions are the high profile issues being considered by the US Supreme Court. What drives the decisions of the court’s nine-justices in cases like these? Attorney James Phillips has spent considerable time analyzing oral arguments to answer that question. Phillips is currently clerking for a justice of the Utah State Supreme Court. He was previously a visiting law professor at BYU studying judicial behavior. We spoke with him last spring about the inner workings of the nation’s top court. Incidentally, that was before the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.