Barr and Mueller, Understanding Sound, Cigarette Warnings,Chicken Bones

Guest: Ryan Vogel, Director of the Center for National Security Studies, Utah Valley University William Barr has spent the last two days in Senate confirmation hearings, hoping to become US Attorney General. A lot of the questions from Senators of both parties on the committee have focused on what Barr will do with the Mueller Investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Guest: Jonathan Z. Simon, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biology, University of Maryland Just now, your brain did something amazing. First you heard the Top of Mind theme music and then I started talking and immediately your brain recognized the sounds had changed –that now you were hearing speech and your brain needed to pay closer attention. How the brain does that so quickly is a focus of Jonathan Simon’s research at the University of Maryland.

Guest: Jeff Niederdeppe, Professor of Communications, Cornell University The federal Food Drug Administration is a Catch-22. In 2009Congress ordered the FDA to require new, more powerful health warning labels on cigarette packages. But the FDA got caught in a cross fire of conflicting federal court orders. One way out of the legal mess was to prove that graphic, disturbing images of tobacco-related disease on the packages would significantly reduce smoking.

Guest: Sam Payne Sam Payne shares a story

Guest: Richard Thomas, Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester Thousands of years from now, what do you suppose archaeologists will consider the symbol of our time? Like the Bronze Age or Iron Age, maybe we’ll be the iPhone Age? Actually, we may end up being remember as the Chicken Age. Global food preferences have made the broiler chicken the most common terrestrial vertebrate on the planet. More than 65 billion are slaughtered each year. And they’ve been bred for lots of juicy meat, so they’ve got weird, warped bones that may baffle future scientists uncovering piles and piles of them in our landfills.

Guest: Jeff Stokes, Professional Licensed Auctioneer, Co-founder of Stokes Auction Group, Instructor, Western College of Auctioneering Why do livestock auctioneers talk so fast –and are they really saying anything in between those numbers? We’ve got the man to explain how bid calling works. Jeff Stokes is a world champion auctioneer and co-founder of Stokes Auction Group. He’s also a sought-after instructor at the Western College of Auctioneering. Yes, you can go to college to be an auctioneer!