UK and EU, Motherhood and Employment, Mid-East Panel

Guest:  Michael Leigh, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund  The refugee crisis in Europe has prompted new calls for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron’s unexpected victory in May’s general elections came with a promise that he would put the question of a “Brexit” – a British exit from the EU – to a nationwide referendum by the end of 2017.

Guest: Caitlyn Collins, Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin  There’s been much discussion lately about whether women can really have it all: a high-powered career and a family. The United States gets a lot of criticism in that conversation for being the only developed country in the world that doesn’t require employers to offer paid maternity leave. In European countries, women can have a baby and still feel confident that they’ll come back to a job.

Guests: Tyler Young, MBA student at BYU; Kyle Taylor, MBA student at BYU  The TV show “Shark Tank” takes us inside the process of getting money to start a business.  While the stakes may not be quite as high, universities across the country host Shark Tank-like competitions to help students get their big ideas off the ground. At BYU, it’s called the Miller Competition Series and over the course of several phases of the competition, thousands of dollars are on the line.

Guests: John Macfarlane, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Utah Valley University; Fred Axelgard, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in International Relations at BYU; Steven Lobell, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah  Our monthly panel of Middle East experts is back, as Russia intensifies its role in the Syrian war and Muslims worldwide mourn the deaths of more than 1,000 people trampled during the annual pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca. Those are just a few of the topics we’ll cover with our panelists.

Guest: Perry Renshaw, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Utah  The suicide rate in the American West puzzles public health officials.  Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming—all have a roughly 1.5 times higher suicide rate than the rest of the nation. Researchers sometimes call it "the Suicide Belt.