Bitcoin, Teens and Healthy Romance, Alex Honnold

Guest: Peter Midgley, JD, Director of the BYU Copyright Licensing Office A rock band called The Slants won their case at the US Supreme Court this week. Their lawsuit had to do with the fact that their band name is “The Slants,” which is a racial slur for Asian Americans, but the band members themselves are Asian American and say they chose the name as a way of reclaiming the term. Peter Midgley explains what happened when they tried to trademark it.

Guest: Paul Vigna, Journalist, The Wall Street Journal, Author, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order The next time you swipe your card at your local 7-Eleven, think about this: Before the money can leave your bank account and end up in 7-Eleven’s, there are at least five different organizations that will handle your credit card information. It’s an invisible bureaucracy of banks and finance companies and government agencies that set interest rates, charge fees, and control nearly everything about the way we use money.  The electronic currency called bitcoin sidesteps all of that in a way that could save a lot of money. But bitcoin also has features that make it really attractive to drug dealers and hackers. So is bitcoin something to fear or embrace?

Guest: Rick Weissbourd, Senior Lecturer on Education, Faculty Director of Human Development and Psychology, Director of the Making Caring Common Project, Harvard University When teens graduate and move out they need to know how to work, how to handle money, how to clean up after themselves and, according to this guest, how to fall in love. Parents often fail to teach that last one, because, isn’t falling in love something that comes naturally, after all? Well, knowing how to make a healthy, loving relationship work takes lots of skills, and parents often don’t devote the time to teaching those, but, it turns out, kids really want to learn.  See the tips and guidebook here.

Storyteller Sam Payne, of BYUradio's The Apple Seed, shares one of his favorite stories.

Guest: Mark Vlasic, President and Principal of Landmark Design What makes a good park? Children usually prefer playgrounds with lots of areas to explore, where adults usually like parks with natural vegetation and walking paths. Mark Vlasic explains what makes a park successful.

Guest: Jane Joseph, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina The first Saturday in June, a guy named Alex Honnold, arguably the best rock climber in the world, got up early, clipped a small bag of chalk to his waist, and climbed straight up the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan in less than four hours. El Capitan is sheer granite and is as high as a 277-story skyscraper. Honnold was often hanging on by his fingertips, jamming his hands and feet into small cracks in the cliff as he worked his way up. And he did it with no safety gear, nothing to save him if he slipped and fell. The entire climbing world is in awe. The rest of us are pretty sure Honnold is crazy, wondering if he even feels fear. Neuroscientist Jane Joseph also wanted to know, so she put Alex Honnold into an fMRI and took a close look at his brain.