Intelligence Leaks, Fear of Childbirth, Wage Theft

Guest: Ryan Vogel, JD, PhD, Professor of International Law, Director of the Center for National Security Studies, Utah Valley University A 25-year-old government contractor named Reality Winner is in jail on charges of sharing a classified document with the media. Former FBI director James Comey also shared information, but he’s not in jail. He even admitted on live TV, under oath, that he arranged for the media to get notes of a meeting he had with President Trump. Despite the lack of legal prosecution, President Trump continues to call Comey a leaker on Twitter and has fumed publicly about information leaking from various government agencies.  President Trump appears to put James Comey in the same category as Reality Winner and, by extension, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Did Comey really break the law? When is a leak illegal and when is it an act of whistleblowing?

Guest: Anne Bissonnette, PhD, Associate Professor of Material Culture and Curatorship, Curator of Clothing and Textiles Collection, University of Alberta It’s just a fact of life that our bodies change in shape and size as we age. Sudden, or even subtle, shifts in weight can require a whole new wardrobe. Why are clothes in the Western world designed so that even a slight gain in the hips or belly requires a new pant size? On the other hand, the one-size-fits-all sari from India is proof that clothing can both fit and flex with the normal shifts in a body. A new exhibit at the University of Alberta in Canada explores the lack of adaptability in Western clothing. It’s called “Misfits: Bodies, Dress and Sustainability.” Click here for a more information on the exhibit.

Guest: Greg Garrett, PhD, Pop Culture Critic, Professor of English at Baylor University, Author of “Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse” The undead are having a moment in Western culture. Zombies are everywhere – in the biggest shows on TV, most popular video games, and even lumbering their way into rewrites of classic literature, such as Pride and Prejudice. What’s behind this zombie renaissance?

(originally aired Oct. 4, 2016) Guest: Lee Roosevelt, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing, University of Michigan Some questions have an obvious answer. For example, ask a pregnant woman expecting her first baby if she’s at all afraid of how the childbirth will go and the answer is bound to be “yes.” Fear about something so dramatic is normal. But the follow-up questions: “How afraid are you?” “What are you most afraid of?” Those questions don’t get asked nearly enough, according to midwife and nursing professor Lee Roosevelt. As she began to ask those questions, she realized we know next to nothing about fear of childbirth in the US, which could have serious health consequences.

(originally aired Feb. 8, 2017) Guest: Sunita Desai, PhD, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard University There’s a reason companies hire beautiful celebrities to sell us everything from watches to weight-loss programs: it works. Our desire to be like the beautiful and famous gets us to make the purchase. This may not be much of a problem when it’s mascara or shampoo being advertised, but what happens when a famous person goes public about a medical test, procedure or treatment they’ve had? Are people just as eager to rush out and copy that, too? If so, what’s the consequence?

(originally aired Jan. 23, 2017) Guest: Elizabeth Tippett, JD, Professor of Law, University of Oregon Around 60 percent of U.S. employees punch a timecard. Well, they don’t actually “punch” a “timecard” anymore, but they do track their hours digitally and get paid accordingly—in theory. An analysis of a dozen commonly used timekeeping software programs in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology finds it wouldn’t be hard for employers to accidentally—or intentionally—short the pay of their workers.