Gender Pricing, Foodies, Gender Gap, False Crime Confessions

Guest: Julie Menin, JD, New York City’s Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs It pays to be a man when shopping for thinks like razors, body wash – even bike helmets and knee pads for kids. A comprehensive comparison of 800 such products with male and female versions found items marketing to girls and women cost an average of 7 percent more than those for boys and men. That means that over her lifetime, a woman will spend thousands of dollars more to purchase products branded for women. Read the study here

Guest: Yann Cornil, PhD, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business Research into epicureans who so intensely appreciate fine food finds they are not more likely to be overweight. Rather, it’s the antagonistic relationship to food as a guilty pleasure we hate to admit but can’t resist - that’s the kind of eating likely to cause weight gain.

Guests: Lawrence Hipps, PhD, Climate Scientist at Utah State University; Robert Gillies, PhD, Director of the Utah Climate Center After years of record drought, Southern California is now being pummeled by rain and flooding that is expected to last a couple of weeks. Meteorologists blame El Nino – that storm generating system over the Pacific Ocean that rears its head every four or five years.  Climate scientists at Utah State University have linked global warming to a more intense El Nino pattern. Their latest study published in the journal Nature Communications predicts even more dramatic fluctuations are in store for California, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Guest: Gwen Young, JD, Director of the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Wilson Center Half of the world’s most populous countries have never had a female head of state. The US is on that list – though the distinction could change next year, with Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina are running for President. The lack of women in halls of power is one of the reasons the United States fell in the rankings of countries making most progress to close the gender gap. It’s called the Global Gender Gap Report and The World Economic Forum has been doing it annually for ten years. Gwen Young from the Wilson Center shares her reaction.

Guest: Larry Baxter, PhD, Professor of Chemical Engineering at BYU This next conversation will probably elicit groans from current and future chemistry students – the periodic table just got bigger. Four new elements were officially added to the 7th row of that nightmare for memorization.

Guest: Stephen Porter, PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Psychological Science and Law. According to the Innocence Project, more than 1 out of 4 people who were wrongfully convicted, and who were later exonerated by DNA evidence, had made a false confession or incriminating statement. Why do so many people confess to crimes they did not commit?   A new study from the University of British Columbia examines one explanation: innocent people somehow become convinced they actually did commit the crime.