Thank You Notes, Gaming Disorder, Regenerative Medicine

Guest: Quinn Mecham, Professor of Political Science, BYU BYU political science professor Quinn Mecham is back in studio to look at how his predictions from last year played out and to make some new predictions for 2019.

Guest: Amit Kumar, Professor of Marketing and Psychology, University of Texas at Austin Have you sent out all of your thank you notes from the holidays? We all know how great it feels when we receive a thank you note. However, a study done at the McCombs School of Business shows even though we know that giving thank you notes is a positive thing, we don't do it often. It also showed that people underestimate just how much a thank you note is well received and appreciated.

Guest: Douglas Gentile, Professor of Psychology, Iowa State University. If you’re counting the days ‘til your kids go back to school so they’ll be forced to step away from the video game console, this might ease your mind. Video game addiction has become prevalent enough that the World Health Organization now considers it a treatable disorder. But when it comes to the likelihood of developing a gaming addiction, the amount of time someone spends playing may not matter as much as why they play.

Guest: Sam Payne In May, 2019, the Transcontinental Railroad turns 150 years old. The Chinese American Heritage Foundation is doing important work to preserve the history of Chinese immigrants to America, including the workers who built the railroad. There weren’t any written records preserved by those workers. But the Chinese American Heritage Foundation has discovered that many of the grandchildren of the railroad workers remember stories told to them by their parents and grandparents about days working on the railroad. The Foundation is working on recording many of those stories. The Chinese American Heritage Foundation website: https://www.cahf.us/?

Guest: Stephen Badylak, Deputy Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Lizards can regrow an entire tail, and salamanders can regrow a leg. Unfortunately, our human bodies mainly just close wounds and make scar tissue. But just imagine the possibilities if we could grow a new limb after an amputation – or a new organ, rather than needing a transplant?

Guest: Andrea Doucet, Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Brock University, Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work & Care In the richest countries in the world, a new mother gets about a year of paid leave to care for the child. America is the exception. Here, it’s up to companies to decide if – or how much – time they’ll pay an employee to be on leave caring for a new child.  A survey by the Kaiser Foundation in 2017 estimated just one-in-three workers in the US are employed at a firm that offers paid maternity leave.