#MeToo, Refugees Herd Goats, Pun Competitions, Spanish Unity

Guest: Valerie Hudson, PhD, Professor of International Affairs in Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, Director of the Program on Women, Peace and Security Allegations rolling in against high-profile men in Hollywood and other industries are stomach-turning. There’s a sense that a dam has been broken. The flood of #MeToo posts from women on social media sharing their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault has stunned a lot of people: more than one-and-a-half million posts thus far from celebrities and members of congress and the friends in your own Facebook feed. It shatters any notion that misogyny and mistreatment of women are a thing of the past.

Guests: Joshua Lloyd, Economic Empowerment Program Manager for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Salt Lake City; Gustave Deogratiasi, Eastern Africa Refugee Goat Project Coordinator  A third of all the refugees who came to the US last year were from war-torn countries in Africa – especially Somalia. And here in Utah there’s a large population of people resettled through the refugee program from Somalia and Burundi. They’ve collaborated with the International Rescue Committee to start an unusual business that taps into something their families may have done for generations. It’s called the East Africa Refugee Goat Project. Yep, goats.  Click here to access the project’s Facebook page.

Guest: Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center, Associate Chief of Staff for Research and Education at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.  What do Beijing, New Delhi and Salt Lake City have in common come winter? Really bad air quality tied to something called an inversion, where warm air traps a layer of cold air and smog low over the city, lingering for days – or even weeks. A form of air pollution called fine particulate matter is of particular concern during inversions. It’s been linked to asthma, lung disease, heart attack and stroke. Now researchers believe it’s tied to kidney disease, too.

Guest: Joe Berkowitz, Editor, “Fast Company,” Author of “Away with Words: An Irreverent Tour through the World of Pun Competitions” Why is it that puns are more likely to induce a groan than a laugh? It takes a quick wit to come up with a good play on words on-the-spot. Can you imagine getting up on stage at a competition called The Punderdome to spit puns back and forth with someone on a topic you’ve just been given? Joe Berkowitz reveals the competitive world of punning. Who knew?

Guest: Professor Jonathan Wynn, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst The topic of gentrification brings out heated emotions in big cities like New York or San Francisco. It’s when the hipsters move into a run-down neighborhood and give it a new identity, complete with funky boutiques and artist collectives and coffee shops. The place becomes a cool new urban hangout and its original residents move because they can no longer afford the rent or property taxes.  There are upsides for a city to have a rough neighborhood turn into a magnet for young urbanites, but we don’t hear those stories as often. And the thing we definitely don’t hear much is an argument for gentrification as the solution to what ails struggling small and mid-sized cities. Jonathan Wynn makes that case with us today.

Guest: Javier Ruperez, Retired Spanish Diplomat, Spain’s Ambassador to the United States from 2000 – 2004 Spain’s Prime Minister is poised to take an unprecedented move by the end of this week. His plan is to remove Catalonia’s separatist leaders from office and dissolve the region’s parliament to force new elections. Catalonia is a semi-autonomous region of Spain a little like a state here in the US. A few weeks ago, Catalonia violated Spain’s constitution by holding a vote for independence, which Spanish police disrupted with force in some places. Catalonia’s president has declared his intent to have the region secede from Spain.  Just imagine California or Texas making such an announcement, and you can see why Spain’s central government is a bit upset.