Drug Companies and Opioid Crisis, Online Public School, Investigative Journalism

Guest: Robin Feldman, JD, Professor of Law, Director of the Institute for Innovation Law, University of California A prominent player in America’s opioid abuse problem, Purdue Pharma, is facing more than a thousand lawsuits from states and cities over its alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis with its prescription painkiller OxyContin. Now, Purdue notes that OxyContin accounts for less than two percent of opioid in the US. But it used to be much higher. And investigative reporting in a range of publications has shown how aggressively Purdue worked to expand opioid use in the US, even as the overdose crisis escalated. The Financial Times recently reported that a company affiliated with Purdue Pharma patented a new drug earlier this year to treat opioid addiction, meaning it could potentially profit off both sides of the opioid epidemic.

Guest: Laura Belnap, Director, Utah Online School For generations, school meant desks, hallways, lunchrooms, bells. But now the same revolution that disrupted American retail is coming after education. States all around the country now offer an online public school option from Kindergarten through high school.

Guest: Jeffery Tessem, PhD, Professor of Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Science, Head of the Tessem Diabetes Research Lab, Brigham Young University One in ten Americans have diabetes and most of that is Type 2 diabetes, which means the body doesn’t use insulin properly to keep blood sugar levels in check. Proper exercise and diet can prevent most people from getting Type 2 diabetes. That’s not true for the other type of diabetes – Type 1, which is sometimes called “juvenile diabetes” because it often occurs in childhood. There is no cure yet for Type 1 diabetes, but researchers have zeroed in on something in the body called “beta cells.”

Guest: David Feldman, PhD, Professor of Economics, College of William and Mary It’s homecoming season on college campuses. Alumni are back to visit their old haunts and marvel at the new buildings and amenities added to the school since they graduated. Those fancy sports arenas, workout facilities and dining halls must be a main reason tuition is so much higher today, right? Well, actually, that’s a common misconception, according to economist David Feldman.

Guest: Thomas Peele, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the Bay Area News Group, Lecturer of Journalism at University of California Berkeley Veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book about dysfunction in the Trump White House has quickly become one of the year’s top-sellers and drawn sharp criticism from its subject. The President often complains about how the media covers him. “Enemy of the People” he calls them. But in a lot of cases reporters are the people’s only advocate uncovering corruption in government, holding powerful people to account. That’s the kind of investigative reporting Thomas Peele does – the kind of reporting that won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Guest: Rachel Wadham, Host, Worlds Awaiting, BYUradio