Kenyan Elections, History of Halloween, "Mormon Octopus"

Guest: Daniel Nielson, PhD, Professor of Political Science and African Studies, Brigham Young University The country’s elections have been plagued by disputes over vote rigging and stolen outcomes. So, when the country’s Supreme Court overturned a Presidential election in August and called for a do-over, there was hope the move would be an opportunity to strengthen Kenya’s democracy. It has not gone well. The rerun is supposed to happen tomorrow – Thursday – but may not go off. Concerns about violence at polling locations and in the streets.

Guest: Lisa Morton, Screenwriter, Author, Halloween Expert Halloween is weird, isn’t it? It’s part harvest festival, with apple cider and pumpkin patches. And it’s part rowdy celebration, with trick-or-treaters running amok and adults dressing in costume. And it’s also part supernatural spookfest, with ghost stories and haunted houses. The strange nature of Halloween likely dates back to a peculiar Celtic holiday called Samhain. Halloween historian Lisa Morton has written about it extensively and joins me now.

Guest: Rick Eckstein, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Villanova University When the US men’s national team missed qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, Sports Illustrated called it “\[t]he most embarrassing failure in U.S. Soccer history.” The team’s coach resigned, and there are calls for more changes at the top of the U.S. Soccer organization. But Villanova sociologist Rick Eckstein thinks that many problems with soccer in America start with our kids' teams. Youth soccer is becoming exclusive and expensive, and that is ultimately hurting the men’s national team.

Guest: Sam Payne, Host, The Apple Seed, BYUradio

Guest: Douglas Schmidt, PhD, Associate Chair of Computer Science and Engineering, Professor of Computer Science, Vanderbilt University Nearly 150 million people had their personal information stolen by hackers because Equifax – the credit monitoring company – failed to update some of the software it uses. In other words, the hack was completely avoidable. The software problem was known – there was even a fix for it that had been available for two months before Equifax was hacked.

Guest: Anthea Butler, PhD, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania