Ag-Gag Laws, Our Debt to Islam, Healthcare History

Guest: Erika George, JD, Professor of Law, University of Utah At least nine states have “ag-gag” laws on the books. A federal judge recently ruled one such law in Utah unconstitutional. These laws make it a crime to lie about your identity in order to get onto a commercial farm or into a slaughterhouse and then secretly tape what goes on there and expose the recordings to the public. Animal rights groups say the laws amount to a “gag order” on their efforts to shed light on inhumane or unsafe food production methods.

Guest: Glen Cooper, PhD, Adjunct Professor of History, Pitzer College During the European Dark Ages, when science, art and literature seemed to flounder for several centuries, there actually was a lot of discover and insight going on – but it was in the Islamic World: places like Iraq, Persia and Syria. The science of medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished among Islamic scholars and would help catalyze the European Renaissance. But those contributions have been largely forgotten today. Why? And what’s lost when we ignore the debt we owe to Islam?

Guest: Christy Ford Chapin, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Visiting Scholar, Johns Hopkins University Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act are a shambles, so some in Congress are now searching for a more limited plan to stabilize the individual insurance market, where premiums have risen steeply. Even though the fight over Obamacare is often called a fight over “health care reform,” it’s really more about insurance reform, dictating who should get coverage and what the coverage should look like. But how did health insurance companies end up being the gatekeepers to our medical care in the first place? About 100 years ago, health insurance companies didn’t even exist in America. The story of their rise to prominence helps explain why the battle over health care reform is so intense today.

(originally aired Nov. 29, 2016) Guest: Mike Domitrz, Founder of The Date Safe Project, Author of “Can I Kiss You?” and the DVD “Help! My Teen is Dating” According to Mike Domitrz, consent starts from the first kiss. Forget the romance movie notion that a kiss should happen organically when your partner is sending the right signals and you’re picking up on them and fireworks go off when you come together without exchanging a word about it. The whole idea of consent often boils down to “No means no.” It’s the concept central to nationwide discussions regarding sexual assault. But is it really that simple? That “No means no” and “Yes means yes”?

(originally aired May 1, 2017) Guest: Mark Belk, PhD, Professor of Biology, Brigham Young University There's still time left in boating season, and here in Utah a popular destination for boaters is the massive reservoir Lake Powell, well over 100 miles long. But boaters there have had to deal an invasive species the last five years: quagga mussels are spoiling the party at Lake Powell, threatening serious damage to the thriving houseboat industry there and possibly wreaking havoc on sport fishing, just like they’ve done in the Great Lakes for the past 30 years. Will the quagga mussels win out again?

(originally aired March 28, 2017) Guest: Dr. Jon Schull, PhD, Director of RIT’s MAGIC Center, Founder of the e-NABLE Movement Every year roughly 1,500 babies in the US are born missing all or part of an arm.  Simple activities like getting dressed or opening a door can be a challenge for these children. But a prosthetic hand can cost tens of thousands of dollars and kids tend to out-grow them in a few years.  Enter the e-NABLE movement: a fast-growing network of more than 6000 volunteers that use 3-D printers to create custom-made prosthetics for less than $50. The movement has already provided about 2,000 prosthetics for people in more than 40 countries.