Trump Leak Trouble, Facebook Fights Corruption, Stop Violence

Guest: Ryan Vogel, JD, Director of Center for National Security Studies, Utah Valley University President Trump was accused of intelligence leaks and obstruction of justice this week. First, that he shared classified intelligence with Russian officials during a recent meeting at the White House, and second, that he asked former FBI director, James Comey, to drop its probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. Ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign have been a major frustration to the President and a reason he cited for firing FBI director Comey last week.

Guest: Sudipta Sarangi, PhD, Economics Professor, Head of the Department of Economics, Virginia Tech Facebook has come under fire for enabling the spread of fake news, so it has recently begun a more assertive process of identifying false news items and rooting out hoaxes.  But Facebook is not necessarily the enemy of all truth. In countries where press freedom is limited, Facebook correlates strongly with reducing government corruption.

Guest: Hans Breiter, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University; Director, Laboratory of Neuroimaging and Genetics, Massachusetts General Hospital No one can predict the future completely, but mathematical models and the right kind of data can predict much about our future behavior, such as when we’re likely to buy a new car or who we’re likely to vote for in the next election. So, what if the same approach could be used to predict bad behaviors – like who’s going to commit a crime? If this sounds like the Tom Cruise movie, “Minority Report,” you’re not wrong. New research could help us stop violence before it stops, but there are ethical and privacy considerations to address.

Guest: Richard Salvi, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, Co-founder and Director of University at Buffalo’s Center for Hearing and Deafness Have you ever noticed that in a noisy room, you struggle to hear what people are saying, but in quiet place, you can hear just fine? If so, you may have a form of what’s known as “hidden hearing loss,” because the usual hearing test – typically done in a quiet room – wouldn’t flag any problems.  University at Buffalo researcher Richard Salvi may have figured out why.

Guest: Joanna Burdette, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, University of Illinois at Chicago For the first time, doctors have recreated a woman’s entire reproductive system in the laboratory—uterus, ovaries and all. It even has a 28-day menstrual cycle. The hope is scientists can use it to discover and test new treatments for birth control, infertility, endometriosis.  Professor Joanna Burdette helped design this working model, which is named EVATAR.

Guest: Frank McAndrew, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Knox College Anticipating the end of life – for yourself or for a loved one – is a sobering and difficult exercise most of us would rather avoid. The same is true for a beloved pet, although sometimes we are forced to have conversations like deciding how sick a dog should be before putting him or her down. The pain can be masked by getting a new puppy or some other distraction, but it is inevitably still there.    Psychologist Frank McAndrew was surprised at how difficult the loss of his own dog was, but then he looked into the research and it all made sense.