Obamacare, March Madness and Sleep, Transitional Justice

Guest: Elizabeth Clark, JD, Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religious Studies at BYU An Obamacare challenge at the Supreme Court is about birth control again – specifically the requirement that companies make it available for free to women covered by their health insurance plans. Churches are exempt from that if the use of birth control violates their religious beliefs. But religious nonprofits like schools or the nursing homes run by an order of Catholic nuns called the “Little Sisters of the Poor,” are not exempt from the birth control requirement. Instead, they’re given a way to opt-out. It’s workaround that requires some effort and is still a violation of their religious freedom, say the Little Sisters and half a dozen other religious organizations who argued their case before the Supreme Court today.

Guest: Cathy Goldstein, MD, Neurologist at the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Center  We’re down to the Sweet Sixteen in March Madness of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. How’s your bracket so far? Let’s talk about strategies for picking a winner. You could go any number of ways – go with your gut, look at win-loss statistics and point spread averages. Or you could go with neurologist Cathy Goldstein’s approach and pick teams based on time zones and circadian rhythms.

Guest: Kelli Muddell, Director of the Gender Justice Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice When a brutal war ends, it’s not as though the sun comes up, the flowers bloom and all is again right with the world. The consequences of conflict linger and must be dealt with. Communities rebuilt, psychological trauma addressed. Healing can also mean holding people accountable for atrocities committed in the fog of war.   It’s called “transitional justice” – basically ensuring justice is done in the transition from war to peace. And Kelli Muddell, of the International Center for Transitional Justice, says it’s not a one-size-fits all thing. Men and women suffer war in different ways and have different demands for justice, after the fact.

Guest: Randy Bell, PhD, CEO of Landmark Research Group  You would think that someone who has worked on disaster sites as devastating as Chernobyl, the 9/11 World Trade Center, and the BP Oil Spill, as well as crime scenes as tragic and infamous as the Nicole Brown-Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey murder sites would have a jaded and skeptical view of humanity, but this guest proves just the opposite can be true.

Guest: Liz Sly, Beirut Bureau Chief for Washington Post  The terror group ISIS is proving effective at coordinating – or at the very least motivating – attacks in major Western cities, but Syria and Iraq are at the heart the Islamic State ISIS is trying to build. Why Syria? Remember, just five years ago, democratic protests there were part of a movement many dubbed the “Arab Spring.” That was tragically too optimistic. Most of the countries where those protests flourished are now mired in brutal war. And what of the protesters who started it? For the most part, they’re in prison, in exile or dead. Washington Post Beirut Bureau Chief Liz Sly marked the fifth anniversary of protests in Syria with a detailed look at how that nation’s democratic revolt went so terribly wrong.