Privatizing Criminal Justice, Robot Pizza, Stop ISIS Recruitment

Guest: Maybell Romero, Visiting Assistant Professor of Criminal Law, BYU President Trump this week placed his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of a new White House office focused on leverage business ideas to make government more efficient – and in some cases, to privatize government functions. We’ve already seen evidence through directives from the US Attorney General’s office that the Trump Administration intends to continue relying on privately-run prisons, which the Obama administration had planned to move away from.

Guest: Brett Burkhardt, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Oregon State University Now let’s turn to the future of privatized prisons in the US justice system. Shortly after taking office last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed a directive issued by the Obama Administration aimed at phasing out the federal government’s contracts with private prisons. Attorney General Sessions has indicated the future needs of the federal correctional system will require the use of private prisons. That corresponds to President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies which are likely to result in many more people being detained while they wait for their immigration claims to be processed by the courts.

Guest: Julia Collins, co-CEO and co-Founder of Zume Pizza Silicon Valley's latest pizza delivery service could put Domino's out of business with their secret ingredient: robots. At Zume Pizza, the owners have built what they call a “co-bot” environment where employees work alongside robots to streamline the pizza-making and delivery process. Once the human employees and robots have prepped the pizza, they load it in a delivery van that bakes the pizza on its way to the customer’s house. CNBC’s recently named Zume Pizza the most promising young start-up for 2017.

Guest: Sam Payne, Host of BYUradio’s “The Apple Seed” Sam Payne joins us in the studio to share tales of tellers and stories.

Guest: Maria Mascola, Maternal & Fetal Medicine, Obstetrics & Gynecology The umbilical cord is a literal lifeline between mother and her baby. And a father’s first official act in his baby’s life is often cutting that cord, making the baby an independent human. In the US, this usually happens within seconds of birth, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends waiting up to a minute before cutting the umbilical cord.

Guest: Efraim Benmelech, PhD, Professor of Finance, Northwestern University ISIS was quick to claim credit for the attack that killed four people in London last week. Almost as quickly, the terror group spun the attack into YouTube propaganda videos aimed at attracting new recruits. ISIS has proven particularly savvy when it comes to recruitment, drawing more than 30,000 people from at least 85 countries to fight for its cause on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria – and carrying out attacks in their countries of origin.  The US and European countries are investing heavily in efforts to counter ISIS recruitment and prevent would-be martyrs from radicalizing.