Hawaii's Erupting Volcano, Motherhood and Politics, Carbon Neutrality

Guest: Estelle Chaussard, PhD, Professor of Geology and Geophysics, State University of New York at Buffalo Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano continues to erupt. Its eruptions and lava flows have destroyed dozens of homes, released lethal gases and set forests ablaze. As the lava reaches the Pacific Ocean it’s releasing caustic plumes of acid haze. And now, officials say lava is encroaching on a geothermal plant that’s a major source of power on the island, as well as a potential source for toxic gas leaks if breached.

Guest: Debra Schilling Wolfe, MEd, Founding Executive Director of the Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice and Research, University of Pennsylvania More than a million teenagers under the age of 18 are homeless in the United States and “unaccompanied”– meaning they’ve got no parent or caregiver. They’re fending for themselves in homeless shelters and on the streets – and worrisome new research shows they’re extremely susceptible to human trafficking.

Guest: Laurel Elder, PhD, Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Hartwick College In Maryland, Krish Vignarajah is running in the Democratic primary race for governor, and she campaigns on the fact that she’s a woman and mother of a baby. In her campaign ad, she is seen breastfeeding her baby. Here we discuss the way women on the 2018 ballot are tackling perceptions of motherhood and politics.

Guest: Miles Brundage, Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, and  PhD candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University Artificial intelligence makes it possible for Google and Netflix and other services to learn our preferences, anticipate our needs and make recommendations we often end up loving. Which is great. But what might spammers and hackers do with the same capability? Rather than learning our likes to serve up a new favorite film, they could use artificial intelligence to craft the perfectly targeted, personalized email to get you to click on that infected link.

Guest: Sam Payne, Host of The Apple Seed, BYUradio Sam Payne of The Apple Seed shares a story.

Guest: Lera Boroditsky, PhD, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California San Diego, and Author of the forthcoming “7,000 Universes: How the Languages We Speak Shape the Way We Think” In French, there are two forms of the pronoun “you.” There’s “vous,” that’s more formal for when you’re talking to strangers or superiors. And there’s the informal “tu,” for friends and family. But how close do you need to be before making the switch to using “tu” with people? Is it presumptuous to suddenly start using “tu” one day? When a French speaker makes that switch from "vous" to "tu," does it change the way the people in the relationship think about each other?

Guest: William Moomaw, PhD, Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy and Founding Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and Member of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 Trees absorb carbon dioxide and make oxygen for us to breathe. Burning wood releases the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. So if we cut down trees to burn for electricity and plant new ones in their place, is the process carbon neutral – basically cancelling out the CO2 effect on the atmosphere? The EPA recently announced a plan to treat the burning of wood harvested from managed forests as renewable energy – similar to solar and wind power. That decision hinges on this question of carbon neutrality.