Robocalls on the Rise, Angel Gowns, Schooling Isn't Learning

Guest: Margot Saunders, JD, Senior Counsel, National Consumer Law Center If it feels like you’re getting more robocalls on your cell phone, interrupting you at work, at home and everywhere in between, you’re right. Government regulators and industry experts say there’s been a huge surge in robocalling over the last few years. In February alone, 3 billion robocalls were made. That works out to nine calls for every person in America over the course of a single month. Congress has been holding hearings on the problem lately.

Guest: Diane Dione, Founder and Executive Director of Angel Gowns Foundation  When Diane Dione’s daughter lost a baby who only lived one day, part of the heartbreak was having to shop for a dress to bury the tiny girl in. They nearly didn’t find anything small enough for her, and the trauma of those hours spent shopping in the happy, bubbly world of baby clothes stuck with Dione. So she turned her personal tragedy into a blessing for others with her non-profit “Angel Gowns,” where she and 300-some volunteers transform donated wedding dresses into tiny burial gowns that are given to parents who have lost a baby.

Guest: Rick Eckstein, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University, and Author of “How College Athletics Are Hurting Girls' Sports” As college graduates don caps and gowns to receive their degrees … and start paying off their student loan debt, let’s consider the disparity between what universities are spending on academics and what they’re spending on athletics. Over the last decade, one of those budget lines has remained relatively flat while the other has grown significantly.

(Originally Aired 2/12/18) Guest: Clément Vinauger, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, Virginia Tech It’s summertime, and that means mosquitos. Researchers are getting to the bottom of why some people attract mosquitoes more than others. And, get this, they’ve done it by putting tiny helmets on mosquitoes. They’ve also figured out that if you swat at a mosquito like crazy, it just might remember that and avoid you later.

(originally Aired 9/12/17) Guest: Lant Pritchett, PhD, Professor of Practice of International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Researcher at the Center for Global Development One of the great international development success stories of the last century is the fact that today practically every child in the world enrolls in school, and most attend at least to the end of primary school. Getting to this place has taken a consistent, global effort. But, for all that schooling, kids are not learning. There are some 250-million children around the world unable to read, write or do basic math, and more than half of them are in school.

(Originally aired 9/11/17) Guest: Ana Homayoun, Author of “Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced World” You’ve heard of Snapchat, but have you ever used it? How about Tumblr, WhatsApp or AskFm? If you’ve got a teen or tween in the house, they know exactly what those sites are and probably use them more than you think. What’s the best way to talk to your kid about what they’re up to on social media, without being overbearing?