Venezuela, Friendship, Letters and Loss, New York Nunchucks

Guest: Paola Rondon Over the weekend US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged members of the UN Security Council to join America in calling for Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro to step down. The US and many of Venezuela’s neighbors say Maduro’s re-election was a sham and they’re backing a leader of the opposition party named Juan Guaido who has declared himself Venezuela’s interim president. Maduro says the US is trying to engineer a coup.

Guest: Sarah Bagley, MD, Internist at the Boston Medical Center and a professor of medicine and pediatrics at Boston University. It’s usually standard procedure for people receiving treatment for opioid addiction to be asked to take a urine drug test regularly – especially early on in treatment. But it’s a bit controversial because there’s a kind of “I want to help you overcome this, but I don’t trust you to tell me the truth” feel to it – and trust is crucial in the relationship between a patient and therapist. So, are urine drug tests really necessary to treatment of opioid use disorder?

Guest: Sarah Ruhl, Playwright, Professor, Yale School of Drama, Co-Author of “Letters from Max: A Book of Friendship” “When we find the right friend at the right time in our life, or the right teacher, or the right student, our lives are changed forever.” That’s a line from a recent New York Times essay by playwright Sara Ruhl. For her, that friend was Max Ritvo.

Guest: James M. Maloney, Adjunct Professor, State University of New York Maritime College  The two short sticks attached with a chain were one of Bruce Lee’s signature weapons. New York officials made it illegal to possess nunchucks in 1974 because of reports they’d become popular with muggers and street gangs. But a lawyer nicknamed “Professor Nunchucks” by comedian Stephen Colbert, has just succeeding in getting the ban overturned. A court said last month it violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms and state officials let the deadline to appeal the ruling expire. So nunchucks are back in New York

Guest: Brendan Leier, Clinical Ethicist at the University of Alberta and Stollery Children’s Hospitals & Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute. There are two plasma donation centers within walking distance of BYU’s campus. That’s not unusual: across the country, plasma donation is most popular with people who are cash-strapped, including college students. But donation isn’t really the right word, because donors get paid. America is the only country in the world where selling your blood is so widely accepted. A few provinces in Canada have started allowing it recently –which has reignited a long-running debate over the ethics and safety of selling plasma.

Guest: Ken Smith, Professor of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah Grandparents die in their 70s and 80s. What does that mean for how long their grandchildren will live? Not as much as you might think. Predicting lifespan is very complicated, but a new study may help researchers identify the gene that controls if someone is going to live an exceptionally long life.