Eclipse, After-School Activities, What Babies See

Guest: Andrew Fraknoi, PhD, Professor and Emeritus Chair of Astronomy, Foothill College, Author of “When the Sun Goes Dark” A once- or twice-in-a-lifetime event will fill the skies over the US on Monday, August 21, as a total solar eclipse moves eastward from Oregon to South Carolina. It’s been about 40 years since Americans have had this kind of opportunity!

Guest: Heather Austin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine It’s back-to-school time and that means afterschool activities are ramping up. Families with kids at home, you know this drill: Jane has soccer on Mondays and Wednesdays, games on Saturday, ballet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Thursdays she goes straight from ballet to art class. She has to read for 20 minutes every day, do an hour of homework, and practice piano. Piano! Almost forgot about piano! Piano lessons before soccer on Wednesdays! . . . It's tiring just to think about. So how does little Jane feel at the end of the week?

Guest: Margaret Livingstone, PhD, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School Eyes may be windows to the soul, but they are also windows to the brain. Scientists at Harvard Medical School have been studying the brains of baby macaque monkeys and they’ve found that eyesight is a key to brain development, even when the monkeys are asleep! Their findings have important implications for human brain development, too.

Guest: Sam Payne, Host of The Apple Seed, BYUradio The Apple Seed team members reminisce about their favorite teachers.

Guest: Sumit Mohan, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Columbia University Thousands of people in the US die every year waiting for a kidney transplant. Meanwhile, doctors are discarding thousands of donated kidneys every year because they’re not considered suitable for transplant. But what if many of those kidneys could actually save the life of a person in need?

Guest: Mark Verstraete, JD, Privacy and Freedom of Speech Research Fellow, University of Arizona Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” proved to be so popular that last week NBC brought back the satirical newscast for a summer mini-series while Saturday Night Live is on summer hiatus.  We know that Weekend Update is fake, and fans go there for humor. But fake news, we also know, is a real thing, and concerns are rising about what to do about it. In a new report out of the University of Arizona, researchers tackle defining what fake news actually is and recommend strategies to combat it.

Guest: Rebecca Reczek, PhD, Associate Professor of Marketing, Ohio State University  Somewhere in your attic, basement, or garage, there is likely a box of something, baby shoes and blankets, toys, or books, something you’re never going to use again but that you just can’t bear to throw away or donate. Other people might regard these items as clutter, but perhaps you see memories in those dusty boxes taking up space.  How can we motivate ourselves to get rid of what we don’t need anymore, especially if there’s sentimental value attached?