Blackface, Life on Other Planets, Chinese Storm Clouds

Guest: David Pilgrim, PhD, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, Founder and Curator of the Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University The governor of Virginia continues to face pressure to resign but said over the weekend he'll serve out his term with an emphasis on race and equity. Politicians, fashion brands, and TV show hosts have all come under scrutiny recently for blackface. To understand the controversy, you need to know the history of the practice.

Guest: Luis Urrieta, Susan B. and John L. Adams Professor of Education, University of Texas at Austin The star of the Netflix film Roma is the first indigenous woman in history to be nominated for an Oscar. She’s up for best actress. Yalitza Aparicio is her name. She plays a live-in maid to an upper class white family in Mexico City. Her Oscar nomination, as an indigenous woman whose own mother is a domestic worker, has focused attention on some of the racial, class and ethnic divisions. Aparacio has even been featured on the cover of Vogue Mexico, which is remarkable, says Luis Urrieta.

Guest: Michael Auslin, Fellow in Contemporary Asia, The Hoover Institute, Stanford University In the 20thCentury, the U.S. economy was so dominant that people said, “When America sneezes, the world catches a cold.” These days, that might also apply to China. It’s a giant in its neighborhood and our largest trading partner –just look at the stuff around your house. Much of President Trump’s rhetoric in his trade war seems focused on keeping China’s power in check and America in the dominant role. So, the fact that China’s economy is now slowing would seem like good news. But, Asia analyst Michael Auslin warns that storm clouds on China’s horizon could have serious repercussions for us.

Guest: Laurance Doyle, Principal Investigator, Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute In the last two decades, astronomers have identified thousands and thousands of planets orbiting stars outside of our solar system. According to NASA, many of them could potentially be habitable. Laurance Doyle has spent his entire career on this quest. He’s a member of the NASA Kepler Science Mission looking for habitable planets in space. And he’s also a research scientist at the SETI Institute, where some of his work entails developing a plan to decipher whatever messages alien life might try to send us one day.

Guest: Josh Kantor, Organist for the Boston Red Sox This is what you’d expect to hear at Fenway Park during the 7th inning of a Boston Red Sox Game. But regular fans to know to keep their ears perked for sly humor from organist Josh Kantor throughout the game. Kantor has been making Fenway rock for the past 16 seasons. He takes requests on twitter, learns songs on the fly, and last year played 749 different tunes.

Guest: Suzanna Martinez, PhD, University of California, San Francisco Generations of so-called starving college students have subsisted on ramen, and mac and cheese. Most aren’t truly starving, of course. But a recent government study found there are a lot more students going hungry on American college campuses than we tend to think. Some estimates say thirty percent of college students are “food insecure,” meaning they don’t have ready access to enough food for an active, healthy life. The Government Accountability Office’s report on campus hunger says that anywhere from nine percent to over 50 percent of college students face food insecurity. What's being done about it?