Latin America, Precrastination, Mormon Colonies

Protest and Upheaval Spreads Across Latin America (0:30) Guest: Kirk Hawkins, PhD, Professor of Political Science, BYU The long-time president of Bolivia has stepped down and fled the country. Weeks of sometimes violent protests in Chile have spurred the President to promise a new Constitution will be written.  Peru’s president dissolved the country’s Congress a month ago, so Congress turned around and suspended him, sparking a Constitutional crisis over who is in charge of Peru’s government. For several weeks in October, violent protests swept the streets of Ecuador. And Venezuela’s political and humanitarian crisis grows deeper every month. Pre-Crastination is the Opposite of Procrastination (16:55) Guest: David A. Rosenbaum, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at University of California Riverside The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Is procrastination sometimes a good thing? While there seem to be obvious benefits to getting things done in a timely manner, new research is revealing that there are definite drawbacks to pre-crastinating akin to the drawbacks of procrastinating. They conclude that this habit does not just reflect simple haste or the pursuit of instant gratification; it also reduces demand on mental resources--meaning that we are just trying to make our lives a little bit easier. In doing so, however, you actually increase your own anxiety levels and feed into a vicious cycle of intense compulsions to act fast. Mormons in the US-Mexico Borderlands (32:58) Guest: Lisa Elliott, Associate Professor of Mass Communication, El Paso Community College, NEH Grant Recipient The FBI has joined the investigation into the murder of three women and six children in Northern Mexico last week by suspected cartel gunmen. The victims were dual US-Mexico citizens from a community that identifies as “Mormon” but is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Last week on Top of Mind, we spoke with an expert on the independent –or fundamentalist –M