Paris Terror Attacks, Math Anxiety, Black Hole Swallows Star

Three World Events (1:03) Guest: Quinn Mecham, PhD, BYU Political Science Professor  BYU political science professor Quinn Mecham is back for his monthly analysis of three international events we should be paying attention to.  We discuss the terror attacks in Paris, the elections in Myanmar, and political violence in Burundi.  Parents and Math Anxiety (24:47) Guest: Erin Maloney, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar in Psychology at the University of Chicago  If you feel the panic rising when your elementary school child comes home with a math assignment to finish, you may want to just take a pass rather than dig in and try to help. Your anxiety or negative attitude about math will likely mean lower test scores for your kid.  Apple Seed (40:37) Guest: Sam Payne, Host of BYUradio’s “The Apple Seed”  Sam Payne joins us in studio and captivates us with a new story.  Socializing and Depression (51:59) Guest: Alan Teo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University  Who will you be with for Thanksgiving this year? How long has it been since the whole extended family was around the same table? Turns out the answer might affect your health – your mental health, that is. Face-to-face contact – even more than phone calls and emails – has the power to decrease depression in older adults.  Women in Kuwait’s Political System (1:05:27) Guest: Marwa Shalaby, PhD, Director of the Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program at Rice University  Most Americans know Kuwait as the place that Saddam Hussein invaded and we helped to liberate during the Gulf War of the early 1990s.  This small, oil-rich Arab country at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf has a democratically elected, and very powerful, parliament. But Kuwait also has a powerful king – or emir, as he’s called - which makes it an interesting case to consider. When women were given the right to vote in Kuwait ten years ago, there was an initial surge of female members of parliament. There was even a woman appointed to the emir’s cabinet. But those numbers have steadily declined since. Today, not a single woman sits in the Kuwaiti parliament.  How a Black Hole Swallows a Star (1:29:52) Guest: Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, PhD, Professor and Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz  The details of how a star gets swallowed by a black hole have been largely left to theory. Occasionally, astronomers luck out, though, and manage to capture the carnage of a black hole in action through high-powered telescopes.