Dakota Pipeline, Gender Discrimination, Gerrymandering

Dakota Pipeline and the Army Corps Guest: John Freemuth, PhD, Professor of Environmental Policy, Boise State University, Executive Director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy Construction for a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline is on hold since the US Army Corps of Engineers announced, Sunday, it would not allow the oil pipeline to cross under a dammed-up section of the Missouri River that is a water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation, which is about a half-mile away. Instead, the Army Corps said it will conduct an environmental review to consider alternative routes for construction. That could delay the $3.8 billion pipeline by months – or years.  The companies building the pipeline are expected to appeal the decision and may be counting on President-elect Trump to reverse the situation when he takes office.  The Effect of Religious Experiences on Our Brains Guest: Jeffrey Anderson, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Director of the fMRI Neurosurgical Mapping Service, University of Utah When someone has a religious experience, what’s really going on? A fascinating effort at the University of Utah called The Religious Brain Project is answering that question using brain imaging. They’ve just released their first findings, which were focused on a couple dozen devout young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who agreed to lie in an MRI machine while reading scripture and watching uplifting church videos.  The Best Schools Might Not Be Best for Your Child Guest: Jorg Spenkuch, PhD, Professor of Economics, Northwestern University Our school system is not doing a good job of serving high-achieving students. If you’re a parent of a kid who is bored in class day in and day out, wouldn’t you jump at the chance to move him to a more advanced class or a top school?  Challenging Gender Discrimination in Nepal Guest: Cecile Shrestha, Associate Director of Philanthropy at WaterAid One in three people around the world lacks access to adequate sanitation – including, something as simple as clean water for drinking and cleaning. In developing countries, where sanitation is lacking, women and girls tend to suffer the most, for a variety of reasons we’re going to discuss. And we’re going to focus on Nepal, where a combination of topography and cultural myths make the problem particularly acute.  Why is Gerrymandering Legal? Guest: Michael Barber, PhD, Professor of Political Science, BYU The US Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases about the constitutionality of gerrymandering. That’s the practice of one political party redrawing legislative and congressional district boundaries, so it can more easily win elections. It’s totally legal to draw the lines based on political partisanship, according to previous Supreme Court rulings. But drawing the boundary lines based on race is not. What the court’s trying to figure out now, is where the line between partisanship and race lies. If – as is the case in North Carolina – the majority of white voters are Republicans and the majority of African American voters are Democrats, how can the court be sure the boundaries were drawn based on political affiliation and not skin color? How Doctors Die Guest: Zara Cooper, MD, Surgeon, Proffessor at Harvard Medical School That fact is we will all die, but very few of us are comfortable accepting that without making every effort to delay it. Our medical system also defaults to lots of interventions when the end-of-life is near - hospitalization, surgery, invasive treatments. And many, many people have a hard time saying no to intervention, no matter how unlikely it is to prolong life. Saying "no" to last-ditch treatment feels like saying "yes" to death.  But the doctors performing those procedures tend to make very different choices when facing their own death. Researchers have long suspected that doctors choose to die differently than the rest of us. A Harvard Medical School team from the Center for Surgery and Public Health, at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has quantified just how differently doctors die.