Stories from The Apple Seed

Guest: Joel Campbell, Associate Teaching Professor of Journalism, Brigham Young University The relationship between President Trump and the Press is strained. And it’s a tad ironic, considering how avidly President Trump watches and reads news reports – and then immediately responds on Twitter. But in the last week, the President’s ire took a turn that has civil liberties advocates concerned. After an NBC news report particularly bothered him, President Trump tweeted: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Guest: Carey Cranston, Inaugural President, American Writer’s Museum Two blocks away from that famous giant silver bean sculpture in Chicago, on the second floor of an office building, there’s a new museum dedicated to American writers. Not just Hemingway, Kerouac, Steinbeck…. Rapper Tupac Shakur and comedian Richard Pryor and chef Julia Child are in the museum, too. The exhibits are heavy on interactive technology, but light on books – you know, the bound paper kind – hardly any to be seen in the place, actually, other than as pieces of sculpture. The museum is getting rave reviews from attendees, but a more mixed reaction from literary types – for the reasons mentioned above. Let's find out what's going on inside the American Writers Museum.

Guest: Steven Fesmire, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, Green Mountain College, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Middlebury College It’s college application season right now. The schools with the best career placement after graduation, according to The Princeton Review, include MIT and three other engineering or STEM-focused schools. And isn’t that what a degree is for, to help you get a job, launch right into a career? But what about education for its own sake?

Guest: Amanda Morris, MD, Anesthesiologist, Clinical Instructor, Stanford University This may have happened to you and you would have never known it - only about four percent of people are aware of the practice. Did you know that it’s not unusual for surgeons to schedule two surgeries at once? The procedures may overlap just a little – or maybe a lot. And surgeons don’t always tell their patients in advance how this will all go down. If they did, would you agree to it?

Guest: Jamin Rowan, PhD, Author, “The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition,” Assistant Professor of English, Brigham Young University When you walk through Manhattan’s Central Park you can forget that you’re in a city of more than 8 million people. Central Park was designed to shut out the city and the crowds. Compare that with New York City’s new High Line park, which takes in sweeping city views and is nestled right between buildings on an old elevated rail track. It embraces the city. The two parks represent opposing views of what parks and housing developments in the city should do: Should they provide refuge from the city or should they cultivate the street and sidewalk life that already exists in dense urban cities? Those are the questions at the heart of “The Sociable City.”