Canada v. Saudi Arabia, Going Gray, Youth Voting & Diet Soda

Guest: Oonagh Fitzgerald, a former Canadian government official who worked on international law and human rights, directs the International Law Research Program at the Center for International Governance Innovation.  About ten days ago, Canada’s foreign minister Tweeted a call for some human rights activists to be released from jail in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis responded by kicking Canada’s ambassador out, bringing the Saudi ambassador home and cutting off all future business with Canada. Saudi Airways flights to Toronto have been suspended and thousands of state-funded Saudi students attending Canadian universities have been told by the Saudi government to find somewhere else to continue their studies.

Guests: Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart & Takoma Park Youth Council Chairman Kiran Kochar McCabe A handful of cities around the country let 16 and 17 year olds vote in local elections and there’s a push to get more on board. Takoma Park, Maryland, which is a suburb of Washington, DC, was the first to do it five years ago. But are 16-year-olds really mature enough to cast an informed vote? On the other hand, if we trust them to drive a car and pay taxes on their after-school earnings, don’t they deserve a say in local issues that affect them, like education?

Eunice Zhang, MD, Clinical Fellow, preventive medicine, University of Michigan School of Public Health When I drink soda, it’s always diet, because that way I get a sweet treat without the caloric consequences. Scientists, though, are discovering that calorie-free sweeteners like aspartame or sucralose aren’t harmless freebies in the body. They have consequences, which Dr. Eunice Zhang flagged in a recent article she wrote for The Conversation.

Guest: Ali Bouzari, PhD, Food Scientist and author of “Ingredient: Unveiling the Essential Elements of Food” Meat grown in a test-tube is currently possible, in small amounts. But a bunch of companies say they’re on the verge of being able to sell you a whole filet of fish, nugget of chicken or slice of foie gras made in the laboratory. PETA – the animal rights group - supports the idea because it doesn’t require force-feeding or slaughtering animals. The beef, pork and poultry industries would prefer these mad scientists not call their stuff meat, at all. But what does it actually taste like? Will it ever do for the palate and the chef what meat does?

Guest: Dr. John Darnell, Professor of Egyptology at Yale University Five-thousand-year-old graffiti has turned up in a remote part of the Sahara Desert between the Nile River and the Red Sea. It dates to a time just before Egyptians developed their hieroglyphic writing system, so these pictures scratched into stone are a window into what seems like a basic human urge to express ourselves and leave a mark on the world. These ancient Egyptians weren’t so different from people carving their initials in a tree or spray painting them on walls, really.

Guests:  Steve Johnson, PhD, Associate Professor of Micro and Molecular Biology at Brigham Young University and Scott Weber, PhD, Associate Professor of Micro and Molecular Biology at Brigham Young University.