The Power of Play

Guest: Ryan Vogel, JD, Director, Center for National Security Studies, Utah Valley University President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort made a plea deal with special prosecutor Robert Mueller in which he agreed to cooperate fully with the probe into Russian election meddling. What, if anything, might that mean for the President?

Guest: John K. Davis, PhD, JD, Professor of Philosophy at California State University-Fullerton, Author of "New Methuselahs" Ponce de Leon is said to have sought the Fountain of Youth in Florida. That’s probably a myth. But if he was looking for it, he was in the wrong sun-soaked state. Today, California-based Google and other high-tech companies are on the quest for eternal life. If you could get a treatment that would slow aging and let you live to be 150 or 200 years old, would you do it?

Guest: Eric Rath, PhD, Professor of History, University of Kansas Seventy-six years ago in America, people of Japanese descent were being rounded up and forced into prison camps to wait out the war. Everything related to their culture was considered suspicious and threatening. Today, the most expensive, the most exclusive restaurants in America are sushi restaurants. How did that happen? And is the sushi Americans eat the same thing you’d find in Japan?

Guest: Karen Levy, Assistant Professor of Information Science, Cornell University We know we’re being watched and monitored – by Google, Facebook, our iPhones, our Fitbits. We’ve pretty much gotten used to it because of how helpful it is to have those services know our preferences. But somewhere along the way, we’ve also turned into a society of watchers. We can see exactly where our Uber driver or our Amazon Prime package is as we wait. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Guest: Sandra Hope, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Miology, Brigham Young University; Mike Alder, Director, Technology Transfer Office, Brigham Young University Antibiotics kill bacteria. You know that. But did you know bacteria actually make their own antibiotics to kill other bacteria? It’s one of their defense mechanisms. And, BYU microbiology professor Sandra Hope has figured out how to harness the antibiotic generating ability of bacteria fight infection.