MS-13 Gang and Trump, Martha Hughes Cannon Legacy, Michal Kosinski and Facebook

MS-13 is Not What the Trump Administration Thinks It Is Guest: Steven Dudley, Senior Fellow, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University in Washington DC; Co-Director, Insight Crime President Trump and the Department of Justice have made fighting the MS-13 gang one of their top priorities for law enforcement and immigration policy. “ICE recently arrested 15 MS-13 gang members -- these are not good people, folks. Okay?” said President Trump on Monday in a speech about the opioid crisis. In addition to drug policy, the President also points to MS-13 when he talks about the need to build a border wall, increase deportations, crackdown on sanctuary cities. But what if those policies don’t actually stop MS-13 from committing heinous acts of violence and instead just make the problem worse? The Legacy of Martha Hughes Cannon Guest: Janiece Johnson, Historian, Maxwell Institute of Religion, BYU Right now in the US Capitol Building, there’s a statue of Philo T. Farnsworth – the Utah-born inventor of the television. For 40 years he’s been one of Utah’s contributions to the National Statuary Hall Collection, but soon he’ll be replaced by a different statue. The Utah Legislature has decided that Martha Hughes Cannon is a more deserving of the honor. What did she invent that’s better than TV, you ask? Why Education Reform Consistently Fails Guest: Jack Schneider, PhD, Assistant Professor of Education, College of the Holy Cross Secretary DeVos has invested a lot of her personal wealth in school choice programs to give families an option beyond their neighborhood school. She’s not alone. Billions upon billions of dollars from philanthropists all over the political spectrum have gone toward school reform efforts intended to improve schools, improve teachers, improve student performance. The results have been lackluster. Education professor and historian Jack Schneider at the College of the Holy Cross says that’s because those efforts are typically one-sized-fits-all and come from the top down. The Fearless Brain of Alex Honnold (Originally aired: June 17, 2017) Guest: Jane Joseph, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina The world’s best rock climber, Alex Honnold, does free solo climbing. Meaning no net, no safety gear. Last June, he climbed the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan in less than four hours, with nothing but his fingers, his toes and a bag of chalk clipped to his belt. Many, many people have wondered over the years if Alex Honnold is even capable of feeling fear. Is there something wrong with his brain that makes it so he can do these insanely risky things? Workplace Giving (Originally aired: Nov. 21, 2017) Guest: Robert Christensen, PhD, Associate Professor of Public Management, Brigham Young University It’s time to gather up all your paperwork to do your taxes. Some of your charitable deductions last year might have included workplace giving. Maybe yours was encouraged by your employer. A lot of people have really mixed feelings about these campaigns, which is apparent because workplace giving donations have been declining in recent years. What Facebook Does with All that Personal Data It Collects (Originally aired: March 14, 2017) Guest: Michal Kosinski, PhD, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford University Let’s look now at some of the underlying science behind the current scandal involving UK-based Cambridge Analytica. The company got access to profile and preference data for some 50-million Americans through a personality quiz app that was available on Facebook and then used that information to try and sway the election for President Trump. The whole approach is based on work published in 2015 by psychologist and data scientist Michal Kosinski when he was a grad student at Cambridge University. Multiple reports indicate Cambridge Analytica approached Kosinski for help, but he declined and the firm turned to a different researcher at the university named Aleksandr Kogan.  Michal Kosinksi is now a professor at Stanford University and still working on using big data to predict people’s preferences. We spoke with him a year ago about his work.