Rise of the Islamic State

Guest: Milena Blake, JD, Staff Attorney on Stanford’s Justice Advocacy Project  Overcrowded prisons are a problem nationwide, but they’ve become so serious in California that the US Supreme Court ordered a significant reduction in prison headcount by next year. Initially, the plan involved releasing some prisoners early and transferring others from federal prisons to county-run jails with more space.  Then California voters got involved. Last year they passed a proposition that converted six types of non-violent felonies into misdemeanors. And it’s retroactive, so a Stanford Law School report says some 13,000 people doing time in California prisons and jails on those offenses have had their sentences reduced and been released in the last year.

Guest: Kurt Repanshek, Founder and Editor of NationalParksTraveler.com – the leading online resource for National Parks-related news  As winter approaches the temperature drops and the snow begins to fall. Sometimes there’s a powerful urge to snuggle up and wait out the winter from the comfort of a chair by the window. Shame that, because apparently there’s a lot to be appreciated out-of-doors in winter. Particularly in the country’s National Parks.  National Parks Traveler is just out with its Essential Park Guide to winter adventures.

Guest: Michael Huckabee, PhD, Professor and Director of the Division of Physician Assistant Education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center  Flu season is back, along with the posters in doctor’s offices and ads on TV urging us to get a flu vaccine.  Slightly less than half of Americans go the flu shot last year. Does the vaccine really help all that much? We all know someone who got the shot and also came down with the flu, right?

Guest: Rod Gustafson, Film Reviewer at ParentPreviews.com  Sometimes real life provides more drama than any screenwriter could dream up. Case in point – the 2010 collapse of a mine in Chile where 33 men were trapped for more than two months. A new movie tells their story. It’s called, “The 33.”

Guest: Marc Hansen, PhD, Professor in the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology at Brigham Young University; Mike Alder, Director of BYU’s Technology Transfer Office  Can you hazard a guess here – what’s the leading cause of death among Americans? The Centers for Disease Control says Heart Disease, which kills more than 600,000 people a year. Not far behind in the number two spot? Cancer. Accidents are actually the fourth highest cause of death, but the number is much, much smaller – 140,000 per year.  So, let’s look at number two: Cancer. Among the challenges to treating it the many different types that can arise and the aggressive way in which cancer cells grow - and even become resistant - to drug treatment.  More information about technology developed at BYU is available at techtransfer.byu.edu.