Food Insecurity, Narcissism, Tax Forms, Earthquakes

Food Insecurity (1:02) Guest: Hilary Seligman, associate professor at the University of California San Francisco To be food insecure means that you don't have enough money afford enough nutritious food for a healthy lifestyle. One in 7 Americans live in a food insecure household. But that does not mean that one in seven Americans are perpetually hungry or losing weight. In fact, the irony of food insecurity in America is that it has a tendency to lead-in many cases-to obesity. Dr. Hilary Seligman calls this the "obesity-hunger paradox." Narcissistic Leaders (20:14) Guest: Brad Owens, professor of business ethics at BYU and author of a study on the effects of narcissism in leadership published in the Journal of Applied Psychology Nobody likes a narcissist, and if you know the story of the mythological man Narcissus, for whom the condition was named, you know being a narcissist didn't serve him well. So obsessed with the beauty of his own reflection in a pool of water, he ended up drowning. But, if you're a leader in a dynamic field, you just might need a little narcissism-so long as you know how to be humble occasionally. Such is the finding of a new study by BYU ethics professor Brad Owners, published in the latest Journal of Applied Psychology. Redesigning Tax Forms (39:35) Guest: Joseph Bankman, professor of law and business at Stanford University and an expert in the field of tax law Tax forms are notoriously confusing and getting help from the IRS is increasingly rare. The commissioner of the IRS said this week customer service at the agency is abysmal, due to budget cuts: six out of every ten people who call the IRS for help can't even get through to a representative. While the experience is painful for taxpayers, it's also costing the government a lot of money. Stanford University law and business professor Joseph Bankman says that redesigning the tax forms to be simpler and more direct would encourage people to be more truthful in their filing and cut down on the more than $400 billion the government loses to tax evaders each year. American Heritage: Creative Destruction (52:29) Guest: Grant Madsen, BYU history professor BYU history professor Grant Madsen shares insights with us as he teaches an introductory American History course this semester. Each week features a new topic and a deeper understanding of how our nation was founded. Engineering for Earthquakes (1:13:13) Guest: Jennifer Tovar Craft, defended her thesis in BYU's College of Engineering and is headed to work for Exxon Mobil in Houston. She is the 2015 winner of BYU's 3 Minute Thesis Competition On any given day, the US Geological Survey records dozens of earthquakes happening around the world. Many are so small and deep as to not be noticed by people on the earth's surface, but others are significant enough to cause damage. The USGS says the majority of deaths and injuries from earthquakes result from damage to buildings or other structures. Hence, the importance of building codes and engineering techniques that have developed in the U.S.-many tied to major earthquakes in the 80s and 90s in tremor-prone California. While buildings today are much safer than they once were, techniques to resist seismic activity are far from perfect. Language Learning Secrets (1:24:43) Guests: Raymond Clifford, associate dean in the College of Humanities and director of BYU's Center for Language Studies. From 2012- 2014 he served as president of the Joint National Committee on Languages Hiligaynon, Lithuanian, Malagasay, Cebuano, and Finnish are just a sampling of the languages for which students here at BYU can enroll in advanced-level courses. BYU actually offers more advanced second language classes than any other US university. We discuss the myths and best practices for learning a second language.