The Apple Seed

Guest: Mark Juergensmeyer, PhD, Founding Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Author of “God in the Tumult of the Global Square: Religion in Global Civil Society”

Guests: Marjorie Scheafer and Talia Berkowitz, Graduate Students in the Developmental Psychology Program at the University of Chicago The bedtime story is a hallowed routine for many families. And research shows reading to children improves literacy and listening skills. How about boost math skills? The right kind of bedtime story can according to a study published in the journal “Science.”

Guest: Ashley Weaver, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University Center for Injury Biomechanics Crash test dummies make for dramatic car commercial images, but they are so last decade. The latest research shows computer simulations of car accidents are a much better way to predict injuries. For one thing – you can’t tell by looking at the state of a dummy post-crash whether or not real-life victim might have suffered damage to internal organs. You can with a computer simulation.

Guest: Michael Zamba, Senior Director of Communications at Creative Associates International The terror group Boko Haram – which is now affiliated with ISIS – has wrought so much havoc in parts of Nigeria that some 2.2 million people have fled their homes and villages. Many of these internally-displaced refugees are children who have lost family members and the stability of their former lives. For them, the opportunity to spend a few hours a week in a classroom learning basic math and language skills is not just a diversion; it’s a refuge.

Guest: Alyson McGregor, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University, Director for the Division of Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine, Attending Physician at Rhode Island Hospital, Co-founder of the Sex and Gender Women’s Health Collaborative When your doctor says, something like “this medicine has been shown to work well in 60% of patients,” you probably think – “Well, hey, I’ve got a pretty good chance it’ll work well for me.” But, now let’s say you’re a woman and the doctor said, “this medicine has been shown to work well in 60% of men.” Then you’d be thinking – yeah, and…what about women? And here’s the thing – your doctor probably won’t have the answer. Because, drugs are mainly tested on men – or cells that came from men. It’s been that way for decades, but there is growing interest in addressing “gender blindness” in the drug mark