Worlds Awaiting: Math Literacy

Guest: Eric Jensen, Professor of International Law, BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School Almost two weeks ago, Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish officials believe Khashoggi was murdered in the consulate. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Saudi Arabia to get answers from the Saudi king. If indeed the king or his son, the controversial and powerful crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered a hit on Khashoggi, what consequences might that have?

Guest: Dipayan Biswas, Professor of Business and Marketing, University of South Florida Next time you are out to eat and suddenly decide to order a greasy burger instead of the salad you’d planned on, you might want to stop and listen for a moment. How loud is the music in the restaurant? There’s some evidence that louder music causes people to order unhealthy food. This was true in a grocery store, too, where researchers ran the same experiment – louder music led to more junk food in the shopping cart.

Guest: W. Keith Campbell, Professor of Psychology, University of Georgia There is no such thing as a selfie-free zone. Everywhere you turn, someone is hoisting a phone camera and posting it to Instagram or Facebook. Selfie-taking occasionally even turns tragic when someone loses their footing trying to capture the perfect shot on a hiking trail, for example. Are selfies turning us all into narcissists? Or maybe it’s just that social media is tapping into a narcissistic streak society already had in spades?

Guest: Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, Professor of Biology, Purdue University In January 2009, US Airways flight 1549 took off from New York’s La Guardia airport and suddenly hit a flock of geese. Both the plane’s engines went out with the bird strike and the pilot had to land the aircraft in the Hudson River. Miraculously, no one died. In the last 25 years, 262 human fatalities have been attributed to collisions between planes and wildlife worldwide. Bird strikes are the most common of these and they cost the aviation industry hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Guest: Art Carden, Professor of Economics, Samford University’s Brock School of Business Sears filed for bankruptcy this week. It’s been a long time coming. Years of losses and store closures and layoffs have made Sears feel like a relic in a day when Amazon and Walmart rule retail. But we still remember the days when the Sears catalog landing in our mailbox around Christmastime was really exciting. Sears pioneered the at-home shopping experience long before the internet was invented. So why did it lose its trailblazing edge?