Motivating Your Kids to Read in the Last Days of Summer

Guest: Frederick Zimmerman, Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your overall health? How many healthy days have you had in the last month? More than five million people have answered those questions on surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the last 25 years. The trend is not encouraging. Wealthy Americans are pretty stagnant, health wise. Among the poor, health is declining.

Guest: David Favre, Law Professor, Michigan State University, Editor of Animal Legal and Historical Center Website Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, service animals must be trained to help a person with a disability, and can go pretty much anywhere with them. But service dogs aren’t required to be registered and don’t have to wear any special vest or anything to identify them as a service animal. They do have to be trained, but not by a professional.

Guest: Harold Gouzoules, Professor of Psychology, Emory College You know how at a neighborhood party, every mom knows immediately if the kid screaming from the other room is hers? And she can usually tell right away if it’s a scream of pain or anger or excitement, right? It’s uncanny. But also, apparently, second nature. Humans turn out to be really good at reading screams.

Guest: Albert Simeoni, Department Head of Fire Protection Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute The next month will be critical for wildfires in the West. Late spring rains gave grasses a big boost, which now become fuel in hot, dry, windy weather. California has already given power companies permission to shut off electricity when things get really hot and windy, hoping to avoid another massive burn like the Camp Fire last year. It was caused by aging power lines. While California braces to burn, Alaska has borne the brunt of the fire season so far.