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Guest: Ruby Bridges, a Civil Rights icon since the age of six, when she was among the first African American children to integrate an all-white school in the South     Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of a tiny African American girl flanked by four federal marshals is called, “The Problem We All Live With” and it’s a provocative invitation to consider the ugliness of racism. The girl’s dress and sneakers and the little bow in her braided hair are impossibly white. She looks calm and resolute, even though the wall she’s walking by is marred with a racial slur and the splatter of tomatoes.  She’s Ruby Bridges and November 14, 1960 was her first day of first grade as one of the first African American children to integrate an all-white school in the South.

Guest: Bruce Forbes, PhD, Chair of the Philosophy and Religious Studies department at Morningside College and Author of the new book “America’s Favorite Holidays”  Bruce Forbes’ writes in his book, “America’s Favorite Holidays” that pretty much everything we think we know about Thanksgiving is wrong.

Guest: Todd Surovell, PhD, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming  Why aren’t there any mammoths wandering the earth today? The ancient, elephant-like beasts have been extinct for tens of thousands of years. Theoretical explanations include a meteor, an earthquake or a heatwave.   Research coming out of the University of Wyoming claims to prove that we humans are the culprit.

Guest: Peter Kareiva, PhD, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA  Doom and gloom is the standard approach these days when it comes to talking about climate change. We’ve certainly heard a fair amount of it from experts on this show. But with Thanksgiving upon us, Peter Kareiva of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability is proposing a different angle. He says negativity isn’t that effective in getting people to act anyway, so he’s giving thanks for somethings are going right with regard to the environment.

Guests: Marcus Jensen, Retired Professor of Microbiology; Mike Alder, Director of BYU’s Technology Transfer office  There’s plenty of turkey for Thanksgiving– even though a devastating outbreak of avian flu caused more than 7 million of them to be euthanized over the summer and sparked fears we’d have a holiday shortage. Disease is a perpetual challenge for turkey growers who raise tens of thousands of birds in close proximity. Several decades ago, some BYU scientists landed on a deceptively simple way to vaccinate turkeys against a version of whooping cough that can quickly wipe out entire flocks. If you look forward to a tender slice of turkey on your plate during the holidays, you owe some thanks to retired BYU microbiology professor Marcus Jensen and his colleagues.