Opting Out of Tests

Guest: Alok Bohara, professor of economics and founding director of the Nepal Study Center at the University of New Mexico More than 5,000 people are dead as a result of the Nepal earthquake. Buildings toppled, bridges demolished, whole villages collapsed. The humanitarian crisis in Nepal is urgent. But the worrisome underlying concern is the ability of Nepal’s economy to bounce back from a disaster of this magnitude. The Himalayan mountain nation is already one of the world’s poorest. How far back might this earthquake push Nepal’s progress toward greater development?

Guest: Ron Harris, a Professor of Geology at Brigham Young University specializing in structure and tectonics and natural disaster mitigation. He is also the founder of In Harm’s Way, which works with the most vulnerable communities to prepare themselves for disaster. You can check out the work they do at inharmswayhelp.org. When a natural disaster strikes, the inclination is to think, “Nothing could have been done. It was an act of God.” But Ron Harris makes the distinction between a natural hazard and a natural disaster.  A hazard becomes a disaster when a community is unprepared for it, so he’s created a nonprofit disaster-mitigation foundation to help communities prone to hazards avoid disasters.

Guest: Rick Beyer, best-selling author and filmmaker. His latest work is “The Ghost Army of World War II,” which he co-wrote with Elizabeth Sayles, a children’s book author and daughter of one of William Sayles, who served in the Ghost Army

Guest: Mahesh Srinivasan, assistant professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

Guest: Lowell Miyagi, assistant professor and geologist at the University of Utah, whose research about a new earth layer appears in the journal Nature Geoscience Remember learning about the layers of the earth in elementary school? There’s a thin crust on the surface, then the Earth’s mantle and at the very center is the molten core. Well, there are a lot more layers than that, really. Layers within layers, like the skin of an onion, says University of Utah geologist Lowell Miyagi. He’s just published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience explaining one of those layers within the earth’s mantle that has been a particular mystery.