The Problem with Modern Philanthropy (Originally aired May 24, 2017)

Guest: H.V. Jagadish, PhD, Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan If your smartphone’s always within reach, if you talk to Alexa and Siri more often than you talk to some of your real-life friends, then you should really care about the outcome of a case being considered by the US Supreme Court right now. It involves a guy named Timothy Carpenter who was convicted of helping rob a couple of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores several years back. The FBI was able to close its case against Carpenter by getting cell phone call records and location information from his wireless company. The reason the Supreme Court is hearing this case is that the FBI got Carpenter’s data from his cell company without a warrant.

Guests: Jonathan Deutsch, PhD, Professor, Culinary Arts, Center for Food and Hospitality Management, Drexel University; Kris Moon, Vice President, James Beard Foundation Food waste is a problem globally, for a lot of reasons. Here in the US, most of the food gets wasted on the consumer end: in our homes, in grocery stores and in restaurants. That last category of food wasters is the focus of a new initiative at the James Beard Foundation, which is a big name in culinary arts, as all the foodies listening right now will know. The James Beard Foundation is testing a new curriculum at Drexel University intended to teach chefs how to get the most out of their ingredients and waste less.

Guest: Marlene Hansen Esplin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Comparative Arts and Letters, Brigham Young University

Guest: Jose Franco, Recipient of DACA, BYU graduate Congress has a week to pass another funding bill to keep the government open. One of the sticking points is that some in Congress would like to tie it to a bill protecting so-called Dreamers. These are undocumented individuals brought to the US as children. Hundreds of thousands of them are currently protected from deportation and allowed to work legally because of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. President Trump has ordered that program to end next March. Many in Congress would like to write DACA into law and worry waiting any longer will make it harder to do.

Guest: Emma Greig, PhD, Project Leader of Project FeederWatch, Cornell University Lab of Ornithology If you or your kids can spend hours watching the visitors to your backyard birdfeeder, here is the perfect thing for you. Emma Greig runs Project FeederWatch at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, which collects data from citizen bird watchers all over the country for science. Bird lovers of any age - even school classes and scouting groups – can help.  The bird-watching season runs from November until about April, so it’s the perfect time to get started. For more information about FeederWatch click here.