An App to Help You Overcome Arachnophobia

In the last two months, more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan have been evacuated to the United States, joining the ranks of millions of refugees globally displaced from their homes because of war, famine, natural disasters, and economic collapse. How can everyday Americans grasp the experience of these refugees? The nonprofit Their Story is Our Story has been recording and publishing first-person accounts of refugees all around the world. The stories are now available in a Global Refugee Archive housed at Brigham Young University. Two representatives of the organization, Liz Jevtic Somlai and Shurooq Al-Jewariof, are refugees themselves. (Barbara Davidson/Pool Photo via AP)

Unruly behavior on airplanes has gotten so out of hand that Delta Airlines are creating a “banned passenger” list and asking other US airlines to share their lists as well. Congress held a hearing on the problem recently and Sara Nelson’s testimony was pretty eye-opening. She’s the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants–CWA labor union. (Segment produced by Sydney Jezik) (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

To win a Nobel Prize is a career-defining achievement for a scientist. But they’re only awarded in three scientific fields –physics, chemistry, and medicine. And only three people can share each prize. Plant biologist Devang Mehta can’t win a Nobel because there’s not one for biology. That’s silly, he says. Furthermore, he says the structure of the prizes perpetuates myths about how science works and reinforces disparities: it’s very, very rare for a woman or person of color to win a scientific Nobel Prize. Mehta wrote an essay about all of this several years ago for the website Massive Science and every year around this time – when the Nobel Prizes are awarded – it gets new attention. (Segment produced by James Hoopes.) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Star Trek actor William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk) went to actual space last week – as you probably heard. He’s just the latest in a flurry of space-traveling civilians in the last two months. Most of them have only gone to the edge of space for a few minutes before coming back to Earth. The exception was Inspiration4 –a SpaceX capsule with four civilians on board that spent three days orbiting Earth. Chris Sembroski was part of that crew, but he's not an astronaut. There were no professional astronauts aboard Inspiration4. (Segment produced by Cole Cummings) (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Snakes, heights, germs, do you have any phobias? Fear of spiders is one of the most common, and since we’re seeing a lot of them lurking in Halloween décor this time of year, we were intrigued by some work being done by Anja Zimmer at the University of Basel in Switzerland. She’s studies phobias and developed an augmented reality app to help people overcome a fear of spiders. (Segment produced by Lynsey Mella.)

Everybody’s got an opinion about the COVID vaccine, so it makes sense that celebrities do, too – actors, musicians, and athletes have all been sounding off. That includes singer Nicki Minaj. But they’re not doctors or vaccine experts – why do we pay attention to what they have to say? Mark Harvey studies the way celebrities influence public opinion. He is the Director of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs at the University of Saint Mary and author of the 2017 book, “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-based Advocacy.” (Segment produced by James Hoopes) (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)