Climate of Hope (Originally aired May 3, 2017)

Guest: James Curry, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Utah Congress has until midnight Friday to pass new spending legislation or parts of the federal government could shut down like we saw back in 2013. Top Republicans in Congress this afternoon sounded pretty confident that they’ll manage to pass a temporary spending bill before the deadline, which keeps the current spending levels in place through Dec. 22. And then what?

Guest: Michael Lavers, PhD, Assistant Professor of English, Brigham Young University  Just as World War I was coming to a bloody end and the Roaring Twenties dawned with a promise of political freedom for women and a rebirth of the arts, a young female poet arrived on the American literary scene. Edna St. Vincent Millay, was barely out of her teens when she became a literary star. Her first book of poetry, “Renascence, and Other Poems,” was published 100 years ago.

Guest: John Ruple, JD, Associate Professor of Law, Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment, University of Utah Multiple lawsuits have been filed over the big move President Trump announced during a visit to Utah this week. The President dramatically reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah – Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears – and created five smaller monuments in their place.  Utah’s governor, members of Congress and many local officials in the region of these two monuments applaud the President’s move. Meanwhile, five Native American tribes and many environmental groups say the President has overstepped his authority and want the court to block the changes.

Guest: Christopher Brown, PhD, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in Early Childhood Education, University of Texas at Austin As more and more states create public preschool programs, pre-K is becoming more like kindergarten than daycare. And kindergarten is the new first grade. What most kids do in kindergarten today is a lot more academically focused than you and I experienced decades ago. Doing away with playtime in kindergarten is not serving our children, though.

Guest: Jack Gilbert, PhD, Director, The Microbiome Center, and Professor, Surgery, University of Chicago Medicine, and Group Leader, Microbial Ecology, Argonne National Laboratory There are at least as many bacteria living in and on your body as there are cells in your body. You’re a walking bacterial colony. And guess what? Those bacteria don’t stay put. They’ve colonized your desk, your bed, your car - basically anywhere you spend a decent amount of time bears the fingerprint of your microbiome. Most of the time, the bacteria are helpful or harmless. Sometimes they’re really bad news. Understanding how this works – how our bacteria affect and are affected by our environment – is the goal of a fascinating research project being done at the University of Chicago.