New National Monuments

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: Carl Pope, co-author of “Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet”

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.