Teaching Civics During the Trump Era (Originally aired Jan. 25, 2017)

Guests: Chris Karpowitz, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University; Grant Madsen, PhD, Professor of History, Brigham Young University President Trump had dinner last night with the top Democrats in the House and Senate – Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer - and for the second time in two weeks, he struck a deal with them – to the dismay of his fellow Republicans in Congress. Last week, it was a deal to temporarily raise the debt ceiling. Last night, it was a deal to protect from deportation thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. The purported deal with the Dems also included funding for increased border security, but not to build the wall Trump promised.

Guest: Shadman Bashir, LLM, Visiting Professor of Law and International Relations, Dixie State University After a period of pulling back, America’s longest-running military conflict is heating up again. Last month, the US dropped more than 500 bombs in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban and Islamic State targets. That’s the highest number in a single month since 2012, according to Air Force statistics. President Donald Trump last month also committed to doing what it takes to win the war in Afghanistan.

Guest: Jacqui Shine, Historian and Writer Some people called Percy Ross “America’s Rich Uncle.” He had a rags-to-riches story and spent more than a decade giving his money away in small increments to people who bothered to ask. He purchased a space heater for a family living in an unheated basement, paid a $300 light bill for a woman supporting her disabled brother, bought dance lessons for an elderly woman trying to impress her new beau. Percy Ross did all of this in public style through a newspaper column that ran for more than a decade in papers across the country until 1999 when he stopped writing because he said he’d given away the whole wad. Ross did have his critics who found his particular style of charity a bit too vulgar.

Guest: Alessandro Vespignani, PhD, Professor of Physics, Computer Science and Health Sciences, Northeastern University Have you ever been so miserable with the flu, complete with fever, stuffy nose, body aches, coughs that keep you up at night, that you felt like you had to tweet about it? Well if you ever have, someone may have used your tweet to track the flu in real time. And that someone could be Alessandro Vespignani, a professor of physics, computer science and health sciences at Northeastern University. He has successfully answered the CDC’s 2013 challenge to figure out how to predict the influenza season and his method involves social media, not doctors’ reports.

Guest: Ryan Gabriel, PhD, BYU Sociology Professor On Wednesday, Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the US Senate, met with President Trump and advised him to avoid the kinds of statements he made after the racial violence in Charlottesville when the President said “many sides” were to blame. According to The Washington Post, Senator Scott pointed to “three centuries of history” of violence that still informs race relations today. BYU sociology professor Ryan Gabriel studies how a legacy of racial violence gets passed down in communities.