Saying 'No' to El Chapo, Tooth Enamel, Death Penalty

Guest: Gerardo Reyes, Director of Univision’s Investigative Unit 

Guest: Janet Moradian-Oldak, PhD, Professor of Dentistry and Biomedical Engineering the University of Southern California  Are you a good teeth brusher? How about flossing? Tooth decay is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in the country – five times more common in than asthma is children, even – but it’s also such an easy thing to let slide.  A big problem with slacking off for a bit is that tooth decay is permanent. It’s not like gaining five pounds and then losing them. Tooth enamel does not regenerate once you get back on the wagon and start brushing better. So there’s a lot of research going on right now into materials that could be used as enamel replacements protecting teeth from further decay.  Dental researcher Janet Moradian-Oldak recently contributed to two published papers that combine to offer real promise for understanding – and replacing – tooth enamel.

Guest: Laura Mattia, PhD Candidate in Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University, Financial Adviser for 15 years and Founder of the Women’s Money Empowerment Network  The financial gender gap so often discussed in America doesn’t just apply to earnings. Women make less than men, yes. But they’re also less knowledgeable about finances in general. The Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center last year asked men and women in the US three multiple choice questions along the lines of calculating how much interest you’d earn on $100 in a savings account if the rate is 2 percent. Thirty-eight percent of men got all three questions right. Only 22 percent of women did.  You can find Laura Mattia’s Podcast “Financially Empowering Women,” on iTunes.

Guest: Austin Sarat, JD, Professor of Law and Political Science at Amherst College, Author of “Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty”  Last year, numerous states began authorizing alternative methods of executing death row inmates if they run out of drugs used in lethal injection. Those drugs have become increasingly difficult to obtain for a variety of reasons.  In Utah lawmakers voted to reinstate the firing squad as a backup plan for execution. Electrocution is the backup plan under consideration in Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia. Oklahoma is considering something even more dramatic – a form of the gas chamber that entails death by nitrogen inhalation.  And the irony here, is that all of those methods have fallen out of favor over the years because lethal injection has been seen as more humane.

Guest: Bill Camann, MD, Director of Obstetric Anesthesia at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Co-author of “Easy Labor: Every Woman's Guide to Choosing Less Pain and More Joy During Childbirth”  Hazard a guess at what you think might be the most common surgery in America? Tonsil removal? Appendectomy?  It’s actually the cesarean section – about 1 in 3 babies in America is delivered by C-section. Public health officials are working to bring that rate down because of the risks associated with caesarean section. But there’s also a trend – in cases where a C-section is unavoidable – toward making it a better experience for the mother and child. They’re called “family centered C-sections” by some. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, they call the procedure a “gentle C-section.”

Guest: Bob Zeller, President of the Center for Civil War Photography  Last year a trove of remarkable photos documenting life before and during the Civil War arrived at the Library of Congress and is being digitized for people to view online. The pictures themselves are remarkable, but so, too, is the story of how they came to be in a single collection.  The photos offer a glimpse at daily life of southern slaves before the war and extend all the way to a shot of Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois home draped in a black-and-white mourning cloth after his assassination. The Library of Congress announced last week it had acquired more than 500 of these images from the collection of an 87-year-old Texas grandmother.  View the photos here: Library of Congress: Robin Stanford Collection