Disney and Gender, Restaurant Calories, Walden in Farsi

International Law (1:04) Guest: Eric Jensen, JD, Professor of International Law at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School  World Powers – including the US and Russia – agreed to work toward a ceasefire while meeting in Munich late last week, but there appear to be some significant hang-ups over the details.  Disney and Gender (34:16) Guest: Carmen Fought, PhD, Professor of Linguistics at Pitzer College  Disney’s princesses have come a long way since Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Ariel and Belle and Mulan and Merida and Anna and Elsa are so much more capable and independent than the damsels-in-distress of the classic Disney animation era. Much better role models for girls, many of us would agree.  But, a couple of linguists have been analyzing Disney’s catalogue to get beyond the basic storyline of these princess films and they’ve discovered that while most of them feature strong heroines, men do 50 percent, of not more, of the talking and, in some cases, as much as 90 percent. The gender gap in both roles and dialogue is striking, when you start looking at the numbers.  Apple Seed (51:41) Guest: Sam Payne, host of “The Apple Seed” on BYUradio  Tellers and stories on BYUradio. Sam Payne sings an original composition.  Restaurant Calories (1:01:14) Guest: Susan Roberts, PhD, Senior Scientist and Director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts University  Big chain restaurants with their promises of sheer quantity – bottomless fries, endless breadsticks, super-jumbo shrimp. And like Pavlov’s dogs, we salivate. It’s literally in our genes to crave more food than we really need.  Plates at chain restaurants are huge, partly because we demand it. Skimping on portions is a surefire way to get a bad customer review on Yelp.  So, if you’re trying to keep a diet in check, you’re probably better off avoiding the chains and going to a locally-owned-one-of-a-kind eatery, right? One with a reputation built on something other than endless, bottomless servings.  But some really comprehensive calorie analysis of popular meals in locally-owned restaurants and chains in San Francisco, Boston and Little Rock found restaurants in general are just bad for our waistlines.  Walden in Farsi (1:19:34) Guest: Alireza Taghdarreh, First to Translate Walden into Farsi and a Self-Taught Iranian Scholar of Thoreau  Remember reading Walden in high school or college, by Henry David Thoreau? It’s a reflection on living simply and in-tune with nature, but it’s not a simple read. Thoreau’s sentences and paragraphs are long and complex. The metaphors and double meanings and sarcasm can trip you up. So, just imagine reading it if English were not your first language. And if there was a revolution in your country and the universities closed down as you were graduating from high school, without an option for formal education, learning English meant watching American Westerns and reading anything you could get your hands on.  That’s the story of Alireza Taghdarreh from Tehran who, after teaching himself to speak English fluently, has spent the last decade doing the first translation of Walden into his native Farsi. Last year, Taghdarreh finally journeyed to the place itself - Walden in Massachusetts.