Apple Seed

Guest: Ian Urbina, Investigative Reporter for the New York Times  A rising chorus of advocacy groups and food manufacturers are acknowledging that labor and human rights abuses are rampant in the fishing industry that supplies the largest pet food makers in America. Nestle acknowledged the scale of the problem in a report released last week that tells of migrant workers lured onto Thai fishing boats and forced to work under inhumane conditions in what amounts to indentured servitude. There are now class-action lawsuits and proposed legislation in the US aimed at forcing the makers of brands including Iams, Meow Mix, Fancy Feast and Purina to ensure they don’t buy fish from boats that enslave migrant workers.

Guest: Roberta Anding, Dietitian at Rice University  Thanksgiving is in the rear window, but the opportunities for indulgence have just begun. For people on a diet, or feeling like they ought to be on one, the holidays are tricky. How many times have you heard someone lament having gained five pounds just on Thanksgiving alone?

Guest: Hyong Yi  On November 20th, Hyong Yi and his two children spent their morning handing love notes to complete strangers in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. They were marking one year since their wife and mother, Catherine, died of ovarian cancer. Their story has since been covered by media around the world – India, Korea, Italy and beyond – and countless people have joined in, sharing their own love notes on social media using the hashtag 100lovenotes.

Guest: Shelly Lundberg, PhD, Associate Director of the Broom Demography Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara  What’s the point of marriage? To have a companion? To have kids? To have a better financial situation? Answering these questions is key to understanding the big shift in American attitudes toward marriage over the last 50 years. People get married much later in life, for one thing. And those with a college-education are much more likely to get married.

Guest: Joyce Nuner, PhD, Assistant Professor in Family and Consumer Sciences at Baylor University  Infant mortality has declined in the United States, but the latest CDC statistics show little progress in reducing the rate of pregnancies that end in stillbirth or miscarriage. Approximately one in four women will experience a miscarriage, and yet there are few resources or policies in place to support those women at work and in their communities.

Guest: Julie Selbo, PhD, Radio/TV/Film Professor at the University of California, Fullerton  A recent and much-talked-about cover story for the New York Times Magazine highlighted Hollywood’s gender gap on and off-screen. It detailed blatant sexism in the industry and lots of subtle ways in which women are marginalized and underused in film. The latest Hollywood diversity report out of UCLA gives the hard data - men outnumber women 2 to 1 in lead movie roles, 8 to 1 among film directors and 4 to 1 when it comes to the scriptwriters who give film actors the words to say.