Better Traffic Signs

Guest: Reverend Sean Carroll, Executive Director of the Kino Border Initiative 

Guest: Lewis DVorkin, Chief Product Officer at Forbes Media  In 2013, the Pew Research Center says 82% of Americans got news on a desktop or laptop and more than had said they received news on a mobile device. Many young people get their news almost exclusively from what shows up from friends and sponsors on Facebook or Twitter feeds. This shifts in news consumption is helping usher in a new role for journalists.  “I have always believed that the mission of journalism is to inform,” says DVorkin.  “If they’re going to understand their audience they need to understand what the audience consumes and how they consume their stories,” says DVorkin on journalists.  “Today’s most successful journalists,” says DVorkin “will be the most knowledgeable about a specific category.”

Guest: Pete McGrail, Research Fellow at Northwest National Laboratory 

Guest: Grant Madsen, BYU History Professor  This is the weekly appointment we have with BYU history professor Grant Madsen who shares insights with us as he teaches an introductory American History course this semester. Each week brings a new lecture topic and a deeper understanding of how our nation was founded.

Guest: Shadman Bashir, Professor of Law and International Relations at Dixie State University  Shadman Bashir is a native of the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan. He’s a practicing Muslim and an attorney trained in a mix of English, Islamic, and U.S. law. Bashir recently visited BYU to do something he finds himself doing a lot of these days—explaining what Islam is and what it isn’t. He says it’s not just Westerners who get it wrong, but even people in predominantly Muslim countries misunderstand Islam. They see it as a single monolith—like a rock face with a single way to be Muslim and a single interpretation of Islamic belief.