Plant Growth is Booming Due to CO2 Emissions

Guest: Jay Zagorsky, PhD, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University Tax cuts are one of President Donald Trump’s main promises and about a week ago we got the broad outlines of what he’s got in mind. The big news is that Trump would like to slice the corporate tax rate in half. Trump believes a lower rate will give companies more money to invest in growing their business and make America more attractive to international companies accustomed to the lower corporate tax rates in other countries. The focus on corporate taxes gives the impression that businesses are the biggest contributor to the US government’s tax coffers. But, they aren’t. Not by a long shot. And the largest sources of federal tax revenue may surprise you. Or maybe not, if you’re still smarting from filing your income taxes last month.

Guest: Garson O’Toole (pen name of Gregory Sullivan), PhD, author of “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations” Albert Einstein famously said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s one of the famous quotes we seem to hear most often in our social circles, but it turns out that Albert Einstein did not say that. Researcher Garson O’Toole is the Quote Investigator. His blog debunks hundreds of misquotations and now he’s got a new book about them called, “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations.”

Guest: Chef Mai Pham, owner of Lemon Grass Kitchen, author of “The Best of Vietnamese & Thai Cooking,” “Pleasure of the Vietnamese Table” and “Flavors of Asia” Pham is on a quest to get more Vietnamese and Thai food in American bellies. She’s the force behind a couple of successful restaurants in California and has spun some of her best recipes into ingredients other restaurants can use. That’s why she’s at BYU on this particular day, standing behind vats of boiling water, translucent rice noodles, and aromatic broth, giving Dining Services Executive chef, John McDonald, a quick tutorial on pho. We join her to sample her creation and learn how to incorporate more Southeast Asian cuisine into our own menus.

Guests: Lois O'Brien, PhD, and Charlie O’Brien, PhD, Entomologists Most people try to keep bugs out of their house, but Charlie and Lois O’Brien added extra rooms onto their Arizona home in order to accommodate the bugs they’ve collected over 60 years. The O’Briens are leading entomologists: Charlie is an expert in weevils and Lois in planthoppers. Between them they’ve collected more than one and a quarter million insects – many of them rare specimens. And they’ve just donated the entire collection to Arizona State University. We talk about their life-long passion for bugs.

Guest: Rachel Wadham, host of World’s Awaiting on BYUradio Rachel Wadham discusses award winning children's books, and some special awards nominated by kids. Wadham is the education and juvenile collections librarian here at BYU and host of Worlds Awaiting on BYUradio. It’s a show dedicated to encouraging a love of reading and discovery in children. It airs Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern and you can also hear it weekdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on BYUradio.