Behind the Keys of the Red Sox Organist (Originally aired February 11, 2019)

Guest: Josh Kantor, Organist for the Boston Red Sox

Our first cut today comes from the classic summertime activity in America -a night at the ballpark. And if you’re lucky, it’s Fenway Park, where Boston Red Sox Organist Josh Kantor is taking requests on Twitter and giving fans a chuckle with his sly humor–like, when he played Prince’s Purple Rain during a rain delay.

 

Do School Suspensions Reduce School Violence? (Originally aired February 27, 2019)

Guest: Charles Bell, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University

Millions of kids get suspended from public schools around the US every year, and a new study from the ACLU found that schools that suspend the most are all in Hawaii. Suspension is a way to punish a student for seriously bad behavior, alert the parents that the school means business and keep the other students at the school safe. But kicking a kid out of school for a few days or weeks may not do any of those things.

 

The Real Paleo Diet (Originally aired March 11, 2019)

Guest: Herman Pontzer, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University

The whole idea behind the paleo -“caveman”-diet is that if we go back to eating like our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we won’t have all the obesity and diabetes and heart disease our modern lifestyle has brought. Makes total sense when you look at the few hunter-gatherer societies left on the planet today: They are in excellent health.

 

Kossula’s Story of Enslavement, Published 87 Years After It Was Written (Originally aired July 20, 2018)

Guest: Deborah G. Plant, Literary Critic and Editor of “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’” Written by Zora Neale Hurston

The last ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States came after the Atlantic Slave trade had already been banned. So the owners of the Clotilde unloaded their illicit cargo secretly and then sank the ship to hide their crime. The remains of the Clotilde were found last month in Alabama’s Mobile River. It’s a major historical discovery that makes this next conversation worth another listen. One of the enslaved men aboard the Clotilde was Cudjo Lewis. In 1927, when he was 86 years old, he told his story to ethnographer and novelist Zora Neale Hurston, but she couldn’t get it published. That changed last year, when it was published posthumously and became a bestseller. It’s called “Barracoon.”

 

Paid to Play with LEGO (Originally aired February 19, 2019)

Guest: Noel Straatsma, LEGO Master Model Builder, LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Toronto

The great thing about summer, for so many kids, is the long hours of uninterrupted play: riding bikes until the sun sets; devouring a new book from cover to cover (that was me); or undertaking an ambitious LEGO project without any distractions. Back in February, as the latest LEGO Movie came out, we met a man who turned his childhood hours building LEGO into a profession. He’s an honest-to-goodness Master Builder for LEGOLAND Discovery Centre in Toronto.

 

Childproof Your Ride (Originally aired March 26, 2019)

Guest: Amber Rollins and Whitney Rodden from KidsandCars.org

It’s the scary time of year when temperatures soar and the risk of a child dying in a hot car rises along with the thermometer. Vehicle-related injuries are a top killer of children, including hot car tragedies and rollover accidents. Earlier this year we spoke with safety advocate Whitney Rodden and KidsandCars.org director Amber Rollins about how to “Childproof Your Ride.”