Race to Develop a Vaccine for Coronavirus (0:29)

Guest: Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD, Associate Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Co-Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Research

The threat of coronavirus in the US remains very low, with only 11 confirmed cases and no deaths. But globally, it has already sickened more than 21,000 people and killed more than 420. Most of those cases are in China, where the outbreak started and is now more deadly than SARS was 18 years ago. Researchers at the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development have a vaccine for SARS they think could be useful against this new coronavirus, too. So why isn’t it already available? 

Trump Administration Expands Immigration Ban to Major African Countries (19:50)

Guest: Charles Kuck, Managing Partner of Kuck | Baxter Immigration Partners, Past National President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)

The Trump Administration on Friday added six more countries to the so-called “travel ban” – but in this case, the restrictions don’t actually apply to travelers coming to the US for a visit. It’s really more of an “immigration ban” on citizens from Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan looking to live or work in the United States. People from two other countries – Tanzania and Sudan – will be banned from applying for visas through the “diversity lottery” which issues tens of thousands of visas every year to countries with historically low numbers of immigrants coming to the US.

The Skills College Students Need to Be More Mentally Resilient in Stressful Times (37:59)

Guest: Marty Swanbrow Becker, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of  Educational Psychology at Florida State University 

College brings so many new experiences and demands, it’s normal for students to feel overwhelmed. But the American College Health Association’s latest annual survey found more than half of college students around the country have felt hopeless, very sad or overwhelmed with anxiety in the last year. Almost half of all college students in the survey say they’ve felt so depressed it was difficult to function. Counseling centers on college campuses simply can’t keep up with demand from students in crisis.

Putin’s Code and Russia’s Future (50:42)

Guest: Brian Taylor, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, Author of “The Code of Putinism”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has four years yet in office before term limits will force him to leave the role. But he’s already begun maneuvering to rewrite the rules so he can remain Russia’s most powerful leader. A commission looking into changes Putin has proposed is even toying with the idea of giving him the position of “Supreme Ruler.” “The Code of Putinism” attempts to explain why the Russian leader behaves as he does and what that’s meant for Russia during his 20 years in power.

Teaching Social Skills After School (1:09:49)

Guest: Bridget Durkan Laird, CEO of Wings for Kids

Kids learn all kinds of great things in school, but it may be hard to find a unit on emotional intelligence in a teacher's curriculum. Bridget Laird things that's an oversight - so she helped start Wings for Kids, a non-profit based in Charleston, SC that teaches kids social-emotional skills in an afterschool program.

The Study on Cuttlefish Vision Using 3D Glasses (1:26:12)

Guest: Trevor Wardill, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota

Cuttlefish are pretty weird looking sea creatures. They’ve got eight tentacles coming out of their face, like a squid, but their body is a little more flat and flowy. And they’ve got two big eyes on their head, which work together, like our eyes do, to see the world in 3D. That last part is something scientists only recently discovered by velcroing 3D glasses onto the faces of cuttlefish and showing the movies. No, not the latest Marvel movie.