Politics Is Influencing How Countries Report COVID-19 Cases (0:30)

Guest: Eric Jensen, JD, Professor of International Law, Brigham Young University

The United States currently leads the world in COVID-19 cases, followed by Spain, Italy, Germany, France and then China. But US intelligence officials say China’s numbers are probably much higher and the country’s just not reporting them. Same thing may also be true about pandemic information coming out of Iran, Russia and other repressive regimes. How can the world respond to a global health crisis like this if we can’t trust each other to tell the truth about how bad it is?

Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls Are Fakes (19:08)

Guest: Jeffrey Kloha, Chief Curatorial Officer at the Museum of the Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the oldest biblical texts ever found – dating back 2,000 years. Bedouin herders found them in caves in the 1940s and most of them today are in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. But a few priceless fragments are held in private collections and other museums around the world. So it was a big, big deal for the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC to secure a dozen Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the last decade. Now, the Museum has learned its fragments are fakes. Really, really good fakes.

Family Farmers Are Disappearing. Does America Really Need Them? (35:39)

Guest: Eric Sannerud, Farmer, Entrepreneur, and Business Owner

Family farming was at its peak in America 85 years ago and it’s been in steady decline since then. Sure, there’s still a lot of farming happening in the country, it’s just being done by fewer people with much bigger farms. The shift toward giant farming operations is making it harder and harder for small-time farmers who do it because they love it to stay afloat – and when they’re too old to keep it up, their kids and grandkids are often not interested in taking over. Eric Sannerud is an exception. He’s under 30 and growing hops on the Minnesota farm that’s been in his family for four generations. Sannerud is part of a nationwide effort to save family farming in America.  

Manmade Ice Pyramids Compensate for Disappearing Glaciers in Himalayas (50:38)

Guest: Sonam Wangchuk, Engineer, Director of the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh

The region of Ladakh, high in the Himalayas of northern India, doesn’t get much rain, so the people there have long relied on melting glaciers for water to drink and grow their crops. But the glaciers are disappearing. So the people of Ladakh are making their own mountains of ice – they look like ice castles – to store water for the spring and summer. They’re called “Ice Stupas.”

I Live Simply Movement: https://www.ilivesimply.org/

Teens Who Play Sports Have More Resilience (1:10:34)

Guest: Paul Caldarella, Professor of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University.

We’re all in need of resilience right now, with the stress of the pandemic weighing on our families and communities. Playing sports turns out to be a great way to teach resilience to kids.

Award-Winning Cartoonist on Stepping Into the Unknown With Young Readers (1:20:49)

Guest: Gene Luen Yang, MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Cartoonist and Graphic Novelist, “Dragon Hoops”

Gene Luen Yang’s first graphic novel drew from his own experiences growing up Asian in America. It was called “American Born Chinese” and won him all kinds of praise, including being the first graphic novel ever nominated for a National Book Award. Yang’s latest graphic novel for teens also draws from real life – but it’s about basketball, which is something much less familiar to him.  In fact, the very first line in the book, “Dragon Hoops” is Yang telling us, “I hated sports ever since I was a little kid. Especially basketball.” So why write a whole book on it?