Intensifying Natural Disasters Causing Insurance Crisis for Homeowners (0:30)

Guest: Benjamin Collier, Assistant Professor of Risk, Insurance, and Healthcare Management, Fox School of Business, Temple University

As wildfires get bigger and more damaging to communities in the West, insurance companies are increasingly reluctant to cover homes where fire risk is high. Similar trouble is emerging for homeowners in areas prone to flooding and hurricanes–which are also getting more intense with climate change. California’s Insurance Commissioner has called the problem of insurance companies refusing to cover homes in fire-prone areas a “crisis” for the state and issued a moratorium on insurance companies refusing to renew policies of existing customers. That moratorium is about to expire.

 

TV’s Effect on Teen Smoking and Vaping (19:57)

Guest: Elizabeth Hair, Senior Vice President, Overseer of Health Communication Research, Truth Initiative

Smoking and tobacco use appear to be on the rise in some of the TV shows most popular with young people–including Stranger Things on Netflix. The anti-tobacco group Truth Initiative’s latest report also found that young people who see those images on TV are not more likely to start smoking–which is good news. But they are more likely to start vaping.

 

Why Antarctica’s Ice Shelves Matter (36:48)

Guest: Jonny Kingslake, Professor of Glaciology, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Columbia University

You’ve heard that the massive ice sheet covering Antarctica is melting and causing sea levels to rise. The estimates of how quickly that ice is melting have failed to consider what’s happening to Antarctica’s ice shelves. The news there is not good.

 

Recapturing Traditional Practices Brings Physical and Mental Health to American Indian Tribes (52:50)

Guests: Sanjay Rawal, James Beard Award-winning Documentary Filmmaker, Director of Gather; Samuel Gensaw, Member of the Yurok Nation, Founder of the Ancestral Guard

In the new documentary film GATHER, we see a young man named Sammy Gensaw cooking a fresh-caught salmon over a campfire on a beach along the Klamath River. He makes a sobering prediction: “I know that I’ll probably die from health-related issues, due to the fact that I was raised in a generation when there was no food. We had to live out the gas station,” says Gensaw, a member of the Yurok Tribe in Northern California. “We live in a food desert. There’s no grocery store here. If you’re youth, you have a better shot of buying drugs in your local community than you have of buying healthy, affordable foods.” Gensaw’s efforts to reclaim the native food practices of his ancestors is featured in GATHER, which is now available on iTunes and Amazon.

 

Volunteers Combine Resources to Protect Native Elders During Pandemic (1:16:10)

Guest: Ani Begay Auld, Co-Director of ProtectNativeElders.org

COVID-19 rates among American Indians and Alaska Natives are more than three times that for whites in the United States, according to CDC data.  As it became clear that native communities would suffer disproportionately in the pandemic, a group of volunteers created Protect Native Elders to collect donations and deliver essential medical and safety supplies to tribes around the country.

 

Matching Books to Readers (1:30:58)

Guest: Rachel Wadham, Host, Worlds Awaiting on BYUradio, Education and Juvenile Collections Librarian, Brigham Young Univ

What’s on the reading list for your kids this school year? Are you struggling to get them motivated for the daily “reading” time their teachers are assigning during remote learning?