Lots of Our Assumptions about America’s Healthcare System Are Wrong

Guest: Arthur Garson, MD, Director, Health Policy Institute, Texas Medical Center, Co-Author of “Exposing the 20 Medical Myths: Why Everything You Know About Health Care is Wrong and How to Make it Right.”

Twenty-five cents out of every dollar Americans spend on healthcare is wasted, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That wasted money isn’t making us any healthier. It’s not improving the quality of the care we receive. It’s just down the drain. How can the richest, most developed country in the world be so wasteful when it comes to the thing that matters most to us? Well, for one thing, pediatric cardiologist Arthur Garson says we’re holding on to a lot of misconceptions about how health care works in America.

Veterans Hunt Invasive Florida Pythons

Guest: Tom Rahill, Founder, Swamp Apes

Florida’s Everglades are crawling with thousands of Burmese Pythons, and they’re destroying the ecosystem. It’s such a huge problem that the state government has turned to bounty hunters to track down pythons and kill them. Tom Rahill is an IT guy by day and a snake hunter by night. But for him, it’s about more than the money or saving the Everglades-its therapy. Rahill believes python hunting especially helps veterans and runs a non-profit called Swamp Apes to bring them along.

Overcoming A Key Hurdle Toward a Future of 3D Printed Organs

Guest: Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD, Research Associate, Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

All over the world, scientists are trying to figure out how to make a human organ. Just imagine if instead of waiting for a heart transplant, a patient’s own cells could be coaxed to grow a new heart. There have been some amazing breakthroughs along those lines, but one of the main problems is how to make sure that all the newly-grown cells coming together in the shape of a heart get the blood and oxygen they need to thrive. They don’t just automatically leave room for blood vessels as they grow, it turns out. And so inevitably, the inside cells die off as the new tissue gets thicker. Researchers at Harvard have figured out how to make artificial blood vessels in lab-grown tissues using a strange kind of 3D printing.

Hmong Stories: “We Had to Use Our Words Like Money, to Make Our Place in the World”

Guest: Kao Kalia Yang, Activist, Teacher, Author of “The Latehomecomer,” “The Song Poet,” and “A Map Into the World”

Kao Kalia Yang was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and came to the United States when she was 6 years old. In Laos, her home country, people like her were the target of genocide because many of the men had helped America fight communists during the Vietnam War. Today Kao Kalia Yang is a leading voice for the stories of her people –the Hmong. She’s written several acclaimed memoirs, including “The Latehomecomer” and “The Song Poet.” In October, she’ll publish her first picture book, “A Map Into the World.”

How Aquarium Hobbyists Are Saving Fish Species

Guest: Kapil Mandrekar, PhD Student at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

The world’s freshwater lakes, rivers and streams are under tremendous pressure from pollution and thirsty people and crops. As a result, the fish in those freshwater habitats are also under serious threat. It’s time for an all-hands-on-deck approach to saving them, says fish ecologist Kapil Mandrekar. And that means scientists need to work more closely with fish fans who have home aquariums as a hobby.

Self-Efficacy and Literacy

Guest: Rachel Wadham, Host, Worlds Awaiting on BYUradio, Education and Juvenile Collections Librarian, BYU