With Europe’s Doors Shut to Americans, Rick Steves Embraces Virtual Travel (0:32)

Guest: Rick Steves, Travel Guide, PBS-TV Host, Author of “For the Love of Europe”

Because of COVID-19, tourists from the US are not allowed into Europe and it’s unclear how long that restriction will last. So what do you do if you’re America’s leading expert on traveling in Europe?

The Masks We Should Wear (18:15)

Guest: Ben Abbott, Professor of Ecosystem Ecology, Brigham Young University

First we were told specifically not to wear masks. Then we were told they wouldn’t do much good, but go ahead and wear one if it makes you feel better. Now we’re being told to wear them whenever we’re in public. Why has the advice from public health experts been all over the place on masks? And is there any reason we ought to trust them now?  BYU ecology professor Ben Abbott and his colleagues read more than 100 different scientific studies on COVID-19 to get a grasp on exactly what we know about the value of wearing a face covering.

How Dark Are These Deep-Sea Fish? (36:08)

Guest: Alexander Davis, PhD Student in Biology at Duke University

Some of the darkest-skinned creatures on the planet live on the bottom of the sea. Which, when you think of it, is strange because there’s no sunlight down there, so why would fish need skin so black it absorbs nearly all light in encounters?

The First Millennial Saint (52:51)

Guest: Mathew Schmalz,  PhD, Religious Studies Professor, College of the Holy Cross

An Italian teenager who died in 2006 is under consideration to become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint. That, plus the fact that Carlo Acutis was just 15 when he died of leukemia, would make him unusual in the canon of Catholic saints.

Workplace Harassment (1:13:48)

Guest: Rachael Dailey Goodwin, Ph.D. Candidate in Management at the University of Utah, Harvard Research Fellow 

If you’re in a meeting or at a gathering and you see someone being sexually harassed, you’d say something right? Most of us think that we would. But the reality is – not that.

Most of the Industrialized World Has High Speed Rail. Why Doesn’t the US? (1:28:11)

Guest: Rick Harnish, Executive Director, High Speed Rail Alliance

If you want to go from LA to Vegas, you can make the four-and-a-half-hour drive or spend a couple hundred dollars on a flight. Now, if this were Europe, Japan or China, you’d also have an option to take a bullet train that could get you there in two hours. Why doesn’t the US have high-speed rail when it’s so common in other developed countries?