The Astros Are Cheats. Is the MLB Partly to Blame? (0:36)

Guest: Molly Knight, Journalist, TheAthletic.com, Author of “The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse”

Major League Baseball teams are in spring training, playing against each other in pre-season games. And everyone’s got an ear out for the sound of someone in the Houston Astro’s dugout banging on a trash can to illegally notify the batter of what pitch is coming. The Astros have now admitted to cheating in 2017–but they have not been stripped of the World Series title they won that year. The scandal has so far consumed Spring Training and spurred a lot of conversations about what it means to play fair in a world when technology makes it so, so easy to cheat. And, as we so often hear in elite sports, everyone’s doing it.

 

Will Oil Drilling in ANWR Further Threaten Polar Bears? (19:46)

Guest: Tom Smith, Wildlife Biologist From BYU

Soon, the Trump Administration plans to begin selling leases for the right to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The concern, among wildlife biologists, is that more and more polar bear mothers are giving birth to their cubs in that same area. Polar bears are a threatened species, so oil and gas drilling isn’t supposed to happen in areas that will harm the bear populations. But a study published this week in the journal PLOS One and coauthored by BYU wildlife biologist Tom Smith found that the standard way of scanning an area for polar bear dens to avoid is only less than half the time.

 

Is the Midlife Crisis Real and It Happens Everywhere, but America’s Bad at Dealing With It (35:32)

Guest: David Blanchflower, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College

The stereotypical “midlife crisis” has justified many a motorcycle and sports car purchase by men of a certain age. How common is it, though, for people experience a real, measurable emotional or psychological slump in middle age?

 

Violence Against Native American Women and a Lack of Tribal Sovereignty (50:36)

Guest: Sarah Deer, J.D.  Professor at the University of Kansas, Citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Author of “The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America”

More than 4 in 5 Native American women experience violence in their lifetime, according to the US Department of Justice. That’s a stunningly high rate of victimization that tribal governments are struggling to address.

 

Iconic Penguins in Antarctica Declining More Than Previously Thought (1:08:03)

Guest: Heather J Lynch, Professor of Ecology, Stony Brook University of New York

The penguins that look like they’re wearing tuxedos and bowties are a species called “chinstrap” – and in addition to being easy to spot, they’re also among the most numerous in Antarctica. Chinstrap penguins have been considered lucky, too, because they’re in pretty good shape, population-wise. A new headcount suggests otherwise.

 

How Kids Can Actually Learn Literacy From Alexa (1:26:31)

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