Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

For this week's Please Explain, Hanna Rosin discusses teen sexting, the pervasive trend of teenagers who send and spread, naked pictures of themselves and their peers on their cell phones. She's joined by Marsha Levick, Deputy Director and Chief Counsel of the Juvenile Law Center. For her article “Why Teens Sext,” Rosin, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder and editor at DoubleX, Slate’s women’s section, spent several weeks in Louisa County, VA, where hundreds of students were caught up in a sexting scandal. She looks at how students, teachers, and law enforcement perceive sexting, why parents and law enforcement are unaware of  how pervasive it is, and what should be done to deal with it. Some legislatures are creating laws specific to teen sexting, but in many states, possessing these pictures (even if they are your own) fall under child pornography laws and can lead to teens being labeled as sex offenders.

This week’s Please Explain is all about the language of food. Dan Jurafsky, professor of linguistics and computer science at Stanford University, investigates why we eat toast at breakfast and raise a toast at dinner, whether Thanksgiving turkey has anything to do with the country of Turkey, and examines the many words used to describe foods. He’s the author of The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu.

Decades ago, as agriculture became centralized, seeds were selected for yield, and many varieties nearly went extinct. Now, a few intrepid farmers, entrepreneurs, and chefs and bringing back these heirloom seeds. On this week's Please Explain, Glenn Roberts and Dan Barber talk about heirloom  and other old seed varieties. Roberts is the founder of Anson Mills, which grows, harvests, and mills near-extinct varieties of heirloom corn, rice, and wheat organically. Anson Mills now works with 30 organic growers in six states to grow a variety of native heirloom grains. Barber is the Chef of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located within the nonprofit farm and education center, Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. He's also the author of the book, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food.

Pete Wells, New York Times restaurant critic, and Sam Sifton, the New York Times food editor and former restaurant reviewer, explain the art of reviewing restaurants for this week's Please Explain. They'll discuss what critics look for, what they order, how they judge the food, as well as the way the New York dining landscape has changed, the influence of reviews on the success and failure of a restaurant. They'll also explain how restaurant reviewing has changed in the age of Yelp and share stories from the best and worst places where they've eaten. 

Eating fish is good for us—it contains healthy omega fatty acids and other important nutrients. But fish also contains mercury, which is not healthy to consume. Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union, helps us sort out what kinds of fish we should be eating more of and what kinds we should avoid.

According to Halloran and Consumer Reports' article "The Great Fish Debate," women who are pregnant should not eat tuna at all, because mercury can damage the brain and nervous system of a developing fetus. For more information, check out the chart below, from Consumer Reports.

Fish with the Lowest Mercury (Can safely eat 18-36 oz a week, depending on body weight)

Fish with Low Mercury (Can safely eat 6-18 oz a week, depending on body weight)

Fish with High Mercury(Limit how much you eat)

Fish with Very High Mercury(Best to avoid, especially for children and women who are pregnant or may become pregnant)

Consumer Reports' chart on mercury in fish.

On this week's Please Explain, Chef Peter Hoffman, from Back Forty and formerly Savoy in New York, and Ryan Fibiger, owner and head butcher at Craft Butchery, tell us about how to use as much of the animal as possible--from feet to ears, from head cheese to sweet breads, and everything in between.

This week’s Please Explain is all about the popular raw food diet, why it has taken hold in the United States, and the benefits of raw vs. cooked foods. We’re joined by Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and Dr. Rui Hai Liu. professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell University, who has pioneered many of the studies that reveal the increased levels of antioxidants in tomatoes, sweet corn, and whole grains that can be unlocked only when those foods are cooked.

All over the world people eat rice at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For this week’s Food Fridays Please Explain, Chef and author Renee Marton tells us about the many varieties of rice, its place in cultures and cuisines around the globe, and how to make the best rice dishes—from arborio to wehani. Marton teaches at the Institute for Culinary Education and she’s written the forthcoming book Rice: A Global History.

The divide between Shiites and Sunnis plays an important role in the current politics and turmoil in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. On this week’s Please Explain we’ll learn about the differences—and similarities—among the many religious communities in the Middle East. Zachary Lockman, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at NYU, explains the power struggles in the Middle East and discusses Syria, Saddam Hussein, Yasar Arafat, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Kurds, and ISIS.

Many families who travel for the summer will pack up the car and jump on the highway to their destination. On this week's Please Explain, Dan McNichol, author of The Roads that Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System, explains how the country's highways were planned and created, more than 50 years ago, how these roadways changed the country by connecting cities and small towns, creating the suburbs, and improving transportation of people and goods.