Big First Amendment Cases on Supreme Court’s Calendar (0:30)

Guest: RonNell Andersen Jones, Lee E. Teitelbaum Endowed Professor of Law, SJ Quinney College Of Law, University of Utah

Do pandemic restrictions that limit the size of church gatherings violate religious freedom? The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn has filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court asking that it overrule the New York Governor’s strict limits on religious meetings as COVID-19 cases rise. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the question in the next week or so.

 

How COVID-19 is Changing Lines (23:53)

Guest: Richard Larson, Professor of Data, Systems, and Society, Massacusets Institute of Technology

We all hate waiting in line. But during a pandemic, lines are also a public health hazard. Do they have to exist at all? There’s a whole science to why lines happen and how–with the right planning and technology–they don’t have to be so long. And they definitely don’t have to be so annoying. The pandemic may just be the thing that ends the line as we know it.

 

Bridging Ideological Divides with College Students (41:20)

Guest: Mary Ellen Giess, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Interfaith Youth Core

The election exposed just how deeply divided America is–politically, socially, racially, religiously. Demonstrations for and against President Trump in Washington, DC on Saturday ended in fist fights. And troublingly, reports of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes are up in the United States–including on college campuses. Given that state of affairs, is there any way for religious differences to be a unifier, rather than a divider? The Interfaith Youth Core thinks so. All year, the nonprofit has been sponsoring collaboration and dialogue between universities that are very different–a religious school paired with a secular, liberal arts college.

 

Better Algorithms Are Also Worse Algorithms (52:22)

Guest: James Zou, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University

We’re constantly influenced by computer algorithms–that’s how you get movie recommendations tailored to you on Netflix or articles about things you’re interested in on your Facebook feed. But new research shows that as algorithms get better at making predictions for what one group of people will like, other groups get left in the digital dust. That might be innocent when it comes to movie recommendations, but algorithms also sometimes decide who should get a bank loan or interview for a job.

 

Bringing Seagrass Meadows Back to Virginia, One Seed at a Time (1:08:39)

Guest: Robert Orth, Professor, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary

A story now of humans successfully restoring a marine habitat. Off the coast of Virginia, seagrass had been entirely absent since the 1930s. Then Robert Orth and his colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William and Mary started planting seagrass by hand along the coast. Twenty years later, it’s a real success story and–as the researchers write in the journal “Science Advances”–it’s part of a growing movement of “ocean optimism” when so much of the news about human impact on the environment is bleak.

 

Childhood Behaviors Predict Partnership Patterns in Adulthood (1:28:50)

Guest: Francis Vergunst, Postdoctoral Fellow, Developmental Public Health, University of Montreal

Whether a child is anxious, aggressive or hyperactive around age 10 is a pretty good predictor of future relationship success. A study of thousands of Canadian children that followed them from kindergarten into adulthood found that people who remained single were more likely to have been anxious children. And those who partnered but split up early in adulthood were more likely to have been aggressive or disobedient as kids. So there are some important insights here for parents and teachers.