On June 6, the PGA Tour agreed to merge with its rival LIV Golf, which is backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. The fund is controlled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, a controversial figure who rules over a kingdom accused by many of human rights abuses. Why did the two organizations merge? What does this mean for golf? And, more importantly, how will this affect professional sports moving forward? Andrew Brandt is the Executive Director of the Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova Law School. He tells us about what this new golf entity might look like.

When President Biden lifted the COVID-19 public health emergency in May, he subsequently removed the Title 42 provision limiting immigration into the United States on the grounds of a public emergency. What was Title 42? What will replace it? And, how does this affect the processing and number of immigrants coming to the U.S.? Fernando Chang-Muy is the Thomas O’Boyle lecturer of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He tells us about the immigration process and how the U.S. benefits from foreign workers.

Days before the beginning of Pride Month, Target made headlines by announcing that, in select stores, it would be removing certain LGBTQ+ merchandise and pivoting its Pride strategy on the heels of backlash from a small but aggressive group of customers expressing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. Since then, the reaction from the LGBTQ+ and allied communities has been fierce. Bryan Buttler owns and operates a media relations firm based in Philadelphia that supports the LGBTQ+ community. In a conversation with KYW Newsradio’s Matt Leon, Buttler provides tips and resources for consumers to find out more about how much a company actually supports the LGBTQ+ community, and shares insights on the impact the LGBTQ+ community has on the economy. 

When plastic surgery practices reopened after the initial wave of the pandemic, procedures increased by 44 percent, according to a 2021 report by the American Society of Aesthetic Surgery. The top three surgical procedures were liposuction, breast augmentation, and abdominoplasty. While these procedures are common, they overrepresent the types of plastic surgery that exist. Which surgeries are underrepresented? How were they discovered? Dr. R. Barrett Noone’s book, “From Trenches to Transplants,” examines the history of plastic surgery, beginning at the trenches of World War I. He tells us how the practice has advanced over the years and how he thinks plastic surgery will evolve.

In 2020, international student enrollment in the United States dropped 15 percent because of pandemic era travel restrictions, according to Higher Ed Dive. While numbers are slowly increasing, with 948,519 students enrolling in the 2021/2022 academic school year, they don't rival pre-COVID levels. What’s affecting international student enrollment? Why is it important for the U.S. to have international students? And, what are international students looking for in higher education institutions? Martyn J. Miller is the assistant vice president for Global Engagement at Temple University. He tells us about international students' concerns and how we can learn from what other English speaking countries are doing to increase international student enrollment.

Millions of Americans are dealing with anxiety, and much about anxiety is a mystery. However, recently researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter in the UK released some fascinating discoveries from work with mice that could lead to a better understanding of the neural roadmap behind feelings of anxiety, and more importantly, might eventually help provide a better tool kit for treating anxiety in humans. To learn more about this research, we caught up with Dr. Nathan Baird, Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Saint Joseph’s University

The app TikTok is wildly popular, and in some circles, wildly controversial. The state of Montana recently passed legislation that would ban the app in the state. What is it about TikTok that would lead to a state take a drastic action like this? How legitimate are the concerns? Is it even possible to enforce, and what could a move like this lead to? For this conversation, we caught up with Dr. Hilde Van den Bulck, who is a professor and head of the communication department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University. 

As far as we’ve come in medical and scientific research, sleep seems to be an area that we just can’t pin down. We might understand the stages of sleep and what REM sleep is - kind of - but there are still a lot of unanswered questions, or questions that we hear a variety of answers to. How much sleep do you really need? Do sleep aids like melatonin really help? What happens in our brains when we dream? Why does it seem to be harder to sleep as we get older? Why do we need sleep in the first place? We pose all those questions and more to Dr. Philip Gehrman, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who specializes in Behavioral Sleep Medicine.

During the pandemic, households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, received at least a $95 per month increase to their usual benefits. In March 2023, benefits were cut back, but many of the people who receive those benefits haven’t recovered from the financial loss. They’ve had to turn to food banks, which are now struggling to meet the increased need. How have food banks had to adapt? And, what have they learned from years of high demand? Fred Waisak is the President and CEO of the Food Bank of South Jersey. He tells us about the impact of ending these increased benefits and how his and many other food banks are coping.

We have all heard conversations of “why didn’t they teach us this in school?” or “why did I take calculus if I’ve never had to use it?” Now with a wide scope of possible career opportunities, it might not make sense for all students to take the same classes in high school. Why does this happen, and how could we update the math curriculum? Do we have the teaching capacity to make these changes? Dr. Ted Coe is the Vice President of Academic Advocacy for Mathematics at NWEA. He joins us to discuss how we can reimagine math curriculums and what it would mean for students post-high school.