Think from KERA

With the midterm elections just a few months away, each new week will bring a new poll breaking down the campaigns. CBS News Director of Elections and Surveys Anthony Salvanto joins us to talk about how this data is collected – and about what happens when the numbers don’t predict the winner. His new book is called “Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster’s Guide to Making Sense of the World” (Simon & Schuster).

For decades, Mexican men have been recruited as temporary laborers in the U.S., working in fields, factories and in the service industry. That migration has left the young women they leave behind in a state of uncertainty. Lilia Soto of the University of Wyoming joins us to talk about these often forgotten people, who she writes about in “Girlhood in the Borderlands: Mexican Teens Caught in the Crossroads of Migration” (NYU Press).

The Lumbee tribe in North Carolina has struggled for decades to be recognized by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Without federal recognition, the Lumbee are denied sovereignty, their own land and benefits granted to other tribes. Journalist Lisa Rab joins us to talk about how race and culture inform who gets to claim Indian ancestry. Her article “What Makes Someone Native American” appears in the Washington Post.

During the earliest days of desegregation, black girls outnumbered boys as volunteers to attend all-white schools by a wide margin. Rachel Devlin joins guest host John McCaa to tell the stories of these Civil Rights pioneers. Her new book is called “A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools” (Basic Books).

Arne Duncan served in the Obama administration as the Secretary of Education. He joins guest host John McCaa to talk about strategies for improving our public schools, which he writes about in “How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education” (Simon & Schuster).

Across the U.S., cities are struggling with how we should publicly remember Civil War leaders. And a similar conversation is happening in Spain. Alex Palmer joins guest host John McCaa to talk about how the European nation is divided over how to memorialize Francisco Franco and the victims of his regime. His story “The Battle to Remember” appears in Smithsonian magazine.

For decades, scientists have believed that the nervous system and the immune system operated independent of one another – the former running the body and the second protecting it. University of Virginia neuroscientist Jonathan Kipnis joins guest host John McCaa to talk about how researchers are learning that these two systems actually work more closely together than previously thought. His story “The Seventh Sense” appears in the August issue of Scientific American magazine.

In a special program, “A Line Divides: 100 Days Since Zero Tolerance,” KERA’s Think and The California Report team up to examine the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, the crackdown on immigration, and the separation of families who attempted to cross the border. We’ll hear about a large tent encampment in Tornillo, Texas created to house kids who had been separated from their parents and the national outcry that separation evoked. Think host Krys Boyd and The California Report daily host John Sepulvado will also explore the legal case that countered “zero tolerance” and the politics surrounding this policy, the psychological ramifications of separation, and the process of asylum.

Guests include:

Lee Gelernt, attorney and Deputy Director, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Colleen Kraft, MD, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Jennifer de Haro, Managing Attorney for RAICES in Fort Worth.

Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs (Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean) and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States. He currently coordinates the American Enterprise Institute’s program on Latin America.

Plus interviews with Rodney Scott, Chief Patrol Agent, San Diego Sector U.S. Border Patrol; activists, Trump supporters, attorneys, and features from reporters in the field.

Neel Patel grew up the son of Indian immigrants, with one foot in America and one planted firmly in the old country. He joins us to talk about how that experience informs his debut collection of short stories – and about the lack of Indian characters in popular fiction. Patel’s collection is called “If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi” (Flatiron Books).

Learning to read is a process that builds cognitive skills in children. So what happens when those skills are developed through digital reading instead of books? UCLA child development expert Maryanne Wolf joins us to talk about how reading digitally affects children and adults alike, which she writes about in “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” (Harper).