Can Politicians Block Followers on Social Media? (Originally aired September 7, 2017)

Guest: Lyrissa Lidsky, JD, Dean, University of Missouri School of Law

President Trump has been known to block critics from his @realdonaldtrump Twitter account, but he has to stop. A federal appeal court this week ruled that it’s a violation of the First Amendment when public officials using social media for official government business exclude people for views they disagree with. The President’s attorney has tried to argue that @realdonaldtrump is a personal account, but the court says Trump clearly uses the it for making public announcements as President.

 

Healing Power of Mindfulness (Originally aired January 3, 2019)

Guest: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Author of “The Healing Power of Mindfulness,” Professor of Medicine Emeritus and Founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic, University of Massachusetts

Mindfulness is so buzzy that some company just launched a personal finance app meant to help you “take a deep breath and approach your finances in a calmer and more mindful emotional state.” I don’t know that mindfulness is proven to improve your money situation. But earlier this year I spoke with the molecular biologist who pioneered the study of mindfulness as medicine.  Jon Kabat Zinn was getting a PhD at MIT when he got interested in meditation and yoga. His research led him to create the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, and today more than 700 medical centers and clinics around the world use his mindfulness framework to help patients improve their health. 

 

Scooby Doo (Originally aired February 26, 2019)

Guest: Kevin Sandler, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Arizona State University, Author of the Upcoming Book “Scooby Doo”

Scooby Doo is 50 this year. It was a staple of my childhood, and I hear people in their 30s and 40s are passing the Scooby love down to their kids, too. Would you believe the idea for the show was inspired, partly, by Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night”? A TV executive in 1969 heard Sinatra crooning “dooby dooby doo” at the end of the song and thought it’d be a great name for a mystery cartoon centered around a fraidy-cat dog. How has the show managed to stay so popular for so long? You can still catch it in reruns on TV and yet another reboot is on the way. 

 

How to Grill Everything Right (Originally aired July 10, 2015)

Guests: David Joachim and Andrew Schloss, Authors of "Mastering the Grill," "Fire It Up," and "Williams Sonoma Grill School"

We’re in peak grilling season right now. Food just tastes better when it’s cooked over a flame. There’s a whole science behind why that is –and how to do it well.