At Length With Steve Scher. - The House Of Podcasts

Steve Scher talks with Professor Bruce Blumberg about obesogens, hormone disrupting chemicals that seem to change human metabolism.   We eat too much.  We eat too much processed foods high in calories. We don’t exercise enough. It is being called an obesity epidemic, and it is putting more and more people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other conditions at ever greater numbers around the world. But something more than our own actions seems to be at work resetting our bodies systems that regulate weight gain and loss.Bruce Blumberg, a developmental biologist and a molecular endocrinologist, coined the term 'obesogens' in 2006 after he discovered that exposing pregnant mice to a chemical compound call Tributyltin made their offspring heavier than those not exposed-- even when they are on a normal diet. His lab is at the University of California, Irvine.Scientists now know that fat tissue acts as an endocrine organ, releasing hormones related to appetite an

Dr. Ellen Schur talks to Steve Scher about our bodies internal regulatory systems and how they change as we gain weight. She says the body's changes mean that simply exercising more and eating less is not the only factor to consider when we try to lose weight.   Obesity is medically defined through the body mass index – BMI- an indirect measure of how much body fat a person carries.  BMI is your weight in kilograms over your height in meters. Though Dr. Ellen Schur says it’s somewhat arbitrary and is dependent on the person, the cut off for obesity is a BMI of 30. Overweight is 25-29, normal weight 18 and half to 20.  Dr. Schur is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Washington, Co-Director, UW Medicine Weight Loss Management Program. She is part of the UW’s Weight and Wellness Lecture Series spring, 2015.  So when to worry?  When people are in the overweight category, are they showing signs of changes tha

Sonia Nazario on a train in Mexico Sonia Nazario, author of “Enrique’s Journey: the story of a boy’s dangerous odyssey to reunite with his mother” talks to Steve Scher about the plight of one of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who illegally cross Mexico by freight train and then the U.S. border in order to reunite with their families in the U.S.She spoke to Seattle area audiences April 2015, about America’s Immigration Dilemma and the policies that might help these families. Tens of thousands of Central American children, unaccompanied by parents or other adults are hopping freights and fleeing the drug cartels, the gangs and the thuggish police in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Almost 50 thousand arrived by the middle of the sum

Dr. Regina Benjamin, 18th Surgeon General of the United States, talks with Steve Scher about bringing joy to efforts at losing weight and staying healthy. She spoke in Seattle as part of the UW's Weight and Wellness Series of Lectures.   Dr. Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General from 2009-2013 says we have to rediscover the joy in being healthy. "Being healthy can be joyful. Food can be taste good if you work at it.  Exercise doesn’t have to be a drag. You can enjoy being around dancing, walking, whatever you find that you enjoy.”   As Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin tried to find ways to remove the barriers to exercise. That included getting hairdressers involved in thinking about the most exercise friendly hairstyle. It meant starting

Steve Scher talks with Dr. Adam Drewnowski about the links between obesity and poverty. Simply put, people with more money can pay for better food. But people with an attitude researchers are calling 'nutritional resilience' manage to put together a good diet at low cost. So, how can those strategies for eating better on less money spread to the rest of the population? Two-Thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. The NIH has found that "in contrast to international trends, people in America who live in the most poverty-dense counties are those most prone to obesity."  That puts them at greater risk of diabetes and heart disease.  Dr. Adam Drewnowski says that while food choices are based on taste, cost and convenience, there is a growing body of evidence that obesity in America is largely an economic issue.  Policies that address access or behavior alone are inadequate.Disparities in health follow disparities in income. For example, UW researchers observed higher obesity

Steve Scher talks with obesity epidemic scholar Shiriki Kumanyika about giving people the tools to understand the health implications of their personal choices.   There is an obesity epidemic in America and it is spreading around the world, according the World Health Organization. Most of the world population now lives in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.  The Centers for Disease Control says about one third of Adult Americans are obese. Those rates are higher in the black community. Half of African-American women are obese. Worldwide, obesity has doubled since 1980, according to World Health Organization and 42 million children under 5 were overweight or obese in 2013.In America, obesity is more common among black women than white women. That has been true for decades. However, it is now more common among black girls than white girls. What is happening? Shiriki Kumanyika is a scholar in the field of nutrition and

Michael Pollan talks with Steve Scher about our national eating disorder.  Michael Pollan has helped move food issues toward the center of American politics. His books and articles have focused on how the foods we eat shape our health, environment and culture. He recently co-authored an article, with Mark Bittman and others, calling for a national food policy that could bring about fairer wages, healthier citizens and a more sustainable environmental future.April 8th, Michael Pollan is kicking off the UW's Weight and Wellness series with a talk entitled "Our National Eating Disorder." The event is sold out, but there may be stand-by tickets. The Weight and Wellness Series is supported by The UW Alumni Association and The UW Graduate School.As are these podcasts.

Steve Scher talks with renowned choreographer Mark Morris, who was raised in Seattle and returns in March presenting a performance with his dance group and a talk at the UW.   Mark Morris is one of the most highly regarded arists of our era. The Macarthur fellow is an innovator, a satirist and a romantic. He is most of all, a choreographer suffused with music.

 Steve Scher talks to former SETI DirectorJill Tarter about the search for life in the universe.  Are we alone in the universe?  That question drives SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.Jill Tarter has been on the hunt for decades. She currently holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. She is speaking at the University of Washington March 3rd.  Humans have been wondering about other life in the universe for millennia. Scientists can actually seek the answer now. New tools have given astronomers, astrophysicists, exo-biologists the opportunity to scan the heavens for a signal from out there.  At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association

Steve Scher talks to Christoph Bode about future narratives.   Story creates culture, illuminates morality and explores mortality. Stories have rules that transcend different societies and languages. Christoph Bode is a scholar of the story and a student of the emerging changes in narrative structure.Christoph Bode  is focused on story. Not necessarily any one story in particular, but rather how stories are created and constructed- by storytellers, by writers, filmmakers, even politicians. Bode is a professor of Modern English Literature at LMU Munich, one of Europe’s leading universities. How important is the study of story?  He recently received a grant from the EU to explore how stories shape social and even political thinking.Christoph Bode was a guest of the University of Washington where he spoke on the emergence of digital, multi-player and other new approaches to storytelling.    

What do Disneyland, LA Freeways and Film Noir have in common? According to historian Eric Avila, they all represent aspects of America’s racial divide.  Eric Avila is a professor of history at UCLA.  He examines the built environment for clues to American values, prejudice and racial discrimination. His work takes him from Coney Island to the Freeway boom of the 60’s and on to Disneyland.Avila is in Seattle for a talk at UW titled, “Chocolate Cities and Vanilla Suburbs: Race, Space and American Culture After World War II” January 27th at 6:30 at Kane Hall, room 120.Eric Avila is author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. His latest is The Folklore of the Freeway:Race and Revolt in the Modernist City  At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association.

50 years ago, American citizens were being killed in the fight for the right to vote. During three marches in March of 1965, civil rights activists seeking the right to register in Alabama were met by tear gas and Billy clubs. Local police and State troopers beat the non-violent protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  The televised violence galvanized the nation and Congress. President Johnson pushed through the 1965 voting rights act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the countries history.  Today, the courts have removed pieces of that legislation and some states are restricting access to the ballot box.  The streets of the nation are filled with protestors challenging the police shootings of young black men.  Over the next few weeks, the University of Washington’s Chair of the Communication Department, David Domke, will examine the history and it’s importance today in a series of lectures, Marching to Selma: How MLK, LBJ & The Civil Rights Movement

2013 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry Michael Levitt talks about biological structures, the future of molecular modeling and why it helps the research when scientists are kind and good. Join Steve Scher for this wide ranging conversation with a remarkable scientist. 

Turns out on-call car service Uber compiles a lot of data about its customers. They can get a pretty good idea of what you are up to just by the way you use their service. Are you surprised?  How much privacy is there in the age of the internet? Marc Rotenberg is a lawyer specializing in privacy and civil rights. He is president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group involved in privacy litigation and public policy. He also teaches about these issues at Georgetown University Law School in Washington D.C.Rotenberg says he doesn't use the word fear when discussing civil liberties in the information age. It is disempowering, he feels. Rather, there are challenges to be met, problems to solve. Rotenberg sat down with Steve Scher in late November, 2014, to discuss those challenges. 

Dolores Huerta still fights for farmworker families.  Well into her 8th decade, she is training the next generation of leaders to carry the cause forward.  The former teacher and long time community organizer was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded in the United States, by another community organizer, President Obama.  Huerta and Cesar Chavez were co-founders of the United Farm Workers.  Dolores Huerta has pushed and prodded mayors, governors, senators, even presidents for new laws, but her focus remains on the grassroots.  She is re- energized each time she can get new street lights for a neighborhood, more people registered to vote, better representation on schools boards.  Support for At Length is provided by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Former Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe says procedural reforms restore respect for elected officials. She has written "Fighting For Common Ground: How We Can Fix The Stalemate In Congress." Support for At Length comes from The University of Washington Alumni Association.

Garth Stein had a runaway hit with "The Art of Racing in the Rain." His new novel is a "A Sudden Light." It is a  character about a young boy, his father and a wooden house in the Northwest that is haunted by the spirits of the forest and the people who cut it down.