2021

For her new book How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America, Stanford-trained sociologist Priya Fielding-Singh talked to 75 Bay Area families from a variety of backgrounds about their everyday food choices. She joins us to discuss class, race, and nutritional inequity and why, as she writes in the book, “access to healthy food is about more than geography and finances.”

Despite its name, the ice age saw its fair share of wildfires, particularly towards the end. Humans were partly to blame, as was likely a catastrophic comet that burned some 10% of the earth’s surface almost 13,000 years ago. But Faith and his colleagues found another surprising culprit: the disappearance of large grazers.

The Neanderthals are probably our most famous cousins: short, stocky humans who went extinct around 40,000 years ago, with some surprising theories as to why. Less-well known but equally relevant are the Denisovans. Remains were discovered in Denisova Cave (also called Aju-Tasch) in Russia in 2008, and genetic analysis revealed them to be very close relatives of Neanderthals. Closer than us, in fact. It turned out we had not one, but two closest relatives.

As the Democratic-controlled Congress prepares to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package a sticking point in the negotiations is an amendment that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. That would more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25, where it has sat since 2009.

Anu Asnaani, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and licensed clinical psychologist, said it’s not realistic to expect people to stay still when an animal is attacking them — especially if they are scared of dogs or have been bit in the past.