Today's guest host is Dan Savage, from the Savage Lovecast. Dan is the internationally syndicated columnist of “Savage Love” and the author of several books. With his husband Terry Miller, he cofounded the It Gets Better project and edited the It Gets Bettercollection.
On The Gist, Dan talks to author Peggy Orenstein about the lack of sexual education for young women and how book tours can change the writing process. Orenstein is the author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.
In the Spiel: the clueless conservatism of the Nashville Statement.
Alyssa Mastromonaco joins the pod to talk about the response to Hurricane Harvey and Trump’s visit to Texas. Then, Jon and Dan discuss Trump’s tax reform speech, and his impending decision on the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Amid all the handwringing about kids and the damage smartphones are doing them, child psychologist Ioanna Palaiologou is upbeat. “I don’t think,” she says, “we should worry as much as the media is making it. ... If the elements are there, it’s another toy for them.”
Palaiologou, an associate at the Institute of Education, University College London’s Centre for Leadership in Learning, has the background to make a judgment in that regard. Among other things, she’s an expert on children and play, as she explains in this Social Science Bites podcast.
Play, she explains, is innate - “we are mammals, and mammals do play” – necessary and ultimately informal, she tells interviewer Dave Edmonds. That doesn’t meant there won’t be rules, but that the wellspring of play in bottom-up, from children, and not top-down, from adults. “Play cannot be initiated by adults. It can be supported by adults, it can be facilitated by adults, but cannot be initiated by adults, in my view. Play can only be initiated by children.”
This doesn’t mean play is anarchy, or even that all play is the same. Palaiologou has identified five types of play -- physical, with objects, symbolic (such as drawing), pretending/dramatic, and games with rules – and adults may have a role. But that role is not dominant: “Instruction is fine, but we actually need play to interact with the environment and to make sense of the world with our own senses, our own minds, and to internalize that.”
In the discussion, Palaiologou and Edmonds also talk about cultural differences in play and how it is a vital part of children’s emotional development. All work and no play, it seems, does more than make Jack a dull boy.
Palaiologou has spent more than two decades studying education and early childhood in the United Kingdom and is a chartered psychologist of the British Psychological Society and is the treasurer (and past chair) or the British Educational Studies Association. She is the co-director of Canterbury Educational Services where she is head of children’s services.
There's one "no parking" sign in San Francisco that you can bend the rules on ... if the conditions are right.
Reported by Penny Nelson. Bay Curious is Olivia Allen-Price, Paul Lancour, Jessica Placzek, Penny Nelson, Suzie Racho and Katie McMurran. Theme music by Pat Mesiti-Miller.
Ask us a question at BayCurious.org.
Follow Olivia Allen-Price on Twitter @oallenprice.
On April 3, 2017, the Supreme Court decided McLane Co., Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2008, Damiana Ochoa filed a sex discrimination charge under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against her former employer McLane Co., Inc., a supply-chain services company, when she failed a physical evaluation three times after returning from maternity leave. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) launched an investigation into Ochoa’s charge, but McLane declined the EEOC’s request for “pedigree information,” meaning names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers of those employees who had taken the physical evaluation. The EEOC then expanded its investigation into McLane’s operations nationwide and possible age discrimination, issuing subpoenas to McLane for pedigree information regarding these matters too. McLane refused to provide this information as well, and the EEOC then filed actions in federal district court to enforce the subpoenas issued regarding both Ochoa’s charge and the EEOC’s own age discrimination charge. The District Court quashed the subpoenas, finding the pedigree information irrelevant to the charges, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, applying a plenary or “de novo” standard of review, reversed. Other U.S. Courts of Appeals, however, apply a more deferential “abuse of discretion” standard in such situations, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the split among the Courts of Appeals. -- By a vote of 7-1, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the Ninth Circuit and remanded the case. In an opinion delivered by Justice Sotomayor, the court held that a district court’s decision whether to enforce or quash a subpoena issued by the EEOC should be reviewed for abuse of discretion, not de novo. Justice Sotomayor’s opinion was joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Alito, Breyer, Kagan, Kennedy, and Thomas. Justice Ginsburg filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. -- And now, to discuss the case, we have Ellen Springer, an Associate at Baker Botts, LLP.
What's the Word: Liminal; News Items: 40 Years of Voyager, Ichthyosaur, Strongest Resistive Magnet, GMO and Dunning Kruger, Banning Mention of Global Warming; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction
George Asamani is an exceedingly well-traveled 39-year-old Ghanaian who currently calls Addis Ababa home. He is the co-founder of a music and messaging app called DooWapp-- an alumnus of Telefónica's Wayra startup accelerator in the UK.
In this conversation, taped at the Enterprise Africa Summit 2017 hosted by the British Council in Accra some months ago, George gave Andile a sense of the positive innovation vibes that he's absorbed while living and working in various African markets over the years. They also chatted about the importance of responding readily to market feedback when iterating a passion-driven 'nice-to-have' software product.
All the news you need to know Thursday, August 31st! Stories range from Harvey to a "historic" new treatment for cancer and even an Instagram hack (and much more).
Award-winning broadcast journalist and former TV news reporter Erica Mandy breaks it all down for you.
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