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1.22.15: Changing Our Understanding Of Merit, Trapping Bed Bugs, & The Uncommon Core

Benjamin Chun via flickr Creative Commons
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flic.kr/p/bSXrxr

For students hoping to get into a competitive college or university, high SAT scores are crucial. On today’s show, law professor and civil rights activist argues that the SAT is a more accurate measurement of family wealth, race and ethnicity than merit. 

Then, The Uncommon Core, our series on offbeat college courses, continues with golf course management. We’ll also hear from a husband and wife research team going to great lengths to end the bedbug epidemic– including offering themselves up as food!

Listen to the full show and click Read more for individual segments.

Changing Our Understanding of Merit

WOM01222015A.mp3
Changing Our Understanding of Merit

The Uncommon Core: Golf Course Management

  • From designing courses to managing the green, this Texas professor can teach you everything you need to know about golf – except how to play it.
  • Find out more at this link.

They've Got Spirit

  • Smith College in Northampton is among the nation's pre-eminent women's colleges -- and alma mater to several notable feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. So one thing people don't expect to find on campus is a cheerleading squad. Karen Brown brings us this story.
  • You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.

Bed Bug Science

  • The husband and wife team of Regine and Gerhard Gries are biologists at Simon Fraser University in Canada, who’ve given a lot of themselves for the sake of their research into the bed bug.
  • You can read more about the research they conduct with colleague Robert Britton at phys.org.
WOM01222015D.mp3
Bed Bug Science

The Myth of Pruitt-Igoe

  • It was meant to be a modern housing marvel, but the public housing project known as Pruitt-Igoe, built in downtown St. Louis in the fifties, quickly became a nightmare. Roman Mars from the podcast 99% Invisible brings us the story.
  • You can hear the full Director's Cut version of this story at PRX.org.

The Woody Allen Amazon Deal

WOM01222015E2.mp3
The Woody Allen Amazon Deal

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