8.31.14: The Changing Face Of Hunger, NASCAR Concussions & The Artificial Womb

During the Depression, the face of hunger was easy to spot: gaunt, worn, and hollow-eyed. Today’s malnourished are tougher to spot. We’ll get a close up of the new face of American hunger. Plus, over 46 million Americans are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The average daily benefit per person per day is four dollars. We’ll find out what living on a SNAP budget really looks like. And, how is America’s sweet tooth may be rooted in Prohibition?

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

The New Face of Hunger

• Tracie McMillan is an author and investigative journalist who wrote “The New Face of Hunger,” a feature in National Geographic Magazine. The article explores the new face of hunger through several families who live with it, and explores current data on food costs, availability, policy, habits and growing obesity among America’s “food insecure.”

The Challenges of SNAP Budgets

• Ellen Vollinger is the Legal/Food Stamp Director at the Food Research and Action Center. She spoke to us about the realities for people living with help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, plus the response to the SNAP budget challenge.  

How America Got Its Sweet Tooth

• While the rise of Big Ag, processed foods, and government subsidies have greatly contributed to American sugar consumption, our sweet tooth may have roots in a single event in American history. Word of Mouth producer Maureen McMurray talked with Nick Capodice, Education Associate at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, about how Prohibition altered America’s palette.

  NASCAR Concussions

• Viv Bernstein ?is a freelance journalist and contributor to The New York Times where she covers sports and NASCAR in particular. She talked about her recent article, "Crashing Without a Cushion: NASCAR Drivers Have Little Help With Concussions."

  A Historic Look at Sonambulism or Sleepwalking

• Producer Eric Mennell brings us the story of a 19th Century sleepwalker whose case inspired early psychiatrists to search for a cure.
• From: Backstory With the American History Guys

The Artificial Womb

• Science fiction has long imagined babies gestating  – from conception to delivery – in a lab, and artificial wombs may soon become a reality. Zoltan Istvanis a futurist, philosopher, journalist and author. He wrote about the science and the ethics of artificial wombs – or ectogenesis, as the technology is formally called - forMotherboard.
• His most recent book is "The Transhumanist Wager."