Next Week on Focus
Coming up next week on Focus, we'll learn more about circus history in East Central Illinois, will talk about Illinois' new health care exchanges and will delve into why you get so many "spam" emails every day at the office. We’ll also find out why we eat with a fork and where the fork comes from.
Monday July 8 – Gamma Phi Circus and Duncan Wall
Early in the 20th century, acrobats, specifically trapeze artists, would winter in Bloomington-Normal to practice in empty mills and empty buildings with high ceilings. This hour on Focus, Lindsey Moon talks with Marcus Alouan, director of the Gamma Phi Circus at Illinois State University, about how those performers sparked a circus movement in Bloomington-Normal. We’ll learn more about Gamma Phi Circus, one of the oldest and one of the only collegiate circuses in the country and will hear about the circus camps the university sponsors to keep the circus tradition alive. Then in the second half of the hour, we’ll listen back to a conversation Lindsey had with Duncan Wall this spring.
Tuesday, July 9 – Getting Ready for Illinois Health Care Exchanges
Do you have questions about the Affordable Care Act and how it’s going to affect you as more and more mandates take effect? We welcome your calls and questions this hour on Focus!
The Obama Administration is slowly implementing mandates created by the Affordable Care Act but recently delayed one applying to some businesses. This hour on Focus, we’ll talk about what’s been delayed, what changes will be implemented as planned and what you should expect if you need to purchase health insurance through one of the exchanges this fall. Health insurance coverage through Illinois exchanges will be available for purchase October 1, and this hour on Focus, John Kastinas and Claudia Lenhoff of Champaign County Health Consumers join host Jim Meadows.
Wednesday, July 10 – Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet
This hour on Focus, Jack Brighton talks with author Finn Brunton about the rise of internet spam. Interestingly enough, internet spam is called spam because of a Monty Python skit. And, while the skit is hilarious, the unwanted emails and messages from advertisers, marketers, identity thieves, bots, con artists and hackers are not. Today on Focus, we’ll learn about what spam really is, how it works and what it means. As Brunton argues in his new book “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet,” spam can show us how online communities can develop and intent governance for themselves and how transforming technology can have unintended consequences.
Thursday, July 11 – A History of Food in 100 Recipes
How we think about food, how we prepare food and how we eat food is constantly changing. It’s mind blowing to think about how much food changes over the course of a decade, let alone several hundred years. What are your favorite dinner dishes? Have you ever wondered how they evolved into the recipes you know and love? This hour on Focus, Lisa Bralts talks with author William Sitwell about the history of food….and when we say history, we mean deep history. We’ll go back to the 1400’s when royals were eating feasts prepared from recipes calling for an entire pig, and we’ll learn more about when the fork became a fixture in Western culture.
Friday, July 12 – The Mystery of Pain
We welcome your questions this hour!
This hour on Focus, we talk with Douglas Nelson, a licensed massage therapist from Champaign, President of BodyWorks Associates and founder of NMT MidWest, a teaching institute focused on pain management. He’s just written a new book called “The Mystery of Pain,” and we’ll talk with him about what pain actually is and how he argues Neuromuscular Therapy can help.