October 04, 2014

The Sobering Truth

Can you tell if someone is an alcoholic? We’ll talk with a top medical doctor, a recovering alcoholic himself, who shares the shocking health effects of years of alcohol abuse. Then, these days there’s a big bad world out there of bad guys and predators. A top criminal profiler shares advice for parents on how to keep their daughters safe.

Episode Segments:

InfoTrak: The Sobering Truth Jeff Herten, MD, author of The Sobering Truth: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You was a high-functioning alcoholic for over 30 years. He talked about the widespread nature of hidden alcoholism in our society. He believes that alcohol is more addictive and destructive than drugs like heroin. He said alcohol consumption contributes to a surprising number of cancers and other health problems.
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InfoTrak: Save Your Daughter’s Life Pat Brown, author of How to Save Your Daughter's Life: Straight Talk for Parents from America's Top Criminal Profiler says no daughter is safe from harm in today's world, especially now that social media makes it so easy to connect with people we barely know. She discussed risky choices that teens make that can put them in harm’s way, and how predators use that behavior to choose their victims. She said parents of teen girls need to be more proactive than ever about keeping their daughters safe.
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InfoTrak: Flu Forecast Dr. Jeffrey Shaman, expert in infectious disease transmission, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University says that he and other researchers are working on mathematical models that will soon be able to forecast flu outbreaks, similar to weather forecasts. His project combines data from Google with weather tracking techniques. He explained how forecasts could be helpful to authorities in choosing where to distribute flu vaccines and other medications, and to warn people in the affected regions.
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Guest(s) Appearing on this Episode

Jeff Herten For nearly thirty years, author Dr. Jeff Herten was a high functioning alcoholic - one who drinks every day, yet continues to lead a productive, successful life. Now he shares his first-hand knowledge of how alcohol can destroy lives - as it nearly destroyed his. Dr. Jeff Herten, a native Californian, resides in rural San Luis Obispo with his wife, Debby. His past as a high-functioning alcoholic, his medical expertise and his life experinces have uniquely equipped him to expose the shocking physical, psychological and social effects of alcohol. The Sobering Truth Website

Pat Brown Pat Brown is a nationally known criminal profiler, television commentator, author, and founder and CEO of The Sexual Homicide Exchange and The Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency. Pat has provided crime commentary and profiling and forensic analysis in over one thousand television and radio appearances in the United States and across the globe. She can be seen regularly on the cable television news programs, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, and is a frequent guest of the Today Show, the CBS Early Show, Larry King, Inside Edition, Nancy Grace, Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell, Joy Behar, and America's Most Wanted. For four seasons, Pat Brown profiled crimes on the weekly Court TV crime show, I, Detective. Criminal Profiler Pat Brown is the host of the 2004 Discovery Channel documentary, The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra. In the spring of 2006, Pat went inside one of Florida's maximum-security prisons to interview a child murderer for the Discovery Channel series, Evil Minds. In 2010 she profiled a new Jack the Ripper suspect for Investigation Discovery's Mystery Files. She is the author of The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychpaths (Hyperion Voice 2010) and Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers (Phoenix Books 2003), and is a contract writer for Crime Library. Pat contributed special feature content included in the 2005 home DVD edition of Profiler: Season Two and the 15th Anniversary Edition, 2006 DVD release of Quentin Tarantino's crime classic, Reservoir Dogs. Through The Sexual Homicide Exchange, Pat offers pro bono criminal profiling and training for law enforcement and she provides profiling consultation to attorneys, families, and producers through The Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency. Pat Brown holds a Master's Degree in Criminal Justice from Boston University and developed the first Criminal Profiling and Investigative Analysis certificate program in the country for Excelsior College. Pat is the founder and director of The Society for Investigative Criminal Profiling, an organization working to promote criminal profiling as a major tool in police investigations. Pat's Website

Jeffery Shaman Jeffrey Shaman, PHD, focuses on climate, atmospheric science and hydrology, as well as biology, and studies the environmental determinants of infectious disease transmission. In particular, Dr. Shaman investigates how hydrologic variability affects mosquito ecology and mosquito-borne disease transmission, and how atmospheric conditions impact the survival, transmission and seasonality of pathogens. More broadly he is interested in the effects of meteorology on human health and is currently working toward developing systems to forecast infectious disease outbreaks at a range of time scales. In addition, Dr. Shaman is studying a number of climate phenomena, including Rossby wave dynamics, atmospheric jet waveguides, the coupled South Asian monsoon-ENSO system, extratropical precipitation, and tropical cyclogenesis. More About Dr. Shaman