Think airs Monday to Thursday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM. Encore airings of Think can be heard Monday to Thursday nights on KERA FM beginning at 9:00 p.m. Podcasts and streamed video are available online at www.kera.org/think.

Monday, 4/15

Hour 1:  Are you wondering where your hard-earned tax dollars are actually going this year? We’ll find out this hour with Mattea Kramer, senior research analyst for the National Priorities Project which explains the federal budget process with the goal of making budgetary information accessible to everyone.

Hour 2:  What do comic book heroines tell us about how society handles real-life superwomen? We’ll talk this hour with Erin Prather Stafford, executive producer of the new documentary “Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines,” which airs on KERA television and PBS this evening.

Tuesday, 4/16

Hour 1:  Why are dinosaurs still so fascinating to both kids and adults and what have we learned from the latest research into the lives of these incredible prehistoric animals? We’ll talk this hour with science writer Brian Switek whose new book is “My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs” (Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

Hour 2:  What can we learn from how a loved one faces a life-threatening diagnosis and death? Well spend this hour with Rod Dreher who tells his sister’s story in the new book “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life” (Grand Central Publishing, 2013).

Wednesday, 4/17

Hour 1:  How are drug and treatment protocols evaluated by medical professionals and researchers and what roles do politics and business interests play in the process? We’ll spend this hour with Dr. Beatrice Golomb, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. She’ll deliver the Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology Lecture this evening at UT Dallas.

Hour 2:  What still needs to happen for our country to finally move beyond the legacy and reality of racial prejudice? We’ll discuss the problems and potential solutions this hour with Michael Higginbotham, the Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of the new book “Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America” (NYU Press, 2013).

Thursday, 4/18

Hour 1:  What makes a community strong and capable of facing the challenges that exist in any urban environment? We’ll spend this hour with Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization” (Island Press, 2008). He’ll speak at tomorrow’s Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture conference “What Makes a Resilient City?”

Hour 2:  How will our networked world influence design and development in the future? We’ll talk this hour with Robert Bruegmann, author of “Sprawl: A Compact History” (University Of Chicago Press, 2005) and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’ll deliver the keynote address this evening at the Second Annual David Dillon Symposium, “Making Connections: The Networked City.”

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