Pipeline Inspectors and The Game of the Century: Thursday’s Show (November 5, 2015)

Two local lawmakers, Congressmen Gene Green and Pete Olsen, have introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives designed to hire and keep enough pipeline inspectors to cover the nation’s 2.6 million miles of pipeline infrastructure. On this edition of Houston Matters, we hear from Rep. Green about why he feels the additional inspectors are needed. We also talk with Mark Babineck, editor of the Argus Media publication Petroleum and Transportation North America. 

Also this hour: Based on the results of a recent sting, retailers in the Greater Houston region sell alcohol to underage customers less often than retailers anywhere else in Texas. Less than 5 percent of retailers targeted were caught selling alcohol to minors here, compared with about 9 percent statewide, and 13 percent in Dallas. We talk with Major Marc Decatur, the Houston Regional Director of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, who supervises enforcement in the Greater Houston region, about the results of this latest investigation.

Then: Paige Phelps talks with Dr. Martin Matzuk, a researcher at the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, about his efforts to develop a contraceptive drug…for men.

Plus: Some called it the “Game of the Century.” On January 20, 1968, the University of Houston men’s basketball team faced college basketball’s Goliath – the number one ranked UCLA Bruins, who had won 47 straight games. In what was the first-ever nationally televised regular season college basketball game, the Cougars pulled off a stunning upset, 71-69, in front of 52-thousand fans in the Astrodome. But there was more to the story than just the basketball game, as we learn from historian Robert Jacobus, author of Houston Cougars in the 1960s: Death Threats, the Veer Offense, and the Game of the Century.