Talk about AIDS, and most eyes turn to Africa.

Elsewhere in the world, the specter of another disaster lurks. Asia presents a different set of challenges, with its complicated mix of child trafficking, prostitution, drug abuse, labor migration over porous borders, and political leaders in disease denial. For public health officials, the numbers are the first thing to consider.

There are two and a half billion people in China and India alone. Multiply this by even modest infection rates, and there’s the potential for monumental disaster. But unlike Africa, where the talk is mostly of treatment, Asia holds out the promise of prevention.
(Hosted by Tom Ashbrook)

Guests:

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke

Adrienne Germain, International Women’s Health Coalition, and Arni Amin, behavioral scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

Fat is the American condition. We are a super-sized nation. Of our population, 62% are overweight, 26% are obese. That leaves millions of oversized Americans living large and fueling a multibillion-dollar diet industry that thrives on failure.

We fight fat. We laugh at fat. We surrender to fat. Beyond the endless how-to advice for shedding pounds and medical warnings of the health risks, jokes still make up the bulk of our national conversation about weight. Fat remains the last bastion of acceptable bias in this country.

In the United States, we celebrate tolerance, diversity, and lifestyles of all shapes and sizes, but fat people remain the big butts of cruel jokes and discrimination. The massive majority gets the short shrift on respect. Listen in for the skinny on the health and social hazards of fat
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Marilyn Wann, author of “Fat!So?”

Dr. David Ludwig, Director of the Obesity Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston, and TBA.

They’re sweeping up and mopping bloodstains in Genoa today, but the battle over wealth and power in the 21st century is just beginning. Beyond the G8 and teargas, beyond anti-globalism and American triumphalism, there’s a radical vision of the world that is suddenly being hailed as the next “big idea.”

It’s called Empire. Its authors say Empire is bigger than you and me, bigger than any nation, any power, and bigger, perhaps, than God. They say it’s already shaping the way we work, the way we love and move, and the way we dream. Think imperial Rome, only larger and wired.

Empire is a hyped-up techno world where the multitudes are restless, where there’s no Caesar in sight, nor in charge, and where revolution is in the air. You wanted a New World Order? Well, here it comes. Call it Empire.
(Hosted by Tom Askbrook)

Guests:

Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri, of “Empire.”

Once upon a time, when families moved into a new neighborhood, they might expect a visit from the Welcome Wagon. These days, the Welcome Wagon might not be able to get past the front gate.

The biggest trend in American real estate is the “gated community,” where only residents have access to the streets and playgrounds. In some parts of the Southeast and the Southwest, gated communities are practically the only new housing being built. And they’re not just enclaves for the super-rich. Moderately priced houses are also in subdivisions set off like fortresses. And HUD is using federal money to retrofit housing projects with electronic gates, so there as well visitors can become trespassers. It’s a trend that some call un-American, or maybe it’s very American.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Mary Gail Snyder, co-author of “Fortress America” and professor of urban studies at the University of New Orleans

Jerry Russo, photographer documenting the gates of gated communities

Robert Engstrom, real estate developer, Minneapolis, Minnesota

John Stilgoe, professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard

and Meredith Hollaus, resident of Boca Pointe gated community, Boca Raton, Florida.

The findings are this, and consider the potential for sensationalism: Girls raised by lesbian mothers are more likely to be sexually adventurous in adolescence.

It’s one small part of a recent review of 20 years of research on gay parenting. The review also says that finding about adolescent girls was deliberately downplayed by researchers. So were other studies showing that kids raised by gay parents do not, after all, turn out like everyone else.

Researchers softpedaled these findings because they didn’t want their work giving ammunition to anti-gay forces, in the courts, in legislatures, or in the media. Or when, for example, gay couples want to adopt children. Now those results have been outed and social science has to begin to contend with the complicated matter of difference.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Dr. Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at the University of Southern California

Paula Ettelbrick, family policy director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

and Steve Nock, demographer and sociologist at the University of Virginia.

The Boy Scouts still hold it in high esteem, second in their code of honor right after trustworthiness, but what about the rest of us?

A quick reading of the newspaper suggests that loyalty is so over. Maybe we still like the idea of it but secretly, the what’s-in-it-for-me generation seems to have decided that loyalty was fine for their parents, but it’s not for them. And maybe they’re right. In an age of corporate layoffs, when Boeing can say “See ya Seattle” after 95 years, when athletes and even franchises live in a perpetual sprint from city to city to show-me-the-money greener pastures, when divorce is the norm and 40-year marriages the exception, is there still room for something as antiquated and awkward, as difficult and demanding as loyalty.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

George Fletcher, Beekman Professor of Law, Columbia University and author of “Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships”

Dan Pink, author of “Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers are Transforming the Way We Live”

and Iris Krasnow, author of “Surrendering to Marriage.”

There’s an old saying: Generals always fight the last war, and that’s why they often lose the next one.

When it comes to armed conflict, figuring out the future is the key to victory. But it’s always a guessing game. Guessing where the new political hotspots will be. Guessing the best way to put out the fires. Guessing what the next generation of weapons will be or should be. Right now, the Pentagon is deep deep into a debate about the future of military defense.

Did we say debate? From the sound of things it may be all out war. Some very smart people thinking about keeping America safe cannot agree on how it should be done. Only that it will cost billions, and billions, and billions.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Thomas Ricks, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter

Stephen P. Rosen, The Caneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard

and Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution

As the dust settles from the information explosion, what was a whispering amongst the public library stacks is becoming loud and clear.

People’s needs are changing. They have other places to go for information and for books. Bibliophiles are as likely to be found sipping lattes at Barnes and Noble as standing in line at the circulation desk. Some City Hall bean counters now earnestly suggest that Internet terminals at the post office could suffice for the public’s research needs and that the dusty old stacks and wooden chairs of the reading room should go the way of the card catalogue.

Yet somehow, public libraries are fighting back, reinventing themselves by reaching out to their communities and becoming places where people can log on, check out, listen in and speak up.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Catherine Dibble, Director of Public Service at the Boston Public Library

John Guscott, manager of electronic services at the Lakewood, Ohio, library and editor of the newsletter Library Futures

SuSie Neubauer, head of technical services at the Robbins Library in Arlington, Massachusetts

It’s perhaps a luxury of our times that we no longer have to fear the ravages of polio, no longer have to lock children into iron lungs and metal braces.

It’s a relief not to have to sweat the mumps and measles. Thanks to the medical miracle of vaccination, these illnesses have all but vanished in America. There is, however a new fear infecting the world of children’s health: Many parents are concerned that vaccination itself is a public health hazard, that it may be causing autism, lupus, M-S and other problems.

Some suspect that the body’s natural defenses are being undermined by an overdose of “preventive care” and they’re delaying, even skipping, the most basic shots, which public health officials say could be a horrible mistake. They say the link between immunizations and illness just isn’t there.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Dr. Richard Johnston, Professor of Pediatrics at the Univesity of Colorado School of Medicine and member of the Immunization Safety Review Committee

Dr. Jerry Klein, Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Univeristy School of Medicine, former Director of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General.

Consider the “before” picture: A teenaged boy who sports the last vestiges of baby fat and the beginning of a very large chip on his shoulder. His age belies his experience. He’s been emotionally abandoned and physically abused. He’s learned not to trust and never to care. He’s fallen through the cracks so many times he’s gotten used to the ride.

It’s a composite sketch, and there are thousands like him across the country. But the trouble with troubled boys is this: there’s no one “after” picture, and there’s no one way to save them. But somewhere between killing them with kindness and berating them at boot camps, there must be another way. It’s just not clear whether the at-risk kid’s best shot at getting out of the woods is by heading into the wilderness.
(Hosted by John Donvan)

Guests:

Daniel Robb, author of “Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island with Troubled Boys-A Teacher’s Memoir” and Dr. Gil Noam, professor at the Harvard School of Education.