Global warming: in temperate latitudes, it means a flooded earth sometime in the future, a sense that what we sow today may drown us tomorrow. In the Arctic, rapid climate change is already a reality; the frozen expanse is not as frozen as it once was. A few scientists who isolate themselves on plains of ice are working to document this, but they’re not the only observers. Native populations, Inuit, Inupiat, have been living global warming for decades. The birds come earlier, the whales breach further from shore, and landslides interrupt travel. Combined, the scientific research and local knowledge deliver one message from the wilderness: global warming is happening, and the Arctic is the crystal ball for what will be, world wide.

Guests:

University of Alaska

Darcy Frey, author of the article “Watching the World Melt Away” in the New York Times Magazine

and Sheila Watt-Cloutier, President of the Canadian branch of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

There’s not much nice to say about Somalia. During 30 years of civil strife, the people in the dry and dust blown land have been drawn from a rural nomadic co-existence into an urban gun run Mad Max battle for food and survival. It was to this Somalia in 1993 that the United States failed so dismally to bring relief in trying to crush the nation’s warlords, a failure documented graphically in the book and film Black Hawk Down. Today, as battles in Afghanistan wind up, America’s leaders are once again considering military involvement in the lawless horn of Africa, as a new front for their War on Terror. Some Somali voices welcome such a notion, others say it would destroy whatever elements of recovery already exist.

Guests:

Mark Bowden, author of “Black Hawk Down”

Scott Peterson, reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and author of “Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda”

and Abdisalam Issa-Salwe, author of both “The collapse of the Somali Sate” and “Cold War Fallout”

and Davan Maharaj, LA Times Nairobi Buerau Chief.

In the pantheon of words as weapons, the nefarious “n word” is the linguistic kin of the atom bomb. No one much cares about its origins, the Latin word for “black,” because when it comes to that word, “nigger,” context trumps etymology. “Nigger as insult” was likely popularized by 19th century American slave owners. Ever since, its mere utterance unleashes a cascade of history, and hurt. Oppression, discrimination, and racism lurk there in two simple syllables. So does controversy, the latest of which has been stirred by Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy, whose new book makes the case for defanging the word, by fearing it less. Not everyone thinks that’s such a good idea.

Guests:

Randall Kennedy, Professor of Law at Harvard University and author of “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word”

and Halford H. Fairchild, Professor of Psychology and Black Studies at Pitzer College.

They are the secrets of Mexico’s “dirty war,” people known as the desaparecidos, the disappeared. The window of Mexican glasnost has finally been opened: information from old government files about the kidnaps, torture, and the killing of leftists who challenged authority in the 70’s and 80’s is finally available. It’s access human rights advocates have long pushed for, despite threats from the old guard, but the new government of Vicente Fox says it’s time to prosecute the crimes of the past. These are the secrets of the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for seven decades, and there will be political costs to uncovering the whole truth.

Guests:

Mariclaire Acosta, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Foreign Relations for Human Rights and Democracy

James Smith, Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times

Roderic Camp, professor of Political Science at Claremont Mckenna College

and Pascal Beltran, political editor of Proceso, a Mexican news magazine.

It’s becoming the troublesome new math for September 11: A plumber, age 24, no dependants, $500,000. A 50 year old investment banker with three kids and a seven figure income, $5 million. According to the cold calculations of government adjusters, it’s that simple. Chances are neither victim’s family will be satisfied, but the feds have to divvy up the 11 billion dollar Relief Fund somehow. Then there are the private charities, and they’re not immune from ethical scrutiny either. Families of policemen could receive more than those of firemen, Americans more than foreigners, and what about the Pentagon victims? Some ethicists argue that excess money should go to those in most dire need, including starving children overseas

Guests:

David Leebron, Dean of The Columbia School of Law

Nancy Anthony, Executive Director of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation

and Paul G. Schervish, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Welfare Research Institute at Boston College.

If you ever wonder why they call politics the game for grownups, then consider this: whoever would have thought six months ago that George W. Bush, a young President with no experience in foreign policy, would be compared to Presidents like FDR and JFK for his diplomatic skills? Who would have guessed that the country would be mired in recession and the once robust surplus would be gone, replaced by the spectre of growing deficits. One week into the new year, and the two parties are scrapping over the economy, and only the economy.

Guests:

Alexis Simendinger, White House correspondent for the National Journal

Ed Goeas, Republican pollster

and Mark Penn, Democratic campaign consultant.

Political pundits have declared that this is the new battleground upon which the upcoming midterm elections will be fought. Pollsters and strategists are trying to predict the unpredictable.

For close to 50 years she blew smoke. Marlene Dietrich stretched those long legs and whispered her sultry come-hithers in a voice that mesmerized men and women from vaudeville to U.S. Army stages and those smoky cinematic “mises-en-scene” that still define an era. And now Berlin, the city that shunned Marlene Dietrich as a traitor, has issued a formal apology on the 100th anniversary of her birth, accepting, even admiring, her wartime refusal to grace the screen for the Nazis. Years after her death, Marlene Dietrich remains hot. Film students study her, festivals celebrate her. Cigarette smoke from those first talking movies still hangs in the stage light, her electric cloud.

Guests:

Klaus Eder, film critic for the German daily Handelsblatt and for German public radio

Mary Desjardins, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Dartmouth College and organizer of “Marlene at 100: An International Conference”

and Patrice Petro, Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and author of “Aftershocks of the New.”

“There are terrorists living among us.” So says a coalition of interest groups including loggers, miners, farmers and developers who regularly confront environmental activists. But are they? Are they terrorists? According to new legislation, the brazen confrontations of the suffragists and the principled disobedience of the civil rights movement could all be termed terrorism. This week in California, the definition will be tested in court. The Star Wars 17, Greenpeace activists facing felony charges for interfering with missile tests, are going to trial in a nation where the old rules of “what was acceptable” are out, amidst a new atmosphere of “what won’t be tolerated.”

Guests:

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder of Partnership for Civil Justice in Washington, DC

Teresa Platt, executive director for Fur Commission USA

Andrea Durbin, National Campaign Director for Greenpeace

and Dave Barbarash, spokesperson for Animal Liberation Front. Environmental Protest, the Patriot Act and what, if anything, is civil, in disobedience.

We have two forms of English, written and spoken, period. Not so, says a prominent linguist. There’s a new form in town, that he calls “Netspeak.” In the minds of many, it’s little more than linguistic vandalism, online expression where grammar is gone and spelling is superfluous. David Crystal, the editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia database says, in fact, we’re on the brink of the biggest revolution in language ever. Now, if you don’t use the letters AWHFY in regular communication to ask your correspondents “are we having fun yet”, and in case you’re not deep in the land of Furry Mucks speaking moo-code, TMOT, that is “trust me on this,” this change in the language affects even those who don’t, on a regular basis, logon.

Guests:

David Crystal, Honorary Professor of English Language Studies at the University of Wales, Bangor, and author of “Language and the Internet” and John McWhorter, associate professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, and author of “The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable about American English” and “Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America.”

It’s a bad day to be banking in Buenos Aires. The new president is announcing an economic plan designed to save the country from political and financial collapse. But, while the plan will make many economists happy, it is also likely to wipe out 30, perhaps 40 percent of the savings of many Argentines. Over the past month, people across that country have rioted over less. Argentina, once the economic pride of Latin America, is undergoing political upheaval and potential chaos.

More than 50 years ago, Juan Domingo Peron came to power by rallying the descamisados, the poor shirtless ones. Today, the new president, Eduardo Duhalde, will try to convince another generation that there’s a way to keep people from losing their shirts again.

Guests:

Ian Vasquez, Director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute

Thomas Catan, reporter for the Financial Times

Paul Bluestein, reporter for the Washington Post

and Steven Levitsky, Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University.