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World of Possibilities (Politics)

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  • Host: Mark Sommer
  • A World of Possibilities is an award-winning one hour weekly radio program that penetrates behind the headlines to uncover the deeper meanings of events. It offers in-depth analysis, informed commentary and an exploration of new approaches to our most challenging problems. Our aim is to open minds and inspire new possibilities.
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Riding the Tiger: Asia Ascending

Tue, Nov 3 Listen
China, India, Southeast Asia: Asia's high-octane economies, though impacted by the global recession, are on a long-term trajectory to expand their influence. Their energy and determination are challenging the economic supremacy of the United States not only in the region but wherever key natural resources are in play. China alone holds the commanding share of U.S. debt in a complex relationship that yokes the two economic titans together in a tense, unpredictable partnership. President Obama...

Tightrope in Teheran: Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Option

Tue, Oct 13 Listen
A disputed election, street demonstrations, open dissent from founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, brutal repression, revelations of a nuclear enrichment plant. Events that would have seemed unthinkable just months ago are now daily news. When candidate Barack Obama pledged to open unconditional negotiations with Iran, he could hardly have imagined they would take place in such a minefield. Located in one of the world's most volatile regions, Iran is bordered by Pakistan, Afghanistan...

Starting Out Right: Upgrading Early Childhood Education

Tue, Sep 29 Listen
We're just now finding out that the first few years of life do much to determine how the rest of it unfolds. That's a scary thought. For those who enjoy the good fortune of being born into affluence, no effort is spared to provide them with the advantages of high-priced childcare, private tutors, and diverse opportunities. But for a great many less advantaged kids and their struggling parents, the options are far more limited. They face a gauntlet of hurdles with few resources to overcome...

Detox! The Movement to Reform Chemicals Policy

Tue, Sep 15 Listen
It's not a very comfortable thought: We live, eat, and breathe in a complex brew of industrial chemicals, some eighty thousand of them. And all but a handful have never been tested to find out it they're safe. At the same time, all kinds of diseases and disabilities, ranging from autism to asthma, are on the rise. What, if any, connection might there be between chemical exposure and eventual disease or disability? We really don't know. The laws that regulate the use of chemicals in consumer...

Nuturing Creativity

Tue, Sep 1 Listen
It's often said that to be employable in a 21st century economy we'll all need to be wired to our computers and one another. Maybe so, but we'd still be missing the qualities of mind and heart that enable us to understand the world and get along with one another. In an information glutted culture, how do we cultivate empathy, ingenuity, and resilience?

Bombs Away

Tue, Aug 11 Listen
The cold war's been over for nearly twenty years, but the U.S. and Russia still aim thousands of nuclear tipped missiles at each other, ready to fire at a moments notice. Meanwhile, economies collapse, the climate cooks, militants terrorize, and none of these threats can be deterred by nuclear bombs. So why do we keep maintaining them, and at what cost?

Bad Medicine: Overusing Antibiotics in Meat Production

Tue, Jul 28 Listen
What part do we consumers play in driving the priorities of an industrial meat production system that puts cheap meat on our plates, but at rising costs to human health, animal welfare, and environmental integrity? Farmers have turned to feeding antibiotics to their animals to prevent outbreaks, but are they unwittingly selecting for the most virulent superbugs, while putting humans at risk?

Wasting Away

Tue, Jul 21 Listen
On both land and sea, human activities are inflicting damage on a scale that may well be irreversible. Our future is imperiled by the heedless pursuit of energy and development to feed a civilization that has still to learn to conserve as well as consume. Two winners of the prestigious TED Prize examine our impacts and urge us to embrace a conservation ethic to return vitality and diversity.

Game-Changing Innovation

Tue, Jul 7 Listen
The U.S. designs nifty iPhones and deadly weapons, but in measures that really matter, like education and green tech, we're being upstaged by other nations. In recent years, we have been systematically dis-investing in our collective capacity for innovation. Why is the engine of American ingenuity running off the rails, and what needs to be done to get us back on track?

Of Pigs and People

Tue, Jun 23 Listen
The indiscriminate use of antimicrobials in large-scale industrial meat production is building bacterial resistance to the most effective antibiotics on which our national and global health systems depend. Recorded largely on location on Midwestern hog and poultry farms, this program features interviews with farmers and others who are raising hogs by healthier and more humane ways.

Two Grains of Sand

Tue, Jun 9 Listen
Nature and Humanity are running off the rails and governments stand seemingly helpless before the juggernaut. Into the breach are stepping new players, inventing strategies to transform the way we do things, and they are forging surprising alliances in the process. Two initiatives are seeking to move the needle on urgent issues: one on climate change, the other on the global tea industry.

Crowd-Sourcing Innovation

Tue, Jun 2 Listen
There have always been brilliant innovators working outside established institutions. With the emergence of open systems of innovation made possible by the Internet, now a far wider range of individuals, teams and institutions can participate in the problem-solving process. Not only for technical challenges, but for those thorny social problems which have eluded the best minds of our time.

The Miner's Canary: First People's on Climate Change

Tue, May 26 Listen
Indigenous peoples, living closest to nature, feel the threat of climate change first. They have a potent message to deliver to the climate treaty negotiators meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. The climate is changing the way they've lived forever, so they're adapting in order to endure. Do the rest of us have the wisdom and ingenuity to change along with the changing climate?

Sick and Tired: The Movement for Paid Sick Days

Tue, May 12 Listen
The first advice given in response to any health emergency such as SARS, swine flu, etc., is to stay home if you feel yourself getting sick. But half of all working Americans can't afford to miss work. Most work in low wage jobs where close interaction with others is constant and unavoidable. 127 countries provide at least a week of paid sick days a year - but not the United States.

Open Source Science

Tue, May 5 Listen
The outbreak of potential pandemics has driven home the urgent need for more rapid responses to public health threats. In order to respond more effectively, we need to create a more open system for the exchange of vital health information. Medical and scientific research pioneers are laying the foundation for a global health commons to accelerate the pace and effectiveness of crucial discoveries.

Peace, Justice - or Both

Tue, Apr 21 Listen
Peace or Justice? That question takes on an anguished poignancy these days in war ravaged societies from Bosnia to Sierra Leone. Peace negotiators and human rights advocates struggle to end the bloodshed and obtain justice for the victims. How does this work in societies whose weak and often corrupt legal structures have been decimated by war?

Building an Innovation Ecosystem

Tue, Apr 7 Listen
Everywhere we look our systems are collapsing in terminal dysfunction. It's forcing us to reinvent the way we do just about everything. But the infrastructure in place to catalyze the kinds of breakthrough innovation we need is still haphazard and inefficient. What kinds of institutions and incentives need to be put in place to spur the innovations we most need to be more efficient and effective?

Putting Our Heads Together

Tue, Mar 31 Listen
The open source movement launched over the past few decades by computer programmers has morphed into a parallel "open innovation" movement. The emergence of cross-sectoral "distributed intelligence" points to the promise of broader and more inclusive networks as the brightest future for the kind of innovation that will be necessary to address our most urgent challenges.

Reviving the Forgotten Continent

Tue, Mar 17 Listen
To many Americans, Africa is a continent of universal, unmitigated suffering, plagued by disease, famine, misgovernance, poverty, and war. While there are more than enough such tragedies on the continent, those who know it well say there's an energy and resilience among Africans that enables them to make much of what little good fortune comes their way. Africa sits on some of the world's most precious mineral wealth. But foreign nations have historically plundered for their own benefit and...

Who's This Economy For?

Tue, Mar 3 Listen
As our savings plummet and our debts soar, many of us are starting to wonder not only when we'll get back on track, but whether the track we've been on all these years is the right one to follow. Author, economist and former labor secretary Robert Reich asserts that rather than resuscitate an unjust and unsustainable economy, we should reinvent it to meet a wider range of needs and possibilities.

Impunity and Accountability in Colombia

Tue, Feb 24 Listen
For more than 40 years, Colombia has been caught in the cross fire of "La Violencia": thousands dead, millions more driven from their homes. Impunity remains the law of the land. Now a series of tribunals and truth commissions are seeking to discover what really happened; to give victims a chance to express their anger and sorrow and perpetrators a chance to confess and serve time or be amnestied.

Fostering Ingenuity

Tue, Feb 10 Listen
If necessity is the mother of invention, there's certainly plenty of necessity to go around these days. But are we doing all we can to incubate the innovations we most urgently need? We'll learn about how to harness our collective genius to address our most urgent needs, and about new threats that could derail our best efforts.

Pan America's Promise

Tue, Jan 27 Listen
Over the decades, U.S. policies towards Latin America have lurched between intervention and apparent indifference, demonstrating its dominance while leaving a residue of resentment. Now, on both sides of the border, new hope emerges for an era of warmer relations. What have been the impacts of U.S. policy, and how are they likely to change in an era of renewed hope but severe economic distress?

Growing the Green Collar Economy

Tue, Jan 20 Listen
In hard times most of us are grateful for any job, but as we face increasing unemployment, poverty, and climate change, the Obama administration proposes to put thousands of Americans to work insulating homes and public buildings, installing solar panels, and reclaiming industrial wastelands. Majora Carter and Van Jones have helped place green collar jobs near the top of the national agenda.

Failing Our Way to a Success

Tue, Jan 6 Listen
At a moment when most all the systems that govern our lives have lost their grip on reality, we're forced to rethink and reinvent the way we do just about everything. Crucial to that transformation is learning how to innovate faster and better than ever before. In this weeks show, two leading students of innovation consider the pivotal role that experimentation plays in achieving eventual success.

Share Values or Shared Values: Re Thinking our Priorities

Tue, Dec 23 2008 Listen
Hard economic times aren't good for much, but they do get us thinking. As we sort through the wreckage of our private dreams, we ask ourselves how we could have done it differently - and how, given the chance, we might create an economy more equitable and reliable than the last one.

When the Music Stopped: Economy 2008

Tue, Dec 9 2008 Listen
It seemed the good times would never end. Pennies from heaven even rained down on Wal-Mart shoppers. Until one day in the fall of 2008, it all came crashing down. This week we sort through Wall Street's ruin and Main Street's rubble to find what went wrong, and what needs to be done to replace a system of brutal trade-off's between affluence and poverty, with a balance of shared prosperity.

Geektopia: Google's Innovation Culture

Tue, Nov 25 2008 Listen
Even in hard times, the search engine giant Google continues to boom while GM bites the dust. Is this another dot-com fantasy or could this culture of innovation, informality and antic spirit be a harbinger of the next economy? We take a tour of the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, and sit down with Alfred Spector for an intriguing conversation about how to grow a culture of innovation.

The Power in Your Person: Dolores Huerta's Farmworker Odyssey

Tue, Oct 28 2008 Listen
She raised 11 children and co-founded the United Farmworkers Union with Cesar Chavez. At age 78 she still criss-crosses the country to ignite her singular passion for social justice among youth two generations younger. Dolores Huerta is on a restless path to inspire the "Power in Your Person", tempered by a healthy sense of humor about herself and the world.

Green Purchasing

Tue, Oct 21 2008 Listen
What we buy individually is small potatoes beside the quantities purchased by large firms and governments. Little noticed by the rest of us, the market for green products is being decisively boosted by the deliberate choices of city governments, universities, hospitals, and corporations. Filling the supply chain with "green" products can benefit both the environment and the bottom line.

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