Host Per Fagereng speaks with Silvia Boero, Professor of New Italian at Portland State University and scholar of Italian literature, about current Italian politics. 

Host Per Fagereng interviews Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and In Praise of Barbarians.

He discusses his latest article, "Living on the Ice Shelf, Humanity's Melt Down".

Davis says, "Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has
ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its
scientific obituary. This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the
141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the
Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of
London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column."

It turns out that the Holocene -- that recent inter-glacial warm interval
when we made ourselves at home on this planet -- is so all over. Welcome to the
Anthropocene, an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial
society as a geological force -- and get used to it.

In this post, Davis considers just how dire things are on our small,
warming planet (dire indeed!) and lays out in no uncertain terms just why those
who are hoping to rely on market mechanisms and carbon trading as a solution to
global warming are bound to be deeply disappointed.

Bruce Silverman hosts another installment of his occasional Answers Series. He speaks with Chris Luginbuhl of the International Dark Sky Association, www.darksky.org. 

Kayse Jama and Leigh Anne Kranz interview Judith Gelin of Portland's Society for Haitian Arts and Culture.