Full Program

Part 1

We begin with comparisons being made to the current unfolding crisis in Ukraine and the diplomatic blunders and political macho on display during the so-called “guns of August” period that led to World War 1, the 100^th anniversary of which will be observed this August. Christopher Clark, a professor of Modern European History at Cambridge University who is the author of the new book “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914”, joins us to discuss the possibility of a civil war in Ukraine igniting a wider conflict in Europe, while contested piles of rock in the South China sea also become the focus of a growing confrontation between China and other Asian nations with whom the U.S. has alliances.

Part 2

Then Jonathan Stern joins us to discuss whether a renewed gas war between Russia and Ukraine could spark an actual war. He is Chairman and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’ Natural Gas Research Program and the EU speaker for the EU-Russia Gas Advisory Council. We examine the murky role of middlemen in deals involving the Russian monopoly Gazprom and shadowy Ukrainian figures who get gas at reduced prices from Gazprom then resell it to the Ukrainian state energy company at a markup, making some of them overnight billionaires.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the just-discovered so-called “Goldilocks Planet” with Steven Kane, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University who is among the team of international researchers who recently discovered a planet in a distant solar system similar to earth, that could support life. We assess the significance of finding a planet that is not too hot and not too cold but, since it is 500 light years away from earth, may not be a useful alternative to our lonely planet.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an agreement just reached in Geneva between the foreign ministers of the U.S., Russia, the EU and Ukraine that may at least temporarily end the crisis in Ukraine and bring Russia and Ukraine back from the brink of a shooting war. John Quigley, who has dealt with conflicts between Russia and Ukraine on behalf of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, the same organization who are now supposed to oversee and monitor this agreement, joins us to examine the agreement. He is a professor emeritus of law at Ohio State University and was a research scholar at Moscow State University and we will look into who will disarm those occupying the buildings and whether Putin, who broke the 1994 Budapest Agreement when he took over Crimea, will live up to this agreement.

Part 2

Then we assess the backlash and unintended consequences of Putin’s intimidation of Ukraine with Dr. Howard Hall, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair in Nuclear Security and Natalie Manayeva, Research Assistant in the Institute for Nuclear Security at the University of Tennessee. They have an article with Dean Rice at CNN “Is Ukraine About to go Nuclear Again?” and we discuss whether, since two of Ukraine’s political parties “Strike” and “Fatherland” have introduced a bill in Parliament to revoke the country’s 1994 signature to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Ukraine will follow Putin’s advice in his New York Times message to the American people that “if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security…if you have the bomb, nobody will touch you”

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Dan Fagin who just won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his new book “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation”. We discuss this superb scientific detective story and great example of investigative journalism about corporate greed, government neglect and courageous citizens who refused to keep silent until the truth was exposed about who and what was causing cancer clusters in a New Jersey seaside town.