Tagged: hiking

It’s not news that government can get bogged down by layers of bureaucracy. The solution to cutting the red tape, says California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, is technology. He joins us to talk about his new book "Citizenville," and how to put technology to use to take citizens from observers to collaborators.

Access to HIV and TB treatment has been improving worldwide. The rate of new infections is going down. But tuberculosis remains deadly, especially for the poverty stricken — TB killed 1.4 million people in 2011. Luwiza Makukula was diagnosed with HIV and TB after her husband died in 2001. Not only was she sick, she was completely isolated. Today, she works with NGOs focused on treatment, care, and support for HIV/TB patients, including Zambia's Community Initiative for TB, HIV/AIDS and Malaria (CITAM+). Luwiza Makukula joins us.

When it comes to proper usage, the Grammar Police work overtime. Have you ever corrected another person’s grammar? How did that go over? Linguist Geoffrey Pullum has written widely on language and usage, from technical syntactic theory to a study called “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax." He joins us for a conversation about the constant struggle for grammatical excellence (or even just improvement) and the right and wrong way to encourage better sentence structure.

American history is full of stories of disenfranchised women who assert their rightful role in society and in so doing, open up the culture. Author Julie Otsuka’s family was interned following the bombing of Pearl Harbor; her father was arrested as a potential spy. She told that story in her award-winning first novel, “When the Emperor Was Divine.” Her second novel, “The Buddha in the Attic,” reaches farther back to explore the lives of brides sent from Japan to America between the wars, and the strain of traditional values in a nation that promised opportunity for all. The writer Julie Otsuka joins us.