Lisa Margonelli traveled thousands of miles from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away to try and understand how Americans can buy 10,000 gallons a second without giving it much thought.

Lisa Margonelli traveled thousands of miles from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. Along the way she stopped at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform. I jokingly call her book, Fast Fuel Nation. She calls it Oil on the Brain.

I spoke with Lisa about her book, the economy of gas stations, and how oil money can hurt a developing country like Chad.

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The disease could actually lower the average life expectancy of Americans for the first time in more than a century. According to the CDC, one in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetime, and a child found to have Type 2 diabetes at age 10 will see his or her life shortened by 19 years.

”Either we fall apart or we stop this,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. ‘I will go out on a limb,” he said, ”and say, 20 years from now people will look back and say: ‘What were they thinking? They’re in the middle of an epidemic and kids are watching 20,000 hours of commercials for junk food.’ ”

According to the Office of Minority Health and the American Diabetes Association, the threat of diabetes is related to ethnicity and economic class. African Americans are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as non-Hispanic whites. One in every four African-American women over 55 has diabetes. And African Americans are 2.1 times more likely as non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes.

Similar trends are true for Hispanics who, on average, are 1.7 times as likely to have diabetes as whites, and for American Indians and Alaska Natives, who are 2.2 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites of similar age to have diabetes.

Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, which accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetics, is pretty clearly a disease of diet and lifestyle. And that’s the good news. According to Neal Barnard, M.D. and founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a change in diet can not only prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes, but can reverse the disease and even get some Type 2 diabetics off insulin.

NEAL BARNARD, M.D., is the author of several books:Eat Right, Live Longer; Food for Life; and his latest, Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs.

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Terry McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee and chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, on the Democratic vision of America and why we have yet to achieve it.

McAuliffe claims he does what he does so the average American can enjoy a chance at the American dream. A self-described Irish storyteller, he’s written a lively book about his political career, the kind an average American can enjoy.

The book, “What a Party,” is a fun read. But I also wonder what Terry McAuliffe has learned in the trenches about why that vision of an America that serves the people has been so difficult to achieve? Why has it been so hard to win elections with that laudable objective? And why so hard to implement when in power? Think universal healthcare.

After years of fundraising for Democrats, McAuliffe chaired the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, then served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005. For the first time the DNC raised more than the RNC — over $535 million.

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An interview with author Thomas Homer-Dixon about the social, political, economic and technological crises we face and how long we can sustain the lifestyle that brought them about.

Thomas Homer-Dixon compares our current situation to driving too fast along a country road in a dense fog. Some ignore the fog and keep their foot pressed on the accelerator, but most of us feel like fairly helpless passengers on this wild ride.

In 1870, the average income in the world’s richest country was about nine times greater than that in the world’s poorest country. By 1990 it was forty-five times greater.

In 2006, the world’s 793 billionaires held combined wealth of $2.6 trillion. (If liquidated in 2006), this wealth could have hired the poorest half of the world’s workers — the 1.4 billion workers who earn a few dollars a day — for almost two years.

Between 1977 and 1996, the weight of the average American cheeseburger grew over 25 percent, and the volume of the average soft drink grew more than 50 percent. About 40 percent of the world’s population now lacks sufficient water for basic sanitation and hygiene, and nearly one out of every five people does not have enough to drink.

Between 2000 and the beginning of 2005, China’s daily oil imports soared 140 percent. Saudi Arabia, has pumped a total of 46 billion barrels of oil in the past 17 years, without admitting to any decrease in its stated reserve figure of about 260 billion barrels.

Since 1950, industrialized fishing has reduced the total mass of large fish in the world’s oceans by 90 percent. The atmosphere’s level of carbon dioxide is the highest in 650,000 years.

Is a deadly crash inevitable?

Thomas Homer-Dixon is director of the Trudeau Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of Toronto. He is the author of “The Ingenuity Gap” and his newest book “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.”

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In the last few years, Americans have seen the harm that results when political decisions are made in the name of religion. Now, the non-believers are fighting back.

During the recent holiday season, there were prominent articles about atheism in The New York Times and the UK’s Financial Times and Telegraph, and a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered. Richard Dawkins debated the existence of God on the London chat show, The Sunday Edition. Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion was a top 10 bestseller on the lists of both the New York Times and LA Times, number one at Amazon UK and Amazon Canada, and number two at Amazon.com. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris was recently an equally successful bestseller.

A group calling itself “The Rational Response Squad,” has launched The Blasphemy Challenge, a campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce belief in the God of Christianity. Participants who videotape their blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of The God Who Wasn’t There, a number one bestselling independent documentary at Amazon.com.

Richard Dawkins holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term “meme.” In January 2006, Dawkins hosted on the UK’s Channel 4 a two-part documentary on the dangers of religion, entitled (against his wishes, I might add) The Root of All Evil. His newest book, The God Delusion, is an international bestseller.

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