Aired 12/23/08 Charities may operate with the noblest of intentions - but according to DAN PALLOTTA, they are hampered from the very start by an irrational set of rules and assumptions. By barring or discouraging charities from wielding the most effective tools of capitalism, he insists, we limit their ability to fight the social problems they were formed to tackle on a truly significant scale. UNCHARITABLE goes where no other book on the nonprofit sector has dared to tread. Where other texts suggest ways to optimize performance inside the existing paradigm, Uncharitable suggests that the paradigm itself is the problem and calls into question our fundamental canons about charity. Pallotta argues that society's nonprofit ethic acts as a strict regulatory mechanism on the natural economic law. It creates an economic apartheid that denies the nonprofit sector critical tools and permissions that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint (e.g., no risk-reward incentives, no profit, counterproductive limits on compensation, and moral objections to the use of donated dollars for anything other than program expenditures. http://www.danpallotta.com

Aired 12/23/08 Prohibition has failed -- again. Instead of treating the demand for illegal drugs as a market, and addicts as patients, policymakers the world over have boosted the profits of drug lords and fostered narcostates that would frighten Al Capone. "Harm reduction," a smarter drug control regime that values reality over rhetoric, is rising to replace the "war" on drugs. Reducing drug use is not nearly as important as reducing the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with both drug misuse and failed prohibitionist policies. With respect to legal drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, harm reduction means promoting responsible drinking and designated drivers, or persuading people to switch to nicotine patches, chewing gums, and smokeless tobacco. With respect to illegal drugs, it means reducing the transmission of infectious disease through syringe-exchange programs, reducing overdose fatalities by making antidotes readily available, and allowing people addicted to heroin and other illegal opiates to obtain methadone.

Aired 12/16/08 After 3.8 billion years of R&D, failures are fossils. The conscious emulation of life's genius is a sustainable survival strategy for the human race. Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example of this "innovation inspired by nature." The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. We are learning how to grow food like a prairie, build ceramics like an abalone, create color like a peacock, self-medicate like a chimp, compute like a cell, and run a business like a hickory forest. Learn more at www.biomimicryinstitute.org and www.asknature.org Janine Benyus' luscious 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature is unique and profound. In the book, she not only invents a new field that she has named biomimicry, but she inverts the way we all think about design - the alchemy that turns intention into action. Benyus draws her design inspiration from nature's wisdom, not people's cleverness. Some 3.8 billion years of evolution have exposed the design flaws of roughly 99% of nature's creations - all recalled by the Manufacturer. The 1% that have survived can teach powerful lessons about how things should be built if they're to last. For example, nature's design genius has led to the creation of bat-inspired ultrasonic canes for the blind, synthetic sheets that collect water from mist and fog as desert beetles do, and paint that self-cleans like a lotus leaf. Little plastic-film patches have been designed using adhesiveless gecko-foot technology, so that carpet tiles can be stored in a big roll, but also easily removed. Equally promising, we'll soon make solar cells like leaves, supertough ceramics that resemble the inner shells of abalone, and underwater glue that mimics the natural as forests. Biomimicry isn't biotechnology. Biomimicry learns and emulates how spiders make silk; biotechnology transplants spiders' silk-making genes into goats, then sorts silk from milk and hopes the genes don't get loose. Biotechnology is smart kids in an oil depot with matches; biomimicry is wise adults in a rain forest with flashlights. Biotechnology is pure hubris; biomimicry is luminous humility - treating nature as model and mentor, cherished not as a mine to be stripped of its resources but as a teacher. Steering this design revolution is a centered, gentle, funny, lovely lady who lives in North America's Montana Rockies, observes deeply, writes with rare beauty, and lectures breathtakingly. By reorganizing the biological literature around function not organism - to reveal which organism knows how to solve your design problem - Benyus and her colleagues at the Biomimicry Guild and Biomimicry Institute in Montana are starting to help the world of the made work like, and live harmoniously with, the world of the born. This will change your life. And it may save the world. -- Amory B. Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute

Aired 12/09/08 Parag Khanna specialized in scenario and risk planning at the World Economic Forum, and conducted research on terrorism and conflict resolution at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2007, Khanna served as a senior geopolitical advisor to United States Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Senior Research Fellow and the Director of the Global Governance Initiative at the NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, Mr. Khanna leads an effort to find innovative strategies for governmental, corporate, and civil society collaboration to resolve pressing global problems and redefine diplomacy for the 21st century. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Harper's Magazine, Slate." His first book, THE SECOND WORLD: EMPIRES AND INFLUENCE IN THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER has been highly praised. His upcoming HOW TO RUN THE WORLD is on the future of diplomacy. http://www.paragkhanna.com

Aired 12/02/08 MARC DARROW M.D. is a Board Certified Physiatrist specializing in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles's, School of Medicine. Dr. Darrow emphasizes prolotherapy in his practice and teaches prolotherapy at UCLA. He is the author of several books including The Knee Source Book and Prolotherapy: Living Pain Free. His self-titled radio show can be heard on KRLA 870 AM in Southern California. Prolotherapy (short for "proliferation therapy") is one of many holistic treatments MARK DARROW utilizes in his practice. Proliferation, of course, means "rapid production." Prolotherapy rapidly produces cartilage and collagen, a naturally occurring protein in the body. Collagen is a necessary element for the formation of new connective tissue, the tissues that holds our skeletal infrastructure together. When benign natural substances are injected into precisely targeted areas of the body, known as "trigger points," they activate the body's natural healing process and stimulate the growth of new collagen and cartilage. This can rejuvenate damaged ligaments, tendons, muscle fascia and joint capsules responsible for most chronic pain. Learn more at www.jointrehab.com