Aired 09/03/09 Today I look at security strategy and planning with Thomas Barnett, an expert on how globalization is transforming warfare whom US News & World Report calls, "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time." THOMAS BARNETT has been a senior adviser to military and civilian leaders in a range of offices, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Central Command and Special Operations Command. From November 2001 to June 2003, he advised the Pentagon on transforming military capabilities to meet future threats. Barnett also led the five-year HYPERLINK "http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/projects/newrulesset/nrs_index.html"NewRuleSet.Project on how globalization is transforming warfare. In his book HYPERLINK "http://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-New-Map-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0425202399/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9598594-4856004?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180360844&sr=8-1"THE PENTAGON'S NEW MAP: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, Barnett presents concrete, world-changing strategies for transforming the US military -- adrift in the aftermath of the Cold War and 9/11 -- into a two-tiered power capable not only of winning battles, but of promoting and preserving international peace. He is author also of HYPERLINK "http://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-Action-Future-Worth-Creating/dp/0425211746/ref=sr_1_2/002-9598594-4856004?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180361200&sr=1-2"BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION: A Future Worth Creating and writes regular columns for HYPERLINK "http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/articles/esquire.htm"Esquire.

Aired 08/26/08 CRAIG VENTER is a remarkable and entrepreneurial scientist. As such, he asks huge questions, takes on huge challenges, and has achieved huge successes. Growing up in California, VENTER was an unremarkable student, with little interest in his schoolwork and even less motivation to complete his education. But the Vietnam War draft led to being a Navy medic, which piqued his interest in science and medicine, and jump-started his education. He received advanced degrees and established himself as a gifted and outspoken scientist. At the National Institutes of Health he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and his own research institute in 1995 sequenced the first genome of a living species in history, the bacterium. This success led to the dauntingly more ambitious goal of the entire human genome—billions of letters of genetic code that would test the limits of both human and computation abilities. He announced he'd do it more quickly and for far less money than the government sponsored Human Genome Project's prediction for completion—a goal he fulfilled in 2001. http://www.jcvi.org/

Aired 08/19/08 GERALD CELENTE accurately forecast the Iraqi War quagmire, the last two recessions, the Dot-Com meltdown, and the 1987 world stock market crash. As far back as 1993 he predicted that a new Crusades would be raging at the dawn of the new millennium. GERALD CELENTE's latest trends alert just released looks back from the year 2012. The streets are teeming with the homeless, helpless and jobless. Major cities look like Calcutta. Neither Big Brother's surveillance, corporate security squads, or angry vigilantes can stop the pandemic crime wave. Even gated communities provide no sure sanctuary; the rich have become the targets of choice for kidnappers, gangs and organized criminals. Food is plentiful if you can afford it, but dangerous to eat unless you grow your own or get it from reliable sources. After years of drought and mismanagement, water shortages have reached crisis levels in much of the world.

Aired 08/12/08 Hunter Lovins is the founder and President of Natural Capitalism, Inc. and Natural Capitalism Solutions, a non-profit in Eldorado Springs, Colorado. A professor at Presidio School of Management's MBA in Sustainable Management program, she has co-authored several books including NATURAL CAPITALISM: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and 2006 CLIMATE PROTECTION MANUAL FOR CITIES. Trained as a sociologist and lawyer, Hunter co-founded the California Conservation Project (Tree People), and Rocky Mountain Institute, which she led for 20 years. Named millennium Hero for the Planet by Time Magazine, she received the Right Livelihood Award, and the Leadership in Business Award.

Aired 08/05/08 Currently editor of The Washington Post's Outlook section and formerly the Post's Los Angeles bureau chief, John Pomfret lived and worked in China off-and-on for a decade - as a student, an AP reporter and the Post's chief in Beijing - and was eyewitness to the '89 Tiananmen Square protests. He has been a foreign correspondent for 15 years, covering big wars and small in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq, southwestern Turkey and northeastern Iran. In 2003, Pomfret was awarded the Osborne Elliot Award for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society.