Students at a pre-school in Hong Kong June 11, 2009. Hong Kong's government has ordered all kindergartens and primary schools closed for two weeks after a dozen students tested positive for the swine flu in the territory. (AP)
Swine Flu Pandemic
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The World Health Organization today called swine flu a pandemic – meaning the flu, which emerged in Mexico in April, is spreading globally at a sustained rate. So far, swine flu has killed more than 140 of the nearly 28,000 people who have contracted it. Dr. Robert Webster, a flu expert at Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, is our guest.
Glimmers of Hope or Dangers Ahead?
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President Obama says he sees signs that his economic policies are beginning to bear fruit. Other analysts warn that the economy is still at the brink. We’ll speak with Greg Ip, economics editor for The Economist, who says that in either case, the government still has to figure out how to get out of its multi-trillion dollar stake in everything from car companies to banks without causing panic.
Feeling the Pain in Laos
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Four decades later, evidence of the US war in Vietnam is still all over the place, and it’s exploding. Heavy and steady U.S. bombings of North Vietnamese supply routes through the neighboring country of Laos left behind countless un-detonated cluster bombs which are killing and maiming innocent villagers all these years later. The BBC’s Jill McGivering has the story.
The Digital Switch… and GM’s Image Control
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A quick reminder that midnight Friday, broadcast television stations will switch over from analog to digital… Then: Reinvention is the name of GM’s new ad campaign. The auto giant is using TV, print and the internet to assure consumers that GM will emerge from bankruptcy stronger than ever. We look at the current campaign and some commercials from GM’s glory days with Here & Now media analyst, John Carroll.
Wickett’s Remedy
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We revisit a conversation with Myla Goldberg. Her 2005 novel “Wickett’s Remedy” centers around Lydia Wickett, a young nurse working in Boston during the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Music from the show
- Peter Dixon, “Nagog Woods”
- Ahmad Jamal, “Patterns”
- Sigur Ros, “Nybatteri”
- The Wee Trio, “About a Girl”
- J.S. Bach, “Sonata for Violin Solo No. 1 in G minor” performed by Henryk Szeryng
With all due respects, but the 1918 pandemic started not in Europe but here in the United States at Fort RIley, Kansas, amongst the very crowded barracks of young soldiers who got sick and weren’t used to such close quarters. It also appeared in Boston. The flu then traveled to Europe with those same soldiers, incubated in the dreadful conditions of the trenches in WWI and came back and by the time it reappeared in the U.S. and spread world wide, It had become something much different and very deadly indeed.
Posted by Mary Mendoza, on June 11th, 2009 at 3:30 pmThe trenchant character of today’s production is deserving of commendation, arresting the listener’s interest from its first minute of report on the present influenza threat to conclusion with consideration of that disease as the subject of fiction, encompassing telling discussion of economics both general and specific, and startling report from the BBC correspondent on the implausibly current effects of artifacts from war long past.
Posted by Paul Egan, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:50 pmThe sedative effect of the aforementioned was much needed by anyone who had heard the hours of ON POINT earlier, what with its interviewees’ zany language including such as, “book walk,” “blend option,” and “vision quest.” After some time I believe I was able to decipher the latter as, “pursuit of knowledge and experience so as to form an outlook on life,” but if these non-locutions constitute the language of those who are judged to have something worthwhile to broadcast and to publish, then it is no wonder that this civilization is in trouble, more so when the second hour offers a fellow telling the world about his fatherhood. Who cares? If one or more of his offspring have in the elapse of half a century from now achieved note as equivalents of Darwin, Freud, or Einstein, then perhaps the “father” would have something of value to say.