More Troops to Afghanistan

U.S. soldiers patrol through the heart of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009. (AP)

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President Obama outlined his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan last night. We’ll have analysis of that strategy from several guests.

• Bing West is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and a retired Marine captain who served in Vietnam. He’s also a journalist who has made several trips to Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Erik Malmstrom served with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, in Afghanistan in 2006-2007. He’s now a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
• Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University who is also a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam, and is a longstanding critic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Washington Post editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who covers the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His book on Iraq is “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.”

Saving Wetlands in Louisiana

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Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, coastal Louisiana has lost more than 300 square miles of wetlands. And marine biologists say those two hurricanes might have caused less damage if some of the Louisiana wetlands hadn’t already disappeared. The BBC’s Matthew Wells visited the New Orleans area and has our report.

The DARPA Challenge

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This Saturday, DARPA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will release 10 moored weather balloons at fixed locations across the country. The point: to find them. The competition is open to the public and offers a $40,000 prize to the first person, or group, who can identify the GPS coordinates of all the balloons. Our guest, Erica Briscoe, a research engineer at Georgia Tech, who will be competing on Friday, talks to us about the Challenge, and tells us why it may be harder than it sounds.

Google Zeitgeist

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What are people across the country googling? The search giant just released their annual report on Internet search trends, and John Abell, New York Bureau Chief for Wired.com joins us with the results.

Food History

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When it comes to a defining moment in the history of food in the U.S. would the publication of the first cook book or the building if the Erie Canal classify as the more pivotal moment? We get some surprising answers to that question from Andrew Smith, author of the new book, “Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.”

Music from the show

• Air, “Mike Mills”
• Fred Hirsch, “Desafinado”
• Nena, “99 Red Baloons”