Why half the world's languages may disappear in this century
Release Date: 04/08/2018
On China's New Silk Road Podcast Preview
Whose Century Is It?
If you like Whose Century Is It?, check out this preview of my new limited series podcast with the Global Reporting Centre, On China's New Silk Road. I've teamed up with great local journalists on almost every continent to explore how China's global ambition is seen around the world, and at the impact Chinese investments in one of the biggest global infrastructure efforts ever, are having on the ground.
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Modern slavery in your grocery cart
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Next time you sip your tea or bite into a bar of chocolate, or load up your grocery cart with other treats, spare a thought for the underpaid or unpaid workers who made it possible. Modern slavery comes in many guises, and politics professor Genevieve LeBaron of the University of Sheffield in England, who's done field studies on the subject, is here to tell you how it happens, and what you might want to look out for as you shop.
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Wizards, Prophets & the Fate of the Earth
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We're pretty clever, we humans, but we ignore unintended consequences at our peril -- like climate change, after a couple of centuries of fossil fuel-driven growth and innovation. Can we innovate our way out of that growing crisis, or must we conserve? Or both? Charles Mann, author of 1491, 1493 and The Wizard & the Prophet, tells the tale of these two competing approaches through the lives of the 'wizard,' Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, and the 'prophet,' ecologist William Vogt.
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Sci Fi Future
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In the imagined world of novelist Eliot Peper's near-term future in such books as Bandwidth and Borderless, San Diego's burning, polar ice caps have melted, everyone's got their heads in their digital feeds, and a powerful social media company called Commonwealth controls --well, seems like just about everything. Eliot talks to host Mary Kay Magistad about writing speculative fiction, about the value of sci fi in helping us all think through current crises and possible futures, and about what sci fi has seen coming, and what it's gotten just plain wrong.
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Why half the world's languages may disappear in this century
Whose Century Is It?
Embedded in each language is a reflection of life as lived by its speakers, over thousands of years. When a language disappears, that's all lost. As the world becomes more connected, and dominant cultures push their own languages for wider use, half of the world's 7,000 languages could be gone by century's end. The good news is, linguists are on it, like this episode’s guest Laura Welcher, who oversees the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project in San Francisco.
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Ethnic cleansing, human tragedy & the future few saw coming for Burma
Whose Century Is It?
Not so long ago, Myanmar (Burma) was a good news story, with democratic reforms, a booming economy and falling poverty rates. Then came ugly military-led attacks on Rohingya Muslims, who killed, raped and burned houses, and forced some 700,000 Rohingyas to flee to camps in Bangladesh, with little pushback from pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. What does this mean for Myanmar's democratic future? Khin Ohmar, an exiled Burmese human rights and democracy activist for 30 years, shares her thoughts.
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We'd All Love to Change the World
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What happens when you mix the efficiency and energy of the entrepreneurial world with the idealism of philanthropy? A growing number of social entrepreneurs say, you can create a world of good. But just like real entrepreneurs, more such efforts fail than succeed, and both smarts and resilience are needed for the long haul. Jonathan Lewis, author of The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur and founder of MCE Social Capital and cofounder of Copia, shares what he's learned over years as a social entrepreneur.
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China's counterintuitive bet
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Can China become a global leader in innovation by protecting state-run companies from competition at home, while acquiring innovative companies abroad? Can that innovation be sustained in a society where free speech and intellectual inquiry is sharply curtailed? China's leaders are betting on it, and in this episode, journalist-turned-business analyst Jim McGregor, chairman of APCO Greater China, mulls over the odds.
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Leading -- and following -- in turbulent times
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Leaders like Donald Trump often rise at times of unsettling change. But what if that's exactly the wrong kind of leadership to face the challenges of this century? Futurist Bob Johansen argues the era ahead will be one with less hierarchy, more shared and shifting leadership, where clarity and agility will be rewarded, while rigid certainty will be punished.
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In the Amazon
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Lush, vast and rich in biodiversity, the Amazon is the lungs of the planet. But it also attracts miners, loggers, farmers and developers, including foreigners, most recently Chinese, who have, over the past 40 years, contributed to reducing forest cover by some 20 percent. But at what cost to the planet? Host Mary Kay Magistad travels in the Amazon with Jon Watts, environment editor with The Guardian newspaper, to explore the complicated present and uncertain future of the Amazon.
info_outlineEmbedded in each language is a reflection of life as lived by its speakers, over thousands of years. And when a language disappears, that embedded knowledge is lost. As the world grows more connected, and as dominant cultures push their own languages for wider use – think English, Chinese and Arabic, for starters -- languages are disappearing. As many as half the world's 7,000 languages may be gone by the end of the century. The good news is that linguists are on it, like this episode’s guest Laura Welcher, who oversees the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project in San Francisco.