February 13 – A Possible Iranian Role in the North Korea Bomb Test; The “Merchants of Doubt” Behind Global Warming Denial; Was the Pope’s Resignation His Most Important Act?

Written by

Full Program	LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM
Part 1	We begin with the fallout from the third and latest North Korean nuclear test and discuss the possibility of Iranian involvement. Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons” and “Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats”, joins us to assess how close North Korea is to deploying a nuclear-tipped missile that could target the United States.
Part 2	Then we look into President Obama’s initiatives announced in his State of the Union address to meet the challenges of global warming and how they contrast with the Republican response issued by Senator Marco Rubio who, in his rebuttal, derisively dismissed climate change, saying “our government can’t control the weather”. Naomi Oreskes, a historian and scientist at the University of California, San Diego and author of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”, joins us to discuss what Obama can achieve in the face of Republican obstruction and denial.
Part 3	Then finally we hear from a former priest, civil rights worker, anti-war activist and community organizer James Carroll, the author of “Practicing Catholic” and “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The Ancient City That Ignited the Modern World”. His latest column at the Boston Globe is “Pope’s Resignation Was His Most Important Act” and we discuss the significance of Pope Benedict’s resignation that places the Catholic hierarchy in, not above, the world of “the flesh and the devil” we all live in as mortals.