April 21 - Comparisons to Today's Crises and the 1914 "Guns of August"; Could the Gas War Between Russia and Ukraine Spark an Actual War?; The Just-Discovered "Goldilocks" Planet

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with comparisons being made to the current unfolding crisis in Ukraine and the diplomatic blunders and political macho on display during the so-called “guns of August” period that led to World War 1, the 100^th anniversary of which will be observed this August. Christopher Clark, a professor of Modern European History at Cambridge University who is the author of the new book “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914”, joins us to discuss the possibility of a civil war in Ukraine igniting a wider conflict in Europe, while contested piles of rock in the South China sea also become the focus of a growing confrontation between China and other Asian nations with whom the U.S. has alliances.

Part 2

Then Jonathan Stern joins us to discuss whether a renewed gas war between Russia and Ukraine could spark an actual war. He is Chairman and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’ Natural Gas Research Program and the EU speaker for the EU-Russia Gas Advisory Council. We examine the murky role of middlemen in deals involving the Russian monopoly Gazprom and shadowy Ukrainian figures who get gas at reduced prices from Gazprom then resell it to the Ukrainian state energy company at a markup, making some of them overnight billionaires.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the just-discovered so-called “Goldilocks Planet” with Steven Kane, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University who is among the team of international researchers who recently discovered a planet in a distant solar system similar to earth, that could support life. We assess the significance of finding a planet that is not too hot and not too cold but, since it is 500 light years away from earth, may not be a useful alternative to our lonely planet.