(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs Last Week

Here are the programs we’ve published in the last week, ranked in increasing order of listener ratings.

• Luther Ragin – Is Grantmaking Enough? (not enough votes to rate) Luther Ragin, Jr., Vice President of Investments for The F.B. Heron Foundation, explains how the mission-related investment approach can harness a foundation’s financial power to maximize its social return. From the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford.
• Mark Lynas – Global Warming (not enough votes to rate) Global climate change is seen by many as a hot political controversy. Journalist and author Mark Lynas argues that it is much more important than that. It is the whole of the human species versus the biosphere, requiring a collective species level response to resolve.
• Martinez Hewlett – Science and Theology (rated 3.3 by listeners) Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Martinez Hewlett, professor emeritus, molecular biology at University of Arizona, and the author of "Evolution from Creation to New Creation — Conflict, Conversations and Convergence. He’s looking at the relationship between science and theology.
• Jaime Sguerra – SOA for Competitive Advantage (3.7) Adopting a service-oriented architecture (SOA) can provide both technical and competitive advantages for an organization. Jaime Sguerra gives details of both the benefits and the challenges for Guardian Life in its transition to an SOA implementation. Sguerra outlines key reasons for doing this and how Guardian chose to deal with the challenges of: multiple platform support; distributed IT organizations; and lack of alignment between IT and the business centers.
• Gary McGraw – Software Security (4.0) Security is not a feature – it’s a requirement for today’s software. According to Gary McGraw, the good news about software security is that we know how to do it, but the bad news is that we aren’t. In this interview with Sondra Schneider, Dr. McGraw describes how to build secure software and what the security challenges are for the software industry.
• Daniel Dennett – Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (4.2) Dr. Moira Gunn interviews Daniel Dennett, professor of philosophy at Tufts University and author of "Breaking the Spell — Religion as a Natural Phenomenon." He looks at the emergence of religion throughout natural history and asks us to bring in science to study it.
• Cory Doctorow – Europe’s Coming Broadcast Flag (4.7) As many American innovators are pleased with the defeat of the broadcast flag in the United States and move on to other concerns, the television and motion picture industries have turned their attention to Europe as the next battleground in the copyright and infringement war. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cory Doctorow calls on open source innovators in Europe to fight for their rights as well.
• Carolyn Porco – Explorer’s Club (4.8) Answers about the origin of living organisms, planets, entire galaxies, all from one robotic space expedition? Perhaps. Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader, presents imagery and insight from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. In her talk, she takes the audience on a rapid fire, guided tour of Saturn’s rings and moons including the exciting discoveries of active geology, organic compounds, and surfaces that are "strangely Earth-like."

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is from 2004:

• David Brin Debates Brad Templeton David Brin debates Brad Templeton on "The Costs and Benefits of Transparency: How Far, How Fast, How Fair?" From the Accelerationg Change 2004 conference.