• BBC interview with Eide
• Taliban conflict
• Richard Holbrooke on the fight against the Taliban

• BBC coverage

Rick Hansen carrying the Olympic flame into BC Place Stadium (Photo: Nicholas Wolaver)

• BBC coverage
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Many of the most popular high-tech gadgets you can get these days involve easy-to-use touch screens. They’re fun to use, but making those touch screens isn’t as fun as using them. Kathleen McLaughlin is a reporter with Global Post based in China. She’s found that in at least one Chinese factory that produces touch screens, workers were exposed to a toxic solvent that violated local codes and was used without proper safety equipment.Host Jeb Sharp speaks with Kathleen McLaughlin. Download MP3 (Photo: Mikael Häggström)

• Global Post: Kathleen McLaughlin’s series “Silicon Sweatshops”
• Photo Gallery: Silicon Sweatshops
• The World: Lead recycling in Senegal
• The World’s Technology Podcast

We’ve got some really thought-provoking stories in the podcast this week. We start with an extended version (that’s why we love the podcast…no time constraints!) with Kathleen McLaughlin, a China-based reporter for the online outfit Global Post. Kathleen’s been working on a series of stories tracking where some of the goodies that make your high-tech gadgets are sourced. In this interview, she talks about a factory she found where employees are suffering health problems because a solvent called hexane, which is used in the making of those groovy touch screens we all know and love. Here are some relevant links for that story:

• Global Post: Kathleen McLaughlin’s series “Silicon Sweatshops”
• Photo Gallery: Silicon Sweatshops
• The World: Lead recycling in Senegal
• The World’s Technology Podcast

Also, we once again sample some of the BBC’s SuperPower series on the Internet. The BBC’s Chris Vallance explores all sides of the argument surrounding the Wikileaks website, and delves into the world of online activism, or “hacktivism” as some call it.

And we end with a series of four short opinion pieces on the future of the global Internet. You can find out more about all four of the contributors here.

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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins about the many young soldiers he’s met while covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Filkins has written a personal essay on young soldiers at war for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.

• “Lost Soldiers” by Dexter Filkins
• Slideshow: the shrine down the hall

• SIPRI report: China prepares for an ice-free Arctic

A few years back, a classical Indian dance guru crossed paths with a young tap dancer. They met at an event called “The Festival of the Feet.” The two wound up improvising together on stage and decided to join forces. This weekend, Pandit Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith celebrate the fifth anniversary of their project — Indian Jazz Suites — with the start of a new tour. Reporter Ruxandra Guidi has the story.

• Tour dates
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AFGHAN REPORT
VETERANS INTERVIEW

MUSIC:
SONG: Claro la Luna
ARTISTS: Silvia Perez Cruz and Ravid Goldschmidt
CD TITLE: Llama
CD LABEL: M & A Recordngs
CD #: MO70A

END TIME: 19:28

MUSIC:
SONG: Bosphorus Winds
ARTIST: Ensemble FisFuz
CD TITLE: Simsim
CD LABEL: Alula Records
CD #: ALU-1038

START TIME: 21:00

PARALYMICS INTERVIEW
OBAMA READER

END TIME: 29:29

MUSIC:
SONG: N’Teri
ARTIST: Lamine Konte
CD TITLE: La Kora du Senegal
CD LABEL: Arion

START TIME: 33:12

SILICON INTERVIEW
ARCTIC REPORT

GEO QUIZ

LATINO VOTE REPORT
GEO ANSWER (TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO)

END TIME: 48:34

MUSIC:
SONG: Hebden Bridge
ARTIST: Kila
CD TITLE: Luna Park
CD LABEL: World Village

START TIME: 50:00

BA STRIKE REPORT
GLOBAL HIT

END TIME: 58:13

We hear from two speakers of the language: first, my Dad, who remembers hardly any Irish these days but studied it at school for many years. Today, many decades later, he wishes he’d paid more attention. Then, a conversation with Manchán Magan, who made a documentary series for Irish TV about his attempt to travel around Ireland speaking only Irish. (That’s him in the picture, praying that he’ll meet someone who speaks Irish.) He was verbally abused in Dublin — a reaction Magan thinks has to do with the past, and feelings of guilt and shame. In Killarney, he asked people, in Irish, to help him rob a bank. In Galway, he sang filthy songs in public and was applauded by uncomprehending old ladies. He also tried — and failed — to buy food and clothes, and to hire a mechanic. Middle-aged Irish people like him, Magan says, never really were interested in keeping up their Irish skills. But the young are different: for them, learning Irish doesn’t have an agenda attached to it. So there may be hope yet for this language.

Then, it’s Alexander McCall Smith. His latest offering in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is a children’s book in the Scots language. McSmith and other participants in a BBC round-table program (also featured in the podcast) discuss books in translation. English is now so dominant and so widely understood, that many books written in English simply aren’t translated into the likes of Dutch, Danish or Swedish, let alone Scots. So, publication of this book in its translation a full year before it is published in the original English is a quite a statement from McCall Smith.

Finally, we profile hip-hop artist Boomer Da Sharpshooter. Boomer, who is ethnic Cambodian, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and raised in California. He grew up speaking English but now raps in Cambodia’s main language, Khmer. It’s not out of choice: in his late teens he was gang-banger, and was sent to prison on weapons offenses. On his release, the US deported him to Cambodia. That was seven years ago. Today, he’s a reformed character, and his Khmer raps are considerably softer in tone and content than his English ones used to be.

Download MP3