First, the role of food in history- as a weapon of war, of empire and of building societies. With Tom Standage. [ dur: 21 mins. ]

* Tom Standage is a journalist and author of The Edible History of Humanity.

Then, what is the relationship between minerals such as oil, diamonds and gold and conflict, authoritarianism and poverty? This week’s scholars have spent years studying how these so-called extractive industries, mining and drilling, impact people’s lives, their governance and the environment throughout the world. How can countries so rich in mineral wealth remain mired in so much poverty? [ dur: 33 mins. ]

* Jeffery Mantz is Program Director of Cultural Anthropology at the National Science Foundation. His publications include Blood Diamonds of the Digital Age: Coltan and the Eastern Congo, Do Cellular Phones Dream of Civil War? e Mystication of Production and the Consequences of Technology Fetishism in the Eastern Congo and How a Huckster Becomes a Custodian of Market Morality: Traditions of Flexibility in Exchange in Dominica

* Michael Ross is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA. His books include The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations and Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia.

* Suzana Sawyer is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Her books include Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador and The Politics of Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations and the State.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.