One Name, Two Fates

Wes Moore has made the most of his opportunities. He was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. His military career led him to work as a Special Assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice at the State Department. He was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

About ten years ago Wes Moore learned about another man who had seemingly made as many bad choices as Moore had made good ones. That man's name was also Wes Moore. The other Wes Moore was involved in the tragic murder of a police officer. In reading about the crime and the man involved Wes Moore found some shocking similarities between himself and the other man who shares his name...

LISTEN: WES MOORE - THE OTHER WES MOORE

Taking the Bugs-Eye View

Dr. Hugh Raffles is amazed that people don't pay much attention to the vast communities often just a few feet away.

There are far more insects in the world than people and some argue that our ecosystem depends much more on the bugs than it does people.

Raffles tells 26 journeys into the world(s) of insects, with his book INSECTOPEDIA. Through the tales of trained crickets and parachuting spiders and more Raffles funnels an anthropological study that is more about humans than it is about insects.

LISTEN: HUGH RAFFLES - INSECTOPEDIA

The Harvest of Pandora's Box

The way humans are living in the 21st century isn't well matched to the way we're built.

Geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells traces the long history of humans by gathering DNA samples and looking for the demarcations of change back in a family tree.

In his study of the long view of humanity Wells has learned that for most of our species's existence we lived in small groups and hunted or gathered our food. About ten thousand years ago something happened: farming. Wells suggests that although the practice of cultivating crops helped humans succeed as far as building up numbers, the shift in to this common practice of survival is having consequences that we are just encountering today.

LISTEN: SPENCER WELLS - PANDORA'S SEED

Reporting from "Talibanistan"

The Afghan war has always been a conflict where borders haven't meant the same thing to both sides. Most experts believe that Al Qaida leaders fled, along with much of the Taliban, to the rough terrain that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. As hard-core Taliban leaders live and thrive in these areas, the war has expanded into Pakistan itself.

After sitting aside for many years, the Pakistani army is now fully engaged in taking on the Taliban forces that were growing and mounting in Pakistan. In February of 2010, National Geographic documentarian Tresha Mabile traveled down IED-laced roads and accompanied Pakistani army forces to Taliban strongholds. With the cooperation of the Pakistani military, Mabile interviewed a captured Taliban soldier and spoke with Pankistani police who suffered some of the most vicious attacks in the Swat Valley.

The Nat Geo producer talks about what she saw firsthand in "Talibanistan," and the change in the Pakistani military's approach toward the Taliban.

LISTEN: TRESHA MABILE - INSIDE "TALIBANISTAN"

When Animals Attack!

Unstable pet chimps, smart and lethal elephants and leprosy-carrying armadillos are just part of the dangers the animal world can present to humans.

Gordon Grice, is more than aware that the food chain doesn't have humans too safely at the top. The author of DEADLY KINGDOM: THE BOOK OF DANGEROUS ANIMALS has taken a look at man's sometimes fatal attempts to treat wild beasts as human. In the wild and in captivity quite often animals don't want to play by human rules. The result is often deadly.

LISTEN: GORDON GRICE - DEADLY KINGDOM