Dirty Wars and Polished Silver, The Grid

Dirty Wars and Polished Silver Guest: Lynda Schuster, Author of “Dirty Wars and Polished Silver: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix” Lynda Schuster has seen enough adventure and suffering for several life times. At 16 she ran away to a kibbutz in Israel and landed smack in the middle of the Yom Kippur War. Rather than scaring her off, that gave her a taste for conflict. She became a war correspondent, covering violence in the Middle East and Central America. Her first husband – also a war correspondent – died in a roadside bombing just 10 months into their marriage. Her second husband, a diplomat, was posted to war-ravaged African nations, and she went along. In her 30s, Lynda Schuster found herself serving as an ambassador’s wife – thinking she’d chosen a more stable, safer, life, only to learn she was badly mistaken. The Fraying Wires of America’s Energy Future Guest: Gretchen Bakke, PhD, Professor of Anthropology, McGill University, Author, “The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future” When you flip a light switch, power up a computer or kick on the A/C, that electricity is being created at that same moment somewhere else on the grid. There’s no bank vault of excess electricity out there that can dole out watts when we all get home from work on a hot summer day and turn our air conditioners up at the same time. The fact that electricity is almost always there when we want it is really incredible.  America’s grid is an engineering marvel. But it’s not aging well: it’s more of a pothole-ridden dirt road than an advanced superhighway. The grid is in trouble for a host of reasons, including neglect, bureaucracy and our changing desires as electricity consumers.