Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, Alisa Miller (CEO of Pub­lic Radio Inter­na­tion­al) explains why Amer­i­cans know less and less about the rest of the world. Along the way, she uses some eye-pop­ping graphs to put things in per­spec­tive. Watch the video below or find it on our YouTube playlist …

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

As a quick fol­low up to our post ear­li­er today, I want­ed to high­light the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel’s first broad­cast on BlogTalkRa­dio, which aired tonight. Right in time for Memo­r­i­al Day, the pro­gram fea­tures an involved con­ver­sa­tion with Jan Scrug­gs, the founder and pres­i­dent of the Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al Fund, who con­ceived the idea of build­ing the memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton. It also com­ple­ments a Smith­son­ian Chan­nel doc­u­men­tary ‘Remem­ber­ing Viet­nam: The Wall at 25′ (click link to see trail­er). You can lis­ten in on the con­ver­sa­tion right below.

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There’s noth­ing like a good debate to reveal the issues that mat­ter most to a soci­ety. And that’s what The Doha Debates have to offer — a good, nuanced look at the hottest issues in the Arab and Islam­ic worlds. The debates, which have been held in Qatar over the past three years, fol­low the for­mat used in the famous Oxford Union debates. And they’ve been aired over the BBC and have picked up a siz­able inter­na­tion­al fol­low­ing. (You can down­load the debates in video or via pod­cast from this page.) The speak­ers gen­er­al­ly include “aca­d­e­mics, politi­cians, reli­gious fig­ures, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, pol­i­cy experts and jour­nal­ists” and some of the recent top­ics debat­ed include the fol­low­ing (thanks Kirsten for the heads up on this):

• Is the Sun­ni-Shia con­flict dam­ag­ing Islam’s rep­u­ta­tion as a reli­gion of peace?
• Do the Pales­tini­ans risk becom­ing their own worst ene­my?
• Is the face veil a bar­ri­er to inte­gra­tion in the West?
• Should the Pales­tini­ans give up their full right of return?

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To mark the fifth anniver­sary of the Iraq inva­sion, PBS’s Front­line is air­ing “Bush’s War,” which offers “the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary analy­sis of one of the most chal­leng­ing peri­ods in the nation’s his­to­ry.” Draw­ing on an exten­sive archive, the pro­gram lays out the “entire nar­ra­tive,” show­ing how “the war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the gov­ern­ment.” If you can’t catch it on TV, you can watch it online. Click here and then click “Watch Online.”

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Dur­ing the run up to the Iraq war, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion esti­mat­ed that the mil­i­tary mis­sion would run around $50 bil­lion, even though experts doubt­ed those num­bers at the time. (In 2002, Yale’s William Nord­haus guessed that the costs could reach $500 bil­lion with­in five years.) Now, here we are in 2008, and new tal­lies sug­gest that the real costs could rise to some­where between $1 tril­lion and $3 tril­lion. This award-win­ning piece — MP3 — iTunes — Feed — delin­eates the mount­ing costs and intro­duces you to some of think­ing in Joseph Stiglitz and Lin­da Bilmes’ new book: The Three Tril­lion Dol­lar War.

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