If you want to understand global population dynamics, you have to look past quantity and look at quality, says Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast.

Technological solutions, like improved equipment and logistical tools, have been trumpeted as keys to finally ending preventable maternal and child deaths. “But it’s not just technology innovation that we need; it is systems innovation,” says Dr. Harshad Sanghvi in this week’s podcast.

As the UN General Assembly begins charting a course toward sustainable growth, population projections will likely undergird many of their most important assumptions about the future. As two new papers released last week demonstrate, however, there are differing opinions about how much the world’s population will grow and when it will stabilize.

The U.S. military has historically relied on its capacity for technological innovation to respond to new risks and crises. But, as Sharon Burke explains in this week’s podcast, the Pentagon has had to invent a new role for itself in response to a changing world.

With less than 500 days until they expire, it’s almost certain that the Millennium Development Goals on child mortality and maternal health will be missed by many countries. Already, work on drafting the MDG successors has begun; but unless policymakers put nutrition at the center of maternal and child health systems, reducing global maternal and child mortality ratios by an appreciable amount will be difficult, says Dr. Ranu Dhillon in this week’s podcast.