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.

Leaders from around the world gathered in New York last month to discuss the replacements for the Millennium Development Goals, which expire next year. The topics included human rights, economic development, justice, disarmament, and terrorism, just to name a few. And that’s a problem, says Genevieve Maricle, policy adviser to the U.S. Ambassador at the U.S. Mission to the UN, in this week’s podcast.

Food aid is one of the most common humanitarian interventions, but it has come under increasing scrutiny from some observers who charge it may not be an effective means of addressing food security and may actually make matters worse. Two recent studies examine the relationship between food aid and conflict, shedding light on both sides of an ongoing debate.

In a tiny village called Chepuwa in the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal, high in the Himalayas and almost four days’ trek from the nearest road, Mikmar Bhote has been growing and selling medicinal and aromatic plants for five years.