Most of the country employs an electronic prescription registry, where doctors and pharmacists can learn instantly which prescriptions you have, who wrote them, and where and how often they get filled. Many in medicine and law enforcement say these registries significantly reduce prescription drug abuse, but New Hampshire is one of the few states that has resisted, as libertarians and other privacy advocates say government has no business collecting and sharing such deeply personal information. We’ll look at the debate and see if a prescription drug registry could be on its way to New Hampshire.

Guests

• Neal Kurk, Republican state representative from Weare
• TBA

In the 1960s and 1970s, the sexual revolution took America – and the world – by storm. Sex became an act of empowerment, liberation, and personal choice.

Sex historian Dagmar Herzog says those advances have been reversed in recent decades. She argues that the religious Right has taken advantage of our anxieties about sex and redirected the national conversation about sex with messages of shame, abstinence, and monogamous, heterosexual relationships as the norm.

Liberals played their part too, standing by silently as the rhetoric of sexual choice is co-opted by political rhetoric.

Herzog's new book is "Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics." She has taught the history of sexuality for more than a decade, but she tells Word of Mouth that reading right-wing evangelical pronouncements on sex written since the mid-90s left her profoundly shaken.

NPR's contributing senior news analyst Cokie Roberts is one of the most recognizable women political reporters today. She came to Portsmouth in April to talk about her new book "Ladies of Liberty" as part of our Writers on a New England Stage series.

Leaders of the world’s eight most industrialized countries kicked of the G8 summit in Tokyo today. Rising food and fuel prices are at the top of the agenda, along with global emissions policies. Back at home, presumed presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are competing to ease voters anxieties about the same issues.

With energy costs and environmental policy in the forefront of this election, Word of Mouth turns to Michael Kanellos to sort out what the candidates are saying on these issues. Michael is senior policy analyst at Greentech Media and – until recently -- he wrote about green technology for CNet.com.

This segment is part of Word of Mouth's Next Green Thing series.

The inhabitants of the Danish island of Samsø used to produce 11 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person annually. They heated their houses with oil brought in on tankers, and imported electricity via cable, generated by burning coal.

That was a decade ago. Now the community of 4,300 people produces enough clean energy to export.

Elizabeth Kolbert is staff writer for The New Yorker, and wrote about her visit to Samsø to find out what an island about the size of Nantucket might teach the world.

This segment is part of Word of Mouth's Next Green Thing series.

(Photo by Nicky Bonne)