Demographers predict that the nation’s population will soar to 400 million citizens in the next 40 years. For some that signals disaster: global warming, peak oil, social decay and the decline of the American empire.

Futurist, columnist and author Joel Kotkin takes a more optimistic view. He envisions America at 2050 as “the most affluent, culturally rich, and successful nation in human history.” Set against ethnic conflicts, low birth rates and increasing homogeneity in the rest of the world, American will defy the naysayers and trends toward urbanization to become a more bountiful, multi-racial society, powered by land, localism, green technology and our defiant indigenous spirit.

Joel Kotkin is a futurist, social thinker and columnist for Forbes.com and for Politico.com. He’s author of several books, including, The City: A Global History, The New Geography: How The Digital Revolution is Reshaping the Global Landscape, and Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy. He’s with us to discuss his new book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

Powell's Book Review: Living on the Edge by Tom Vanderbilt

(Photo by tom.aurthur via Flickr/CreativeCommons)

Some of the greatest medical advances of the past century – the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, gene mapping, and drug treatments for Leukemia and Parkinson’s disease – all trace back to one woman – Henrietta Lacks. Not a scientist, but a poor African-American tobacco farmer and mother of five living in Virginia. She died in 1951 of cervical cancer, and was buried -- at 31-- in an unmarked grave.

Before she died, doctors removed two dime-sized tissues samples from her body. Those "hela" (hee-lah) cells, as they were called, were reproduced in mass quantities and used in countless experiments, evnetually changing the face of modern medicine. Science writer Rebecca Skloot discovered Henrietta’s story and spent a decade chasing down details of the forgotten woman’s life and legacy. After extensive research she now tells the fascinating tale in the new book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Read an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

NY Times book review: A Woman’s Undying Gift to Science

Henrietta Lacks Foundation

If you think video game music still sounds like it did in Tetris or Mario Brothers, think again. Now when you pick up a controller, you’re more likely to be greeted by a soundtrack like the main theme from Bioshock, released for X-Box 360 in 2007 and for Playstation 3 in 2008. Garry Schyman’s acclaimed score brought video game music to a whole other level. Now a new generation of young composers is eager to follow in his footsteps. Top institutions including Yale music school, New York University, and the New England Conservatory are training their students for careers in scoring video games.

Jeanine Cowen joins us to discuss the trend. She’s the assistant vice president for Curriculum in Academic Affairs at Berklee College of Music. She’s also a composer and music producer, and she teaches a game audio class. Nazer Lagrimas is the president of Berklee’s video game music club, which claims more than 300 members. He’s a senior planning a career in interactive audio and joined us as well.

Boston Globe: Berklee is Teaching Students to Compose Scores For Video Games

Berklee Music Blogs: Game Music The New Classical Music

New York Times: Aliens Are Attacking. Cue the Strings.

AOL Radio Blog: Best Video Game Music

Spectrum: Video Game Music Better Than Film Scores

(Photo by Brenderous via Flickr/CreativeCommons)