The film P-Star Rising begins in a Harlem nightclub. It’s 2 a.m., and the final performer takes the stage. She wears a white fur coat and heavy jewelry, and works the crowd into a frenzy. Oh yeah, and she’s only 9-years-old.

P-Star Rising follows Jesse Diaz, a single father who’s determined to help his 9-year-old daughter Priscilla become a rap star. The documentary screens this week on PBS’s Independent Lens, and we’re joined now by Director Gabriel Noble.

P-Star Rising website

(Photo by courtesy of Independent Lens)

Can a broken city be fixed? Justin Langlois thinks so. In 2008, fresh out of grad school, Justin created the artist-led creative research group known as Broken City Lab. His idea: find a new model for social change in blighted cities like his own, Windsor, Ontario. Windsor has the highest unemployment and highest vacancy rate in all of Canada, and faces many of the same issues as its neighbor, Detroit.

City-wide projects inspire public engagement and ask residents to re-imagine their home beyond the boarded up buildings. To engage with their city, even if it’s fallen by the wayside. The lab uses multimedia, unexpected images and creative messaging to spark dialogue for change. Broken City Lab is currently spearheading a five-month project called “Save the City.” We spoke with founder and research director Justin Langlois. Justin also instructs in the School of Visual Arts and Department of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Windsor.

GOOD Magazine: Art Therapy for a City on the Mend

Take a virtual tour of Windsor, Ontario using Google's street view

WINDSOR: a micro-documentary [trailer] from Eric Boucher on Vimeo.

(Photo by Cristina Naccarato)

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