Perhaps no country in Latin America is more picturesque than Bolivia, and the most memorable Bolivian city may be Potosi.

There are very few things I've done just twice in my life, 40 years apart, and one is to backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail across the California/Oregon border.

Literature seems to offer lessons in human nature that help us decode the world around us and be better friends.

I have a one-question language test that people who have lived abroad do better on than those who studied in a classroom. Try my test yourself: In a foreign language you've studied, how do you say 'doorknob'?

It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.

The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims.

However imperfectly, subsidies for the poor do actually reduce hunger, ease suffering and create opportunity, while subsidies for the rich result in more private jets and yachts. Would we rather subsidize opportunity or yachts? Which kind of subsidies deserve more scrutiny?

A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.

What use could the humanities be in a digital age? University students focusing on the humanities may end up, at least in their parents' nightmares, as dog-walkers for those majoring in computer science. But, for me, the humanities are not only relevant but also give us a toolbox to think seriously about ourselves and the world.

The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government. Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off.

The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison.

I can't help thinking that if the American West were discovered today, the most glorious bits would be sold off to the highest bidder. Yosemite might be nothing but weekend homes for Internet tycoons.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.

Worrying about bills, food, or other problems leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax.

Utah may well be the most cosmopolitan state in America. Vast numbers of young Mormons - increasingly women as well as men - spend a couple of years abroad as missionaries and return jabbering in Thai or Portuguese and bearing a wealth of international experience.

Things that happen every day are, frankly, what we in the news business aren't good at covering because there is no one day in which they are news.

Zimbabwe has far fewer tourists than South Africa or Kenya, and there's less crime as well.

Most of the time in the 21st century, we dominate our surroundings: We tweak the thermostat, and the temperature falls one degree. We push a button, and Taylor Swift sings for us. It's the opposite in the wilderness, which teaches us constantly that we are not lords of the universe but rather building blocks of it.

Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context.

Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him.

Most of the villagers were hiding in the bush, where they were dying from bad water, malaria and malnutrition.

There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted.