When it comes to sustainable development, not all goals are created equal, says Wael Hmaidan, the director of Climate Action Network International, in this week’s podcast. Climate change “intersects everything we do,” he says, but is underrepresented in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global development agenda being drafted to replace the Millennium Development Goals next year.

The U.S. military has historically relied on its capacity for technological innovation to respond to new risks and crises. But, as Sharon Burke explains in this week’s podcast, the Pentagon has had to invent a new role for itself in response to a changing world.

Adolescent boys are 75 percent more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than girls. Why? That’s unclear. Lack of data and failure to engage boys in discussions about sexual and reproductive health and HIV care has left many suffering, says Elizabeth Berard, a health science specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development, in this week’s podcast.

What exactly is meant by “water security?” Different conceptualizations of the problem can lead to different, possibly misguided, solutions, says Coleen Vogel in this week’s podcast. Vogel, professor at the University of Pretoria and a lead author of the IPCC’s 4^th and 5^th assessment reports, calls for reframing the water security discourse in three key ways.

With less than 500 days until they expire, it’s almost certain that the Millennium Development Goals on child mortality and maternal health will be missed by many countries. Already, work on drafting the MDG successors has begun; but unless policymakers put nutrition at the center of maternal and child health systems, reducing global maternal and child mortality ratios by an appreciable amount will be difficult, says Dr. Ranu Dhillon in this week’s podcast.

“Climate change is not just a far-away thing that affects far-away people,” says Ian Kraucunas, deputy director of atmospheric sciences and global change at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in this week’s podcast. “It affects things people here in the U.S. care about – and, in fact, that includes national security.”

Successfully incorporating the rights of young people and women into whatever development agenda succeeds the Millennium Development Goals next year hinges not only on the scope of new goals, but how those goals are worded, says Suzanne Ehlers in this week’s podcast.

More than 1.8 billion people – nearly a third of the global population – are between the ages of 10 and 24, comprising the largest-ever generation of young people. According to Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), “how we meet the needs and aspirations of these young people will define the world’s future.”