Focus

Focus, or Focus 580, was WILL Radio's flagship talk program from 1981 until 2014. David Inge was the host from 1981 until his retirement in 2012. Always engaging, the program acted as a resource for citizens to directly question politicians and candidates as well as keep up on the arts, science, health, and even the latest from well-known novelists.

The Focus archive below offers thousands of great interviews and serves as a time capsule and a great resource for researchers and those just curious about how influential people spoke of important topics as they were happening.

Nanoscience and Technology

Guests: Irfan S. Ahmad, Ph.D., and Yi Lu, Ph.D.

Many scientists believe that nanotechnology, a field that involves engineering on a very small scale, has great potential to change both our economy and the way we live.  At the nanoscale, materials we know well can have very different properties, making them valuable for a wide range of products. We’ll look at recent developments in this field here at the University of Illinois. We’ll have two guests, Irfan Ahmad, associate director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and Yi Lu, professor of chemistry.

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Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It

Guest: Daniel Halperin, Ph.D.

Scientists believe that the virus that causes AIDS jumped from chimpanzees to humans about a century ago. It had been confined to a small patch of southeastern Cameroon, and it might have stayed there had not Europeans come, ensuring the disease would spread as an accident of their efforts to exploit Africa’s resources. We’ll look at the role of colonialism in the spread of AIDS. Our guest will be medical anthropologist Daniel Halperin, co-author of the new book Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It.

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