If you want to understand global population dynamics, you have to look past quantity and look at quality, says Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, in this week’s podcast.

The past year brought not only an end to political instability in Madagascar but a new surge of interest in integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development, says Caroline Savitzky of Blue Ventures in this week’s podcast.

Technological solutions, like improved equipment and logistical tools, have been trumpeted as keys to finally ending preventable maternal and child deaths. “But it’s not just technology innovation that we need; it is systems innovation,” says Dr. Harshad Sanghvi in this week’s podcast.

Leaders from around the world gathered in New York last month to discuss the replacements for the Millennium Development Goals, which expire next year. The topics included human rights, economic development, justice, disarmament, and terrorism, just to name a few. And that’s a problem, says Genevieve Maricle, policy adviser to the U.S. Ambassador at the U.S. Mission to the UN, in this week’s podcast.

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.