The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature brings writers from around the world to New York for discussions, lectures and performances that spotlight and celebrate the written word’s ability to bridge the largest cultural gaps.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s leading thinkers in international economic policy, spoke at the CUNY Graduate Center about what he believed to be the three biggest problems facing the human race right now.

Sachs heads the Earth Institute at Columbia University and has written extensively about the economic challenges facings the world’s poorest nations.

On this day, he discussed soaring oil prices, soaring food prices, the global hunger emergency, and the glimmerings of economic instability which are some of the topics covered in his book Common Wealth. His explores how heavily interconnected all of these things are and posits that globalism isn't unique to our time, but the intensity of the channels of communication and transmission are. This plays a large part in explaining how crises can domino and spread as virally and quickly as news and culture, often with previously unseen globally disasterous results. Talk about a double edged sword!