Terry Gross

The New York Times foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins reports that the Taliban are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign in Afghanistan — a fact evidenced by a 40 percent increase in Afghan civilian deaths in 2008.

Journalist Steve Coll says that India and Pakistan held secret talks over the disputed region of Kashmir in 2006, but that tentative plans for peace have since been abandoned due in part to the political decline of Pakistan's former president Pervez Musharraf and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Washington Post staff writer Liza Mundy discusses how multiple births are affecting parents, their babies and society. Mundy is the author of Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our World.