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Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid travel the world and bring home its flavors, its food. And they do it like explorers.

For the taste of Southeast Asia, they followed the Mekong River from near its source on the Tibetan plateau, down through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea. And that’s just for one cookbook.

They’ve been called culinary anthropologists. But these are anthropologists whose work you want to eat. Sizzling. Steamed. Stir-fried. Fragrant.

This hour, On Point: On the road and in the kitchen with the well-fed explorers, Alford and Duguid.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, award-winning cookbook authors, join us from Toronto. They’re the authors of “Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia” and, most recently, “Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China.” Their latest web venture is immersethrough.com.

Here are two of Alford and Duguid’s recipes:

DAI CARROT SALAD

1 pound large carrots
About 2 tablespoons Pickled Red Chiles or storebought pickled chiles, cut into ½-inch slices
3 scallions, smashed and sliced into ½-inch lengths
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon roasted sesame oil
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 or 3 tablespoons coriander leaves, coarsely chopped

Peel the carrots. Using a cleaver or a chef’s knife, slice them very thin (1/8 inch thick if possible) on a 45-degree angle. You should have 3 cups.

In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Toss in the carrot slices and stir to separate them. Cook just until slightly softened and no longer raw, about 3 minutes. Drain.

Transfer the carrots to a bowl and let cool slightly, then add the chiles and scallion ribbons and toss to mix.

Whisk together the soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Pour over the salad while the carrots are still warm. Stir or toss gently to distribute the dressing, then turn the salad out onto a serving plate or into a wide shallow bowl.

Serve the salad warm or at room temperature. Just before serving, sprinkle on the salt and toss gently, then sprinkle on the coriander and toss again.

Serves 4 as a salad or appetizer.

* * * *

MIAO PORK WITH CORN AND CHILES

1/3 pound pork loin
3 or 4 large ears corn (to yield 3 cups kernels)
1 tablespoon lard or peanut oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground Sichuan pepper
2 red cayenne chiles, thinly sliced, or 3 tablespoons thinly sliced Pickled Red Chiles (page 34)
1 teaspoon salt

Thinly slice the pork, then cut into small slices, about ½ inch by 1 inch. Set aside. Cut the kernels from the corncobs on a cutting board and use a cleaver or chef’s knife to slice the kernels off the cob; set aside.

Place a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the lard or oil, and when it is hot, toss in the garlic. Stir-fry for a moment, then add the pork and Sichuan pepper. Stir-fry for several minutes, then add the chiles and ½ teaspoon of the salt and stir-fry until the pork has changed color all over, another minute or so. Add the corn and stir-fry for about a minute, then add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Stir0fry until the corn is cooked through and tender, another 3 to 4 minutes.

Turn out and serve hot or at room temperature, with rice.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as one of several dishes with rice.

For thirty years now, more and more Americans have flown at the drop of a hat. Cheaper flights and more flights made the country seem smaller.

Home in Dallas. Cabin in Vermont. Kids in California. Parents in Florida. Vacation far away — no problem, we’ll all fly.

But the oil price surge that is spiking gas prices and rattling the economy is whipping up jet fuel prices, too. Nobody knows when or if they’ll come down. Airlines are chopping flights, mothballing planes, preparing for “extreme” fare hikes.

An era, it appears, is ending. This hour, On Point: Grappling with the end of affordable air travel.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Micheline Maynard, correspondent for The New York Times covering business and the airline industry.

Andrew Goetz, professor and chair of the geography department at the University of Denver

Deborah Smith, professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, Kansas City

With fuel costs skyrocketing, and just in time for summer, the airline industry is again facing monumental losses. Just this week United, JetBlue and AirTran announced sharp losses, and Delta reported a first quarter loss of $6 billion.

The airlines are cutting everything they can: employees, flights, fleets, and frills. If you’re a traveler, prepare to be nickled, dimed, and worse — charged for a second checked bag, not to mention extra leg room, headsets, and meals.

Air travel isn’t what it used to be. Will it ever come back?

This hour, On Point: airlines in crisis, and the future of flying.

-Jayne Clayson

Guests:

Lisa Stark, correspondent for ABC News, she covers aviation.

David Field, Americas editor for Aviation Business magazine.

Joe D’eon, airline pilot and host of the podcast “Fly with Me.”

Of the world’s seven thousand languages nearly half will disappear by the end of this century. Their extinction means the end of entire cultures, traditions, and histories.

K. Davis Harrison and Gregory Anderson are on a mission to save these dying languages. They’re linguists, but not the kind who spend their lives in libraries and classrooms.

They travel the world — from the Bolivian Andes to the steppes of Siberia — searching for the last speakers of native tongues. Think of them as action-adventure linguists with a cause.

This hour, On Point: the race to save vanishing languages.

-Anthony Brooks

Guests:

Greg Anderson, co-founder and director of Living Tongues: Institute for Endangered Languages, he teaches linguistics at the University of Oregon.

David Harrison, professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, author of “When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge,” and co-founder and director of research for Living Tongues: Institute for Endangered Languages.

Daniel Miller, co-founder of Ironbound Films and co-producer, co-director, and writer of the documentary film “The Linguists”

In their new movie, “The Bucket List,” when Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman’s characters get the news that they’re going to die, and soon, they set out to do it all — skydive, climb Everest, see the Pyramids, travel the world.

When high school chemistry teacher Bryan Cranston is given six months to live in AMC’s new series “Breaking Bad,” he opens a meth lab and tries to make his family rich, quick.

What would you do?

This hour, On Point: we talk with real people given months to live, about life when the clock is ticking loud, and their real-life “bucket lists.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Phillip Krone, 66 years-old political consultant. In 2005, he was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. In 2006, came a diagnosis of liver cancer and was given six months to a year to live.

Kris Carr, 36 years-old documentary filmmaker and author of “Crazy Sexy Cancer.” In 2003, she was diagnosed with a rare stage four sarcoma for which there is no cure.

Judith Freedman, 59 years-old psychotherapist. In 2002, she was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and given 6-10 months to live.

Deep in the cocoa bean plantations of Brazil and beyond, there’s a chocolate revolution underway. Deep, dark, intense, pure chocolate — extreme chocolate — is rising up as the chocolate of choice like never before among chocolate connoisseurs and beyond.

Chocolate that lives very close to the bean. Forget milk chocolate. This is 70 percent pure cacao. 80 percent. 90 percent. 100 percent. Intense.

Food and drink super-guru Bill Buford is up to his neck in it. Literally naked in a vat of beans.

This hour, On Point: New Yorker gourmand Bill Buford takes us deep into rain forest, dark beans, and extreme chocolate.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bill Buford, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, his article “Extreme Chocolate” appears in the current issue. He is the author of “Heat : An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.”

Diego Badaro, a cacao farmer, his family plantation lies on the banks of the Rio de Contas in the Bahia rain forest of Brazil. His ancestors, also cacao plantation owners, figure largely in the writing of famed Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado.