New York City's schools are notoriously troubled, but within that we can find stories of scrappy schools that turned themselves around. One such school is Brooklyn elementary school PS 335, in Bedford Stuyvesant. We speak with principal Laverne Nimmons about the school, the neighborhood and how they're helping their students overcome often-difficult circumstances.

This week on the show, we look at intellectual property law, where it's going, and why we should be nervous about that--my guest is James Boyle, the author of "the Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" (Yale).  Also, how to avoid your summer being an endless nightmare of mosquito bites, with Fordham researcher Tom Daniels.

Now that the seemingly endless rain has (knock wood) let up, we step outside again, with conversations about green building, and about how common plants are being affected by climate change.

This week on Fordham Conversations, two looks at what housing speculation does to neighborhoods. My guests are Beryl Satter, author of "Family Properties: Race, Real Estate and the Exploitation of Black Urban America" (Metropolitan Books), and Jim Buckley, the executive director of the University Neighborhood Housing Program in the Bronx.