It’s pretty impossible to categorize Vance Gilbert’s music. Jazzy? Yeah, he’s got some of that. Pop? You can’t deny it, his tunes are catchy. Folky? Well, he’s got the acoustic guitar.
For the third year in a row, Vance Gilbert returns to On Point for a New Year’s eve celebration of music, laughter, life and a [...]

2004 was a year dominated by the presidential election, from the New Hampshire primary in January to President Bush’s victory in November.
Also in the news in 2004 was the war in Iraq, where shocking abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib surfaced in the spring, and the U.S. death toll passed 1,000 in the fall.
It [...]

October 2, 2004 marked the 100th anniversary of Graham Greene’s birth. Greene was one of the 20th century’s most widely-read, talented, and secretive writers. His dark, globe-trotting adventures, complex Catholicism, and wartime work as a spy for British intelligence, were all echoed in his writing. He was a giant of a man — [...]

Is religion “ignorance with wings?” That’s what author Sam Harris claims in his new book, “The End of Faith.” He sets out to close the door on organized religion and argues for a world without Christianity, Islam or Judaism.
As religious wars and faith-based politics heat up around the world, Harris writes that text-based faiths are [...]

ABC Nightline correspondent Jim Wooten thought he had seen it all. He was north of sixty years old and a veteran reporter of war, famine and disease. Then, in the deep sub-Sahara, he met a little boy, Nkosi Johnson, who brought his hardened reporter’s heart back to life, and awakened the world to the [...]

Personality testing has become a ubiquitous method of categorizing people in pursuits from education to work to therapy. But in efforts to better understand ourselves, are American institutions recklessly brushing over the nuance of human personality?
Proponents of testing assert that by learning more about a persons personality type businesses save money on expensive employee [...]

Earlier this month, some of the country’s best writers met in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the 2004 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism to share their best work.
Jay Allison recalls the moment when he tells his daughter that her divorced dad is dating again. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Helen Ubinas lashes out with frustration and grief at having [...]

In the new book, “Dylan’s Visions of Sin,” the great British literary critic Christopher Ricks takes on the towering legacy of American singer, songwriter, poet and legend, Bob Dylan.
Click the “Listen” link to hear about the poetry inside the music of Bob Dylan.
Guests:
Christopher Ricks, Oxford Professor of Poetry, professor of Humanities at Boston University, author [...]

Earlier this month, some of the country’s best writers met in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the 2004 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism to share their best work.
Hank Stuever gives a hilarious inside look at what goes on behind the scenes of the hit TV show, “Trading Spaces.” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh offers a [...]

Evolutionary biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins is a long-time and unapologetic champion of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He is a self-declared atheist and a firm believer in the inherent complexity of evolutionary forces that created life as we know it.
In his bestselling books, “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker,” Dawkins argued that the main [...]

A recent Gallup poll says only one-third of Americans regard Darwin’s theory of evolution as well-supported by empirical evidence. Microbiologist Richard Colling is working to change that by winning over some of evolution’s toughest converts — fundamentalist Christians.
A devout Christian, Colling teaches biology and evolution at Olivet Nazarene University, a fundamentalist Christian college in [...]

In the beginning, there were Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, the original three tenors, shrink-wrapped for the world. But the world is too big a stage for Mediterraneans only.
Five years ago, Ireland stepped up with a trio and tradition of own. Finbar Wright, Anthony Kearns and Ronan Tynan were plucked from concert hall and hurling match, [...]

Hear a roundup analysis of this week’s major news by On Point host Tom Ashbrook and news analyst Jack Beatty:
1) An explosion at a mess hall in Mosul kills 18 Americans. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham says a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi military uniform is responsible.
2) British Prime Minister Tony Blair announces plans to [...]

Philip Roth struck gold again in “The Plot Against America.” Brian Greene took readers on an unforgettable journey through the “Cosmos.” Ron Chernow explored the psyche of “Alexander Hamilton.”
Many of the authors who made it in the New York Times’s list of 2004’s most notable books have been guests on On Point, where they have [...]

Thirty-five American soldiers are at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, following last Tuesday’s suicide bombing at a U.S. base in Mosul. Colonel Rhoda Cornum, head of the medical center, said today that the wounded all had a “reasonable chance of surviving.”
Though soldiers may physically heal, what about the psychological trauma they suffer? Many [...]

In 1987, a U.S. Marine wrote a new version of the classic “A Night Before Christmas.” His poem celebrated a serviceman spending Christmas far from home. The text was first passed around by mail, later by e-mail, and in 2004, it’s making the round on online blogs.
In this radio diary, hear the poem read by [...]

With the passage of Proposition 71, California’s three-billion-dollar stem-cell venture creates an independent West Coast “mini-NIH” as a work-around to President Bush’s barring the use of federal money for embryonic stem cell research.
The infusion of cash is a boon to researchers and venture capitalists who see stem cell research as the beginning of a range [...]

The Bush administration has issued a new set of rules for maintaining the country’s national forests that mark the biggest shift in American forest-use policy in decades. The new regulations are being welcomed by loggers and condemned by environmentalists.
Hear Juliet Eilperin, who has covered the shift in forest policy for The Washington Post, explain [...]

The Bush Administration is facing a wave of new allegations that abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody has been more widespread, varied, and grave than the Defense Department has long maintained.
Just released FBI memos allege that prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay in the last two years have been subject to abuse and [...]

More information was released today on yesterday’s massive explosion at a U.S. base near Mosul, Iraq that killed 22 people, 18 of them Americans. At a Pentagon briefing this afternoon, General Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the attack was most likely the work of a suicide bomber.
The findings [...]