The Roman Republic is once again flashing across the American imagination and the American television screen with HBO’s new series “Rome.”
The Senate is divided, the Republic is decaying, Caesar is grabbing for empire, and Americans may be watching to see what they might learn from the Roman story. It seems, some might say, like deja [...]

Yesterday, President Bush declared that today’s war in Iraq and wherever terrorists may be found is as great, as desperate, as inevitable as the World War II struggle to defeat fascist Japan 60 years ago.
The 60th anniversary of the end of the World War II conflict with Japan, VJ Day, was actually two weeks ago, [...]

In New Orleans, residents and emergency teams are struggling with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Flood waters broke through at least two levees on Tuesday, submerging the city in up to twenty feet of water in places, and rendering the city of nearly a half-million people uninhabitable for weeks.
Damage assessments are worse than expected, [...]

In the not so distant past, etiquette classes were the domain of the ultra-rich who needed to perfect their country club manners. These days, 20 and 30-something ordinary Jills and Joes are signing up for etiquette classes. Books about etiquette are flying off the shelves and adult education classes are booked to the hilt.
What this [...]

Imagine walking seventy miles, a distance equal to almost three full marathons, non-stop. No big deal? Imagine doing it if you’re only three feet tall, waddling on webbed feet, battling the Antarctic winter, and doing it all dressed in formal wear. That’s what the emperor penguin does every year to reach its mating ground.
The penguins [...]

The search engine Google’s going gangbusters. The world’s hottest tech company just introduced new software — 3D mapping with GoogleEarth, talking over the Internet with GoogleTalk, and a new desktop application that lets you scan your hard drive with a few clicks of the mouse. Now there are rumors that Google is building its own [...]

There’s one incarnation of Google that we haven’t touched on yet — Google as poetry. As Danish poet and radio producer Pejk Malinovski tells us, the search engine has spawned a new genre of contemporary literature: Google Poetry.
In this radio diary, he reads poems he’s created using Google’s search engine.
Guests:
Pike Malinovski is a “Google [...]

Yesterday Sunni negotiators, including former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, publicly denounced Iraq’s constitution presented before the country’s parliament. They have called for its defeat in an October 15 referendum. The denunciation points to what has been an ongoing challenge of bringing the Sunnis on board with the political process, [...]

Gary Hart can’t stand the silence. He wants Democrats to make some noise about the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and about what he sees as the lies that got the U.S. in the war in the first place.
Hart also wants Democrats to stand up and say they made a mistake when [...]

It is the storm that no one on the Gulf Coast wanted to see. But Hurricane Katrina plowed ashore this morning.
New Orleans residents and more have been evacuated, their homes and city itself imperiled. Crude-oil futures have spiked for the first time to more than $70 a barrel on fear of Gulf Coast destruction.
The insurance [...]

New U.S. census data shows that for the first time ever adults living alone outnumber parents living with kids as the most common household type. From 1990 to 2000, the number of single-person households grew by 21.4 percent and for people ages 35 to 64, a whopping 45 percent.
What’s going on? Is being married with [...]

College tuitions are climbing to the moon, and everyone has a different explanation of where the problem lies and how to fix it.
Some say that universities are simply charging the maximum that the market will bear. Others say parents and students have higher expectations about what the college experience should include.
The one thing everyone agrees [...]

Tricia Rose is professor of American Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a specialist in 20th century American and African-American culture and politics. Soon, she will be making her way back to campus for the fall semester.
With the nation at war in Iraq, events unfolding in Gaza, and the upcoming [...]

This past Tuesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Noman Mineta arrived in a silver Lincoln Navigator sport utility vehicle at a L.A. gas station where he delivered a 169-page proposal for the revision of the country’s auto emission standards.
The proposed plan comes as the first change in three decades. Critics call it inadequate, saying it does little [...]

For writer John Richardson, family history is the history of the 20th Century. His father Jack was a founding member of the CIA who worked Cold War hotspots in the 1940s and ’50s. His family joined him at his postings, but the truth about his job stayed hidden from his wife and children. Eventually [...]

A smoldering alienation is burning widely in Europe’s huge Muslim population.
According to American writer and intellectual David Rieff, the continent is headed for a crisis. Multiculturalism won’t help, he says. Deportation and hard bans on hate speech won’t do the trick either.
Hear a conversation with Rieff, European scholar Tariq Ramadan, and German news analyst Josef [...]

In 1985, author Bret Easton Ellis who was barely in his 20s and still in college, became the poster boy of disaffected youth with his novel “Less than Zero.” The bestseller about rich kids on winter break in a delirium of partying, drugs and sex in Los Angeles, sent him to the top of A-list [...]

Jurors in Angleton, Texas have sent a whopping message to the world headquarters of drugmaker Merck in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. That message says “Pay Up.”
In a personal injury lawsuit over Merck’s one-time wonder-drug, Vioxx, a jury last week delivered a quarter-billion-dollar verdict for Carol Ernst in her husband’s death — blaming Merck for [...]

Venezuelan officials reacted angrily to evangelist Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez. Washington distanced itself from Robertson but the comments could heighten tensions between the two countries already at odds over oil and other issues.
Phil Gunson, stringer for The Miami Herald in Caracas, Venezuela has the latest.
Guests:
Phil Gunson, stringer for The [...]

A new organic movement is taking hold of the country’s death industry, as baby boomers push to reinvent what will define them in death. The so-called “green burials” or “eco-burials” combine simplicity with environmental conservation.
Instead of being buried in cemeteries with manicured lawns and granite headstones, a growing number of Americans would rather be buried [...]