By host Tom Ashbrook:
The ticking stopwatch still comes ever Sunday night, and right behind it, the familiar voice announcing: “I’m Mike Wallace.” For thirty-seven years, CBS newsman Mike Wallace has interviewed the great and the grand, con men and killers for “60 Minutes.” And that’s just his best-known job in a long broadcasting career.
He’s taken [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
With his poll numbers down, again, to all-time lows, President Bush is standing up today with a big speech promising to outline a “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” Not an “exit strategy,” but a victory strategy, Don Rumsfeld said yesterday — a strategy for Iraqis, but also for Americans who, in [...]

by Tom Ashbrook.
E.O. Wilson is as big a biologist as the world has to offer, arguably the planet’s most honored scholar of life. He is a towering figure in the science of insects, animal behavior, evolutionary psychology, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of knowledge itself. He’s been called one of the greatest thinkers of the [...]

by Tom Ashbrook
There was more bad news for the GOP and the country on the corruption front yesterday. Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham of California pled guilty to charges of taking $2.4 million dollars in bribes to help rig defense contracts — cash, antiques, vacations, a yacht, his daughter’s graduation party — all on the take.
But [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
“Iraq is a trap,” wrote the legendary Arabist T.E. Lawrence. “The people were tricked into going there.” “We are not far from disaster.” “It will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.”
Suddenly, in 2005, everyone is quoting Lawrence of Arabia from 1920. American soldiers and generals are reading his “Seven Pillars [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Today in Montreal, Canada, ten thousand environmentalists and officials have gathered to look beyond the years and framework of the Kyoto Protocol, at the future of the world’s increasingly urgent struggle with global warming. Thousands of miles to the south, one clue may lie in plans for the sunny Mojave Desert.
After [...]

For the last ten years, Andly Kindler has delivered on a ruthless campaign against what he calls “hack” comedy — comedy that isn’t funny.
Once each year, after poring over the year’s sitcoms, movie comedies, and stand-up shows, Kindler delivers his “State of The Industry Speech.”
It happens at the Montreal “Just for Laughs” comedy festival, and [...]

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 [...]

At one time taking a photograph had an air of mystery — of not knowing quite what would come out until the roll of film went to the developers, and within an hour or a few days, the pictures of a summer vacation, a birthday party, a wedding would be produced. The rise of [...]

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 [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It’s a strange homage paid to the turkey on millions of American tables tomorrow. The great bird will be praised, stuffed, and eaten. But the universe of human interaction with the feathered world — with birds — is a vast one, deeply rooted in myth and fable, literature and worship.
For [...]

Historian Douglas Brinkley is among the thousands of Katrina evacuees who will spend Thanksgiving away from their homes in New Orleans.
In this radio diary, he reflects on what he has learned about the human spirit since Katrina and what it means to give thanks in the wake of tragedy.
Guests:
Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
On August 29th, the wind and rains came, the sea surged, the levees failed, and a great American city was lost to the hurricane. Two wild and troubled weeks later, George Bush stood in the French Quarter’s Jackson Square and promised to “do what it takes… stay as long as it [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
When he came out in 1996 with the bestseller “Angela’s Ashes,” Frank McCourt quickly became an international celebrity. He was 66-years-old, a lifelong teacher with a beguiling story of childhood in Ireland and a killer brogue straight out of Limerick. Or, in his own typically self-skewering words, the “mick of the moment,” [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Israel prime minister Ariel Sharon was not nicknamed “the bulldozer” for nothing. In a long, bold controversial military and political life, Sharon has led commandos, stormed across the Suez Canal, been implicated in massacre and provided the spark for Palestinian intifada.
At the heart of the conservative Likud Party, he championed the [...]

Innovation has long been the high octane fuel driving the American engine to prosperity — the creative force that delivered the microchip, the airbag, and email. Now, that American cutting edge of invention is being dulled.
Tinkerers and corporations alike are working in an environment increasingly hostile to the whizz-bang act of creation. China [...]

When Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha said last week that it was time to bring the troops home from Iraq, it touched off a bitter debate in Washington.
Republicans and Democrats in the House shouted and traded insults in a heated exchange that culminated in a late-night vote against summary troop withdrawal. The high emotion [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
For years the stage show “Latinologues” has provided audiences across the country with a series of comic monologues about the Latino experience in America.
Its characters include Buford Gomez, the slightly unhinged and over-aggressive U.S. border patrol agent; Miss Puerto Rico, who’ll do just about anything to hold on to her beauty [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
As health care costs continue to rise and employer-based insurance coverage continues to shrink, more and more Americans are living without health insurance. It’s a problem that afflicts the working poor and a growing share of the middle class.
Now a number of states — from California to Illinois to Connecticut [...]

Carol Lees learned she had Gaucher disease when still a teenager. The disease enlarges the spleen and liver and weakens the bones. Its victims worldwide are fewer than 10,000. It can cause tremendous discomfort, and without treatment, is fatal.
Until 1991, there was no treatment for the disease. When Lees first heard of a new drug, [...]