By host Tom Ashbrook:
He was the golden child of a stern black preacher, grew up singing gospel with the sweetest voice anyone had ever heard and died chasing a hooker from a three dollar motel room in South Central LA.
In between, Sam Cooke conquered the American jukebox of the civil rights era with a gusher [...]

By Host Tom Ashbrook:
While Americans debate human evolution, the pace of evolution itself is about to explode, says acientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil. In this century, he and others say, humans will reach what they call “the Singularity”: the moment when man and machine, humans and their technology, become one.
Kurzweil foresees human intelligence [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
In 1969, a young guitarist named Leo Kottke came out with his head-turning debut album, “Twelve String Blues,” recorded live at the Minneapolis Scholar Coffee House. It was the beginning of a legendary guitar career.
In 1999, as a new millennium came in, the touring sensation Phish, the group “Rolling Stone” called “the [...]

Salman Rushdie has been an international figure for a quarter of a century now, since the 1981 publication of his acclaimed “Midnight’s Children.” He’s been a fixture on bookshelves, on Op-Ed pages around the world, and on podiums speaking up, essentially, for freedom.
Rushdie became a household name in 1989 when Iran’s Ayotollah Khomeini issued a [...]

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,” [...]

Recently, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gave a stark warning that housing and stock prices could tumble. That’s just one more thing for the small investor to worry about.
Yale University’s chief investment officer David Swensen is at the top of his class. He manages Yale’s $15 billion endowment, which has grown an average of 16 [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Once upon a time in America, there was the Great Depression and a vast World War, and a soundtrack that shimmered with hot brass and moonlight and romance.
At the heart of the swing era was trombonist and big band leader Tommy Dorsey. He was the driven kid from Pennsylvania coal country [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Jonathan Kozol’s view of the history of race and American education goes something like this: at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, the country decided that “separate but equal” did not work. It struggled for two decades with integration, busing, mixing up the kids. Then it shrugged, looked away, and let [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Holly Morris had a job, a desk, a career editing books and a serious case of burnout. She had a rising fear of walking through life with eyes open and soul shut. So Holly Morris fled the cubicle for a walk on the wild side.
She hit the road, mapped out her own [...]

For many years, Americans parented with the stick — the lash, the twisted ear, and the spanking. Then came Doctor Spock — spanking went out and well-nurtured self-esteem came in.
Parenting has now switched to giving plentiful praise and rewards for good behavior. But that’s too much emphasis on self-esteem, some say.
Now, parenting consultant Alfie Kohn [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Virtuoso out-of-the box harpist Deborah Henson-Conant is known as the rockin’ bad girl of the harp world. She took the ancient instrument off its pedestal, cocked it on her hip, and made it play everything from Mexican cantina music to Brubeck to gut-bucket blues and sounds like Van Halen.
She’s the rebel [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The levees broke in New Orleans, but the damage of Hurricane Katrina swept a much larger swath than just the Queen City. From the Texas border of Louisiana, across the Mississippi delta, into Biloxi and Mobile and miles of towns and coastline in between, Katrina hit ten million Americans.
Many towns and [...]

So far, fewer than a third of New Orleans’s pre-Katrina population has returned to the Big Easy. One resident who has yet to make the journey back is singer Delia Nakayama. Medical troubles have kept her in Berkeley, California. But she wants to return to the city that once opened its arms [...]

Guests:
Ben Stein, actor, lawyer and economist who wrote a column for the New York Times last Sunday on executive pay
Randall Thomas, professor of law and business at Vanderbilt University who studies and analyzes executive pay.

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It has been a wild week on Capitol Hill — the Patriot Act, big budget cuts, huge military spending measures, and a hard run at drilling for oil in Alaska.
With the holiday recess bearing down, with news of secret White House spying bearing down, with huge deficits and giant issues of principle [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Two days ago, on board Air Force Two, high above the Middle East after his surprise visit to Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney invited reporters up to talk about the power of the presidency. It eroded after Vietnam and Watergate, he said. But he and George W. Bush are bringing [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
In the great turn of the seasons, the days don’t get shorter and the nights don’t get longer than on this day. It is December 21st, the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. Across the northern U.S. today, sunset comes just after 4 pm. In Helsinki, Finland, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There was big noise out of a little courtroom in Dover, Pennsylvania yesterday. After weeks of remarkable testimony on science and Darwin and evolution and intelligent design, federal judge John Jones III – Republican and George W. Bush appointee to the bench – ruled that intelligent design is not science.
Judge Jones said [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Most of us see things as they are. James Carroll sees things as they should be. The former Catholic priest turned Boston Globe columnist and best-selling author of “Constantine’s Sword” and “American Requiem.” cuts through the clutter of news headlines and gets to the heart of matters.
He asks the tough questions: the [...]

No apologies from President Bush yesterday as he vigorously defended the electronic eavesdropping program he authorized the NSA to conduct without first obtaining warrants.
He called the domestic surveillance a “vital tool in our war against the terrorists” and said his action was fully consistent with his “constitutional responsibilities and authorities.” And he said, in his [...]