By host Tom Ashbrook:
Author Annie Proulx doesn’t like it called the “gay cowboy movie” but whatever you call it, “Brokeback Mountain” ran away with the Oscar nominations this morning — eight in total, including one for best picture, best director and best actor.
Academy Awards night is still five weeks away, but the nominations are flying [...]

The seeds for next year’s Oscars may have been planted at last week’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. One filmmaker who made a big splash there was 22-year-old Roger Ingraham.
His film, “Moonshine,” was made in his home town of Stafford Springs, Connecticut, on a budget of ninety two hundred dollars — his entire [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
After eighteen and a half years and the longest economic expansion in American history, the end has finally come. Today is the last day on the job as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank for Alan Greenspan.
He’s been called the Michael Jordan, the Lance Armstrong, the Gary Kasparov of central bankers. [...]

Coretta Scott King died in her sleep last night at the age of 78. The wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., she was also a force in the movement in her own right.
Joining us to talk about the life of Ms. King is Lonnie Bunch. He is the Founding Director [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
When it comes to human happiness, the ancients were under no illusions. “The gate is narrow, and the way is hard,” says the Bible. And without the gods on your side, thought the ancient Greeks, the search was hopeless.
By the time of the Enlightenment and the American Declaration of Independence, the [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There is news from the Pentagon this weekend that the US Army is now promoting 97 percent of all captains to the rank of major, a dramatic jump in promotion rates, and more evidence — say critics inside the military and out — that the army is lowering standards because it is [...]

Milton Hershey dreamed big. The Pennsylvania farm kid, with more moxie than money, created a chocolate empire that still reigns supreme. And his cravings went far beyond the chocolate bar.
Hershey’s business success was matched by his devotion to social improvement. He built a company town to house his workers. He started up a school [...]

Twelve years ago, in the midterm Congressional elections, the Republican Revolution descended on Washington. This year, there is another midterm election, and the tide might be turning.
President Bush’s approval ratings are a low 43 percent according to this morning’s LA-Times poll. The Jack Abramoff scandal is reaching deep into the Republican Party.
The Democrats are [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
On January 27, 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born is Salzburg, Austria. Within six years, he would be performing before the Austrian empress. Within thirty-five years — the span of his musical miracle of a life — he would compose a continent of music so astounding that it struck even his contemporaries [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There’s an earthquake in Mideast politics today. Palestinians have gone to the polls and elected, it appears, Hamas to power. Hamas, which runs medical clinics and charity networks across the impoverished West Bank and Gaza, is seen by many Palestinians as a champion of clean government.
Hamas is the Islamic militant group that [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Writer Nora Vincent is a lanky five-ten tall and wears a size eleven-and-a-half shoe. With a voice on the low side, she’s a born tomboy. For eighteen months, she put all that together with a change of clothes, a macho haircut, and fake stubble to pose — pretty effectively — as a [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Yesterday, the Ford Motor Company announced that thirty thousand jobs will be cut and fourteen plants will be closed. And the great-grandson of founder Henry Ford says this is the “Way Forward”. Well, maybe. We’d better pray he’s right, and we do.
But if the way forward for American manufacturing [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
All Americans know the story. In 1607, English adventurers moored their tall-masted ships off the coast of Virginia, declared the rough colony of Jamestown, and came face-to-face with the American vastness and the native inhabitants.
Things went badly. Chief Powhatan was not happy. Captain John Smith was soon about to be killed. The [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
One month ago, when word of President Bush’s warrantless domestic wiretapping push became public, the buzz was “constitutional crisis.” Legal scholars, Democratic opponents, and many conservative Republicans said this was illegal — that it was putting the presidency above the law.
This week, in a bold move that could create precedent for generations, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Ask any pet lover or cow poke — we know, or think we know, that cats and dogs and horses have personalities. Who could miss them? But what about an octopus? A hyena? A tortoise? A guppy?
After most of a century of looking the other way, behavioral [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There was a parade of arrests in Tokyo, Japan today — starting with Takafumi Horie, the brash, young entrepreneur whose Internet company’s hiccup last week brought Japan’s high-flying stock market crashing to a close.
After a long decade of economic stagnation, the once-unstoppable Japan has come steaming back. But the world has changed.
China [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Forty years ago this month, the young life of Martin Luther King, Jr. was rushing toward its tragic, glorious, world-moving crescendo. He was 37 years old. He had marched in Selma; lived to see a southern American president say “we shall overcome” and act to prove it; won a Nobel [...]

“Wicked” Wilson Pickett, one of America’s great pioneers of soul music, died yesterday. He was 64. His string of 1960s smash soul hits included, “Mustang Sally”, “Midnight Hour” and “634-5789″.
Pop culture critic Renee Graham talks about Pickett’s life and legacy.
Guests:
Pop culture critic Renee Graham.

The Bush administration is taking more heat on global warming. This time, the critics are former EPA administrators.
Six former heads of the agency –five Republicans and one Democrat– sounded off yesterday at an event to mark the agency’s 35th anniversary. They didn’t mince words.
Russell Train, EPA chief under Presidents Nixon and Ford, called the current [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
You remember the wide open promise of the World Wide Web, right? This was to be the untrammeled, free range domain of digital liberation, a new world of freedom. Well, yes and no.
You can search for whatever you like, but type in “democracy” in China’s blogosphere, or “human rights” or “women” [...]