By host Tom Ashbrook:
Twenty years ago this October, Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Now, at 72, that gilded moment is just one peak in an astonishing life story of letters and bold, even rash, political activism.
It’s been four decades since the young Nigerian writer and firebrand [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
To hear Enron founder and CEO Ken Lay and his lawyers tell it in the courtroom, the troubles at Enron were everybody else’s doing — vulture investors and scheming hedge fund; Wall Street Journal on a witch hunt.
He couldn’t sell his three homes in Aspen or his three homes in Galveston fast [...]

by Tom Ashbrook.
Bigfoot political columnist Joe Klein is pining for Harry Truman. For an American politician, any American politician, who will stand up and tell it like it is, straight from the heart, un-spun, unpolished, un-polled.
After eight presidential campaigns and his briefly-anonymous send-up of Bill Clinton in “Primary Colors”, the Time Magazine pundit is [...]

by Tom Ashbrook
It’s a wild and wacky war zone out there in cable TV newsland. MSNBC’s Keith Olberman rails against Fox giant Bill O’Reilly as “the worst person in the world.” O’Reilly cracks heads, and wisecracks about the millions he’s paid to “bloviate” – his word!
Lou Dobbs goes CNN-ballistic nightly on immigrants. Chris Matthews [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Four books into a still-young career, novelist Colson Whitehead has had the prizes and accolades young writers dream of. He’s been compared to Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison as a new great African-American literary hope, and compared to Thomas Pynchon and Saul Bellow as a writer working well beyond race.
Whitehead has also [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
It has been a deadly month, again, for US troops in Iraq. Sixty-two American soldiers have died so far in April. And one of the earliest was one of the many female casualties of this war: Marine Lance Corporal Juana Navarro.
She was five foot two. “An angel on earth,” her [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
There are some sounds that bring back a time, a place, or a national mood like nothing else — a lonesome train whistle, the crack and call of a famous “at bat,” the first crackly news report of a tragedy or triumph, a line of music now long gone.
For most [...]

Nepal’s King Gyanendra may have pulled the country off the bring of anarchy with his Monday reinstatement of the lower house of the Nepali parliament. But Nepal’s turmoil may not be at an end.
Nepali writer Samrat Upadhyay tells us about the challenges every Nepali faces in healing the country’s wounds.
Guests:
Samrat Upadhyay, author of “The Royal [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
America’s first conservationists were hunters. Men like Teddy Roosevelt, who knew and loved the wild – and the fishing rod and rifle. But in the ’60s and ’70s, environmentalists and hunters and fishermen parted ways, at least culturally.
Green groups like the Sierra Club lobbied against hunting. The hook and [...]

For years, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has positioned itself as the champion of American hunters and the right of all Americans to bear whatever arms they choose.
Now, a fledgling new group is looking to separate those missions and challenge the NRA by pushing for guns for hunters and sportsmen, but not, they say, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
We all know the change — from clock-punching, seniority-building, gold-watch careers in the old economy to the job-hopping, no-strings, freestyle scramble of the new economy.
In the ’90s, the “new economy” life was loudly celebrated for its speed and creativity and fluidity, its boundlessness and freedom. But it wasn’t long before the [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The polygraph machines are out at the CIA in a tough crackdown on leaks and leakers. First to go – fired last week for allegedly leaking word of secret American prisons abroad – was Mary McCarthy, 61, a veteran intelligence officer.
McCarthy worked more than twenty years for the CIA, including very [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
If we accept the old adage that you are what you eat, then Michael Pollan has some unsettling news: we are mostly processed corn that walks. That’s one of his conclusions in his new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.”
Another is that America has a national [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
A growing debate about online sex offender registries grew louder this week after the brutal slayings of two convicted sex offenders in Maine.
Police say it was a case of vigilante justice. The alleged killer, who later killed himself, was able retrieve the names and addresses of the two men on line, [...]

By host Anthony Brooks:
If the great American musical tradition of the blues is defined by names like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Freddie King and Pinetop Perkins — than it’s only fair to include the name David Maxwell — because he’s played with them all.
Maxwell has been a part of the history of the blues [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
It’s too soon to know if the Duke University lacrosse players accused of gang-raping an exotic dancer are innocent or guilty.
It has been known for years, though, that police have charged many on that team with rowdy behavior, including underage drinking and urinating in public. It’s also known that after the [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
Patrick Henry College is a small school with big ambitions, and some would say out-sized influence. Its stated goal is to prepare Christian men and women to lead the nation and shape its culture with biblical values. It promotes strict interpretation of the Bible, which means science professors teach that creationism [...]

In March, Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee spoke at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Center’s mission is “to inform, equip, motivate, and support Christians; enabling them to defend and implement the Biblical principles on which our country was founded.”
Huckabee, a conservative Christian, is a possible presidential candidate in 2008. [...]

By guest host Anthony Brooks:
In 1970 a barrel of crude oil cost a dollar and eighty cents. This week it hit a new high — above 70 dollars. The result — gas at three dollars a gallon and climbing coming to a filling station near you, not to mention fears of inflation and [...]

Big personnel changes are under way at the White House. Today, Scott McClellan has stepped down as Press Secretary and Karl Rove, President Bush’s aide, is scaling back his responsibilities.
Reporter John Harwood explains the latest on what these staff shuffles at the White House mean.
Guests:
John Harwood, Chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and senior contributing writer [...]