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:
The 1990s are about to officially end on the nation’s highways. GM has announced it will end production of the giant Hummer H1.
Now, a stampede of stylish, sporty, gas-sipping tiny cars is headed onto the American roads. Not yet the teeny-tiny cars of Europe — those are coming — but a rush [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The urge is so strong, most people don’t fight it. In the presence of religion and religious icons — churches, temples, altars, scripture, holy relics from the Ganges riverbank to Rome — most people become reverent. Not Daniel Dennett.
Denett is a philosopher on a mission. His mission is to break [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield has whipped up a small storm in the last few weeks with his call for the new embrace of an old idea: manliness.
Men acting manly, says Mansfield, are what this world needs more of. John Waynes and Teddy Roosevelts, Papa Hemmingways and Schwarzeneggers who stride the [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The first Mardi Gras parade since Hurricane Katrina marched through New Orleans’ French Quarter this weekend, with their traditional barbed humor on display – even if many New Orleanians were not.
The bands played “Give Me that Mold Time Religion” and “C’est Levee” for the levees that did not hold. Mayor [...]

Exactly one year ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and blasted a path of destruction across the Gulf Coast. The images of those left behind are heart wrenching: families stranded on their roofs, children wading through murky water, dead bodies floating face down.
Over 1,000 people were reportedly killed. 124,000 homes – mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi [...]

William Rhoden grew up in a segregated neighborhood in Chicago. He played football at a black college. He went on to be a sports columnist at the New York Times.
Along the way, Rhoden saw Mohammed Ali speak out against the Vietnam War. He watched American sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos raise their fists for [...]

Hezbollah’s popularity in war-torn Lebanon has only grown since the fighting with Israel stopped. On the last day of the bombing campaign, Hezbollah sent an impressive 246 rockets over the border. By the next day, its relief effort was in full force.
Flush with volunteers and Iranian money, Hezbollah took charge of the rebuilding [...]

A month of bombings reduced the cities of southern Lebanon to rubble, but the rebuilding process is already underway. Bernard Khoury is a renowned architect based in Beirut and he has been watching the Hezbollah-led reconstruction effort.
Guests:
Bernard Khoury is a renowned architect in the Middle East and internationally.

By guest host John Hockenberry:
If the world could talk, what would it say to humans about our impact on the planet? Perhaps the voices of warning and the signs of change are all around us and humanity is not listening. Does humanity value the diversity and richness of nature? Will we miss it when and [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
In the news this week, has it been a mixed bag or a grab bag? Incumbents are nervous about the early signs of voter revolt in some US primaries. Iran tells the world to mind its own business regarding its nuclear program. The President tells America that staying the course in [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
War produces casualties, refugees, victories and defeats. War liberates people and it also takes prisoners. Prisoners of war are the human tokens exchanged between armies and nations when it is time to settle accounts and make peace.
But people caught in war’s prisons live in a world of precarious rules and sudden [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
The oil-exporting Shiite Islamic nation of Iran has skillfully emerged as a regional power broker since the U.S. invasion of Iraq with new influence from Afghanistan to Lebanon. Now it is signaling that it is willing to flex its muscle to the world community by acquiring a nuclear capability.
Can Iran be [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan nearly thirty years ago set in motion events that live in our headlines today. The war-torn nation that hosted the planners of 9/11, lived through the brutal Taliban regime, and then a U.S. invasion, is far from stable now… even with its supposedly pro-US government.
Reporter, activist, [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
How much is your wedding worth to you? What will it take to launch a young couple off into a lifetime of bliss? In dollar terms, if your wedding costs exceed the Gross Domestic Product of any nation in say OPEC, then you may be over the top.
Weddings these days are [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
So you’ve got your Lexis, you’ve got your olive tree — the world is flat, and a tsunami of globalization is going to remake it. You are all ready for the 21st century, right?
Thinkers from Tom Friedman to Milton Freidman say open markets and economic relationships are the key to global [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
Congress makes the laws, the courts interpret the laws, and the President enforces the laws, right? It’s the three part supposedly balanced system of government that lies at the heart of our constitution.
The power of Congress and the President have ebbed and flowed throughout history but are we at a turning [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
Do you open your pension junk mail — the yearly fliers that talk about how you are doing? There’s a box for how much you’ve put in – generally a demoralizingly small number; a box for how much your pension will grow in 40 years – usually a large number; [...]

By guest host John Hockenberry:
The plot busting British intelligence agents who foiled an alleged airline bombing caper have renewed calls to retool this country’s domestic spying program.
The British have taught a lot of bad lessons on how to govern but do they have anything to teach in the business of intelligence gathering? They’re more secretive, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
“This is your brain,” the old saw might have gone. Simple. At rest. Blank. And this is your brain on music: Switched on, lit up, soaring, rocking.
Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin started out as a record producer, but couldn’t get over the brain science of music. What it is, exactly, that enchants us [...]