By host Tom Ashbrook:
The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote more than 200 years ago about the all-powerful “invisible hand” of the market. It was tough, he said, but good for all.
The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was the great champion of the invisible hand and free markets. Governments, he said, [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Back when defenders of the war in Iraq were still sure of themselves, some of them tossed off terms like “roach motel” and “the flypaper strategy.” The idea was that terrorists from around the world would be lured into Iraq and would fight their last. They’d check in, and not check [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
By 2014, just eight years from now, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that there be no racial achievement gap in American education — none. All children — black, white, Hispanic, Asian — will be performing on the same bell curve of test scores.
It’s a tough deadline and a beautiful [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The Democrats are on their way. The new majority in the House and Senate is cranking up, choosing leaders, naming committee chairs, grabbing prime office space on Capitol Hill.
Come next January 4th, when the 110th Congress convenes, Democrats will hold the gavel. And what will they do with it? On [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The testimony last week was heart-wrenching: a girl of fourteen forced by a polygamist religious leader to marry her cousin and submit to sex she did not want with a man she did not love. “It was the darkest time of my entire life,” she said.
But wait. The world [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The White House does not, does not, does not want to call it a civil war. But at a certain point, the political spin doctors do not get the last word. The death tolls are through the roof. Sunni and Shiite militias are slugging it out with exploding sophistication [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
At the height of the counter-culture, anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the musical backdrop of millions of young Americans lives was made by the iconic group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with songs like “Ohio,” “Teach Your Children,” “Wooden Ships,” and “Woodstock.”
In the years since, a lot of music and [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The Centers for Disease Control now estimates that one in every 166 American children is born with autism. That adds up to a lot of kids, grandkids, neighbors, schoolmates. What was once considered rare can now look like an epidemic, cause still unknown.
Autism and autistic children challenge even the most [...]

Today we bring you Day Two of our Thanksgiving holiday special, sharing readings and conversations from the annual New Yorker Festival. In this hour, you’ll hear plenty of humor and humorists, and a little something about shoes.
New Yorker editor David Remnick talks with the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart about American media culture. Hollywood [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Hollywood’s America is no stranger to angry men in big violent worlds — solitary anti-heroes fighting fire with fire while life rolls on for us, mere mortals. Trace that theme back and you come to two giants of the Western — director John Ford and actor John Wayne.
In 1956, at the height [...]

Once a year, the writers and editors of the New Yorker magazine jump off the page to read their own work and talk with artists for the New Yorker Festival. And we pull together the best of those readings and conversations for an On Point Thanksgiving holiday treat. Today and tomorrow we have [...]

On this Thanksgiving Day, we’re talking turkey, stuffing–and a whole lot more. The nation’s taste buds and eating habits have come a long way since the Pilgrims, even since your mother’s holiday table.
The “French’s Green Bean Casserole” now shares a trivet with fingerling potatoes. Ordinary salads have sprouted all kinds of greens. A little orange [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
All over America tomorrow, after the bird is carved and the Thanksgiving gravy is socked away, millions of televisions will click on — lock on! — to the drama and hoopla and slam dance of NFL football. Tomorrow, it will be Cowboys and Broncos and Lions and more, each with ten [...]

Director Robert Altman died this past Monday evening at the age of 81. The five-time Academy Award nominee for best director was best known for “M.A.S.H,” “Nashville,” and “The Player.” His most recent films were “Gosford Park” and “A Prairie Home Companion.”
We look back at his extraordinary career.
Guests:
Mitchell Zuckoff, a Boston University journalism professor and [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The public clamor over genocide in Darfur is almost off the hook now. Church groups and congressmen and college kids and today, again, the UN, are all raising holy hell over the hell unfolding in western Sudan.
Now, even the Holocaust Museum in Washington is bathing its outside walls every night with [...]

By Tom Ashbrook:
Here’s a conundrum for you: a smaller portion of American households include married couples than ever before — a minority now, says the Census Bureau, just 47 percent. But among Americans who are married, the spouse is being leaned on now — more than ever before — to be everything: [...]

By Tom Ashbrook:
Believe it or not — or maybe you remember — there was a time when air travel could reek of elegance. Wine lists, gracious smiles, on-time arrivals. Of course, it cost a lot more, too.
But today — with security quagmires, mounds of lost luggage, and cattle-car cabins — travelers can feel [...]

The Lebanese minister, Christian leader, and leading anti-Syria politician Pierre Gemayel was shot and killed today in Beirut. The assassination of Gemayel, the son of former president Amin Gemayel, comes amid a crisis in Lebanese politics, after the recent resignation of six pro-Syrian ministers from the cabinet.
We get the latest details.
Guests:
Chistopher Dickey, Mideast regional editor [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
Remarkably, James Bond is back in the movie theaters and headlines. “Casino Royale,” with the new “blonde Bond,” Daniel Craig, opened over the weekend with a $40 million US box office.
The new Bond may look like Vladimir Putin on steroids, but he pulls off the greatest Bond trick of all — keeping [...]

By host Tom Ashbrook:
The mega-billions are flying on Wall Street today, but not in a game you’re likely to play. “Private equity” — super fat-cat private wealth — is buying up publicly-traded companies off the stock exchanges like never before, and taking them private to rework and resell, they hope, for fantastic profits.
If you [...]