UPDATE, 3/4/08: MARGARET B. JONES REVEALED AS FRAUD.: As reported today in The New York Times, Margaret Seltzer, the author of “Love and Consequences” (under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones) has admitted that she fabricated the memoir. She was interviewed here on Friday, Feb. 29.
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Eight people were hit by [...]

Big politics came from the shores of Lake Erie to the Rio Grande this week, as Ohio and Texas prepare to cast their votes in the presidential primary. And big economics were right behind, as the President says no recession, while the numbers go south.
We’ve got Clinton and Obama in full lather now. John McCain [...]

The rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany meant the fall of a world of music. Behind Adolf Hitler, the Nazis suppressed a generation of composers — most Jewish, some simply anti-Fascist — and the works they had produced over many years.
A world of music, between Mahler and Schoenberg, was blacked out, and its creators [...]

It is scary out there in the world of economic indicators.
Inflation is at its highest rate in a quarter century. Home prices are getting low and lower. Factory orders are lousy. The U.S. dollar is plummeting.
It’s no wonder consumer confidence is on the rocks. Never mind recession — some days it sounds like we should [...]

William F. Buckley Jr. founded the National Review and is one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement.
He died yesterday at the age of 82.
We look at Buckley’s legacy for conservatives today.
Guests:
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union.

America is in the middle of a tattoo craze. Forty percent of Americans aged 26 to 40 have been tattooed. More than a third of Americans 18 to 25 have already been inked somewhere — sometimes in ways shocking to their elders.
But the U.S. tattoo culture is nothing compared to some of the world’s body [...]

Twenty Democratic debates, and last night, the last debate before primaries next Tuesday that could decide the Democrats’ competition. Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were gladiators once more in a test of ideas, and integrity, and attitude.
Clinton, fierce and focused, was a commanding presence fighting for the lead she has lost. Obama, cool [...]

There were years in the depths of the Great Depression when masses of Americans lived in desperation for a meal, a pair of shoes, and most of all, a job.
And then, in a world of hobos and shantytowns, came the New Deal and the WPA — the Works Progress Administration. The federal government directly gave [...]

A week from today, it could be over for Hillary Clinton. She may roar back in Texas and Ohio. But if she doesn’t, we may be watching the last week of the strongest bid in history by a woman for the White House.
And we’re pausing today to ask what role gender — and maybe sexism [...]

It’s a globalized world, but that doesn’t mean we all live the same. Take high school students in the U.S., China and India. Different worlds.
A new documentary takes the two million minutes of high school life and compares them — in Indiana, Shanghai and Bangalore.
It’s a little shocking to see. Bright American kids on Xbox [...]

The United States alone spends more than the rest of the world’s nations combined on defense. And defense spending has surged during the George W. Bush years, to its highest level in real dollars since World War II. Yet there is scarcely a word on the ‘08 campaign trail about military spending.
There’s plenty to talk [...]

In 1967, revolution was in the air. And not just on college campuses. Hollywood, too, was at the threshold of a generational rebellion.
The year’s Oscar nominees told the story: So long to the super-sanitized, big-studio moviemaking machines. Hello to the new rough-and-tumble — sex, violence, and rock-n-roll. Out with the “Sound of Music” clones. In [...]

It’s been a week of spectacles, earthly and otherwise.
Clinton and Obama dueled in Texas. McCain exchanged fire with The New York Times. Fidel Castro dropped a bombshell of his own, ending his half-century rule.
The U.S. military created real fireworks, blasting a satellite out of the sky. In Pakistan, opposition parties rocked Musharraf. And Kosovo exploded [...]

One in five children in America today is a child of immigrants. And those numbers are only rising.
Yet as the immigration debate rages, the real lives of those children are too often invisible. Transplanted to a new country, they struggle to master a new language — and a new culture. Some will thrive in school. [...]

Pennsylvania Democrat Patrick Murphy is the only Iraq War veteran in Congress.
He can tell you all about driving into enemy fire in a Humvee without adequate armor; losing the battles for Iraqi hearts and minds; the strategic blunders of the Bush administration; the high price and pain of long deployments, and the 19 comrades who [...]

There are headaches, and then there are migraines — gut-wrenching, brain-throbbing assaults to the head. They’re hard for most people to imagine, but for 30 million Americans, they’re a fact of life.
Once dismissed as psychosomatic, ‘in your head’ disorders, migraines are now gaining top billing as a disease and a public health issue. And if [...]

A year ago, without warning, China shot one of its own satellites out of the sky. The U.S. protested loudly. But what a difference a year makes. The U.S. Navy is preparing to take out one of our own ailing spy satellites with a ship-launched missile — perhaps tonight.
The bus-sized satellite carries half a ton [...]

In our post-9/11 world, religion is often seen as one of the most divisive forces. And for good reason. Religious extremism drives conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq, fuels terrorism from Europe to Sri Lanka, and makes enemies of Israelis and Arabs.
And yet, says scholar Alan Wolfe, the world is not headed for a new era [...]

Call him “the undefeated.” Fidel Castro, at the age of 81 and suffering from a long illness, officially stepped down this morning as president of Cuba.
And he did it on his own terms — after half a century of iron-clad rule of the Communist island nation 90 miles off the Florida coast, having faced down [...]

So much has been written about the search for happiness — in songs and poems and countless self-help books — much of it straight from the heart.
But it turns out there’s also a science of happiness, and in her new book a psychologist lays out the cold, hard facts, based on decades of research.
Did you [...]