One of the great pleasures of directing On Point is that I hear just about every show we produce. And around the holidays, I listen back to some of our best shows to rebroadcast while the staff takes a well-deserved break. This year we’ve reached deep into our archives for some gems of the past three years. There’s a lot to look forward to:

Annie Leibovitz shares intimate details about her work as a photographer and about her relationship with Susan Sontag. Nora Ephron bemoans the woes of aging. And the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch talks about hip-hop, basketball, and his latest documentary, “Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot.”

Then there are the Pulitzer Prize-winning writers: Frank McCourt regales us with war stories of teaching at New York’s Stuyvesant High School—and reconnects with one of his former students who calls into the show [UPDATE, 12/31: this show will not be rebroadcast, because we're producing a live hour on the Israel/Gaza situation in its place]. This spring Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” but before that he joined us in the studio to talk about exactly what he means when he writes about “fuku.”

On the music front: you’ll hear the surprising history of “House of the Rising Sun,” the infamous song of ruin and loss; guitar legend Leo Kottke and former Phish bassist Mike Gordon team up on “Sixty Six Steps”; songs of Sacred Harp in America, where the harp is the human voice; and Count Basie’s American soundtrack of the 1930’s, and the American soundtrack of 2008.

And two subjects that really can’t miss: a world tour of extreme chocolate with The New Yorker’s Bill Buford and a tell-all chat with Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of Britain’s MI-5 security service and the model for Judi Dench’s M in the most recent James Bond movies.

Tom will be back on Friday, December 26, for a special news roundtable looking at the Biggest Stories of 2008. And we’ll be back on Friday, January 2, with our first shows of the New Year. As always, thanks for listening. We look forward to having you with us in ‘09.