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When it comes to music, we’re in the age of abundance. It’s everywhere.

How to sort the ocean and find what you like? Well, you could try Pandora. It’s an online music site that has x-rayed mountains of music. Tell it what you like, it’ll play you a lot more you might like.

Punch in Lady Gaga and you get Shakira. Punch in Stan Getz or Aaron Copeland or Springsteen — and Pandora gives you more in each vein. And maybe some surprises.

Friends used to recommend music. Now the web does. And it’s cool.

This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with the founder of Pandora about the future of music online.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer of the Internet music site Pandora. He’s also an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician, and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry.

Daniel Levitin, professor of music and psychology at McGill University and author of “The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature” and “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.”

President Barack Obama tours the Great Wall in Badaling, China, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009. (AP)

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Who knew mammograms and Pap smears could headline a week? But here they are this week, shoved into the health care debate just as everything is on the line for reform.

We’ve got the president in China, where the U.S. no longer towers. 9/11 trials coming to New York. The Fed chief warning of another year of high unemployment. Crunch time in the Senate on health care.

And women. Sarah Palin in the news. Oprah, signing off for cable. Hillary Clinton, in Kabul for Hamid Karzai’s inauguration.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Matt Continetti, staff writer at The Weekly Standard. He’s author of the new book, “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star.”

Jill Lawrence, columnist for Politics Daily.com and longtime reporter for USA Today.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation. She writes the “Editor’s Cut” blog. She’s also a contributor to the Nation’s own take on Sarah Palin, “Going Rouge: An American Nightmare.”

Early in the hour, Tom asked Michael, who recently wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch, for his inside take on what’s going through Murdoch’s mind:

MICHAEL WOLFF: I think he’s raging against the dying of the light, actually. I think he hooked himself, chained himself to the purchase of The Wall Street Journal, and that is his legacy, and therefore the newspaper itself is his legacy.

He’s fighting on any number of fronts right now. He’s fighting Wall Street, he’s fighting doubters in his company, in his family. He’s really out there, all alone. It’s interesting -- just the other day, he sacked his long-time PR person, a guy by the name of Gary Ginsburg, who has often modulated Rupert’s worst instincts. I think that interview that he gave – I remember he gave that interview to his own employees –

TOM ASHBROOK: Right, Sky News Australia.

WOLFF: … was Rupert kind of coming unhinged, and Rupert unsupervised. I think it’s going to be a very, very interesting psycho-drama that plays out here.

Jeff added that the delusions aren’t only Murdoch’s:

JEFF JARVIS: Gary Ginsburg called me some time ago, when Rupert gave a famous speech to the society of newspaper editors. And Gary was the one who wrote it. Gary added the strategy to Rupert’s words from the outside, rather than Rupert himself. Rupert, again, doesn’t use the Internet.

But News Corp isn’t the only one making the mistake here. I think the mistake that Google has made in this – and I’m an admirer of Google, I wrote a book to that effect – but I think that Google thought that they could become friends with the newspaper industry. And the newspaper industry isn’t looking for friends. They’re looking for enemies they can blame for the problems that are actually their own from the last fifteen years of inaction in the face of this dying light. And so it’s impossible for Google to become friends with the newspaper industry.

The news industry, however, Google gives great value. And I think that Google can encourage this future of entrepreneurial journalism in incredible ways.

And hear the full show — and ensuring fireworks.

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Twenty-one year old Joe Cada won the World Series of Poker and $8.5 million last week in Las Vegas. A heck of a pot for the youngest winner ever.

But fully of a piece, says my guest today, with poker’s fabled place in American history. And in American culture.

Presidents, generals, gangsters, cowboys — and now millions of Americans online — have embraced the part-Puritan, part go-for-it gambler ethos of poker. A new history tells the story.

This hour, On Point: The tangled American roots of poker. And we’ll hear from the 21-year-old who won it all.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

James McManus, bestselling journalist and author who writes about poker for the New York Times and other publications. His new book is “Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker,” came out last month. He came in fifth in the World Series of Poker in 2000 and wrote a memoir about that experience, “Positively 5th Street.”

Read the first chapter of “Cowboys Full” (pdf).

Joseph Cada, winner of the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. He was 21 when he won on November 10, the youngest champion ever. His winnings totaled $8.5 million.

Laura Lane, co-host of ESPN.com’s Inside Deal, a weekly show about online poker.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, left, and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch. (AP)

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For a century and more, newspapers made money hand over fist. Then came the Internet.

Now, newspapers are dying. And news giant Rupert Murdoch is getting mad. He’s ready to fight.

Murdoch’s target is the biggest kid on the Internet block: Google. The News Corp chief says Google has essentially been stealing the news from companies like his and giving it away for free. It’s got to stop, he says.

Is Murdoch just blowing smoke?

This hour, On Point: We’ll hear from Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolf, and Steven Brill — plus Google CEO Eric Schmidt — on Google versus Murdoch.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the Interactive Program at the City University of New York School of Journalism. His most recent book is “What Would Google Do?” He writes a column on new media for The Guardian and blogs at Buzzmachine.

Michael Wolff, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and founder of the news aggregator Newser.com. He’s author of “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.”

Steven Brill, media entrepreneur, founder of CourtTV, American Lawyer magazine, and most recently co-founder of Journalism Online, a company whose mission is to help news publishers make the transition to a paid-content model on the Internet.

Writer Vladimir Nabokov is shown in Montreux, Switzerland, in Dec. 1976. (AP Photo)

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The great novelist and short story writer Vladimir Nabokov emigrated to the United States, made his fortune with the publication of the incendiary “Lolita,” and then decamped to a hotel in Switzerland for the rest of his life.

He died in 1977, leaving behind — on 138 handwritten index cards — the fragments of a final book titled “The Original of Laura.” He wanted it destroyed. His wife, who once saved “Lolita” from the flames, declined.

Now, it’s out. Nabokov’s last work, published against his dying wish.

This hour, On Point: from the fragments of a master, Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Original of Laura.” 

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and author of numerous books on Nabokov, including “Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years,” “Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years,” and “Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery.” His most recent book is “On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction.”

Leland de la Durantaye, a professor of English at Harvard University and the author of “Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov.”

More links:

To mark Nabokov’s 100th birthday in April 1999, Random House created a special site devoted to the author’s life and work.  It’s a good introduction, and includes an essay by our guest Brian Boyd on Nabokov’s memoir, “Speak, Memory.”

(Photo: Flickr/kristiewells)

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For years and years, the word to American women was: Get your mammogram. Self-examine for breast cancer. Be alert. Save your life.

This week, a new message. On Monday, an independent government panel of doctors and health professionals released a new report on breast cancer screening, reversing advice American woman have heard for decades.

Now, if you’re under 50, without special risk factors, no routine mammograms, they said. If you’re over 50, just once every two years. And those breast self-exams you were told to do — never mind. No need to teach that.

The new view is rocking boats all over the place, and drawing fiery pushback — in the midst of a national healthcare debate and cost-cutting pressures.

This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with the chair of the panel and ardent critics of the new view on mammograms.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dr. Bruce N. (Ned) Calonge, chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which issued the new recommendations this week. He’s the chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and president of the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, which licenses and provides regulatory oversight for physicians and physician assistants.

Dr. Marisa Weiss, director of breast radiation oncology at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Penn., founder of Breastcancer.org, and co-author of “Living Beyond Breast Cancer: A Survivor’s Guide for When Treatment Ends and the Rest of Your Life Begins.” She opposes the new recommendations.

Diana Miglioretti, senior investigator with Group Health Research Institute and a professor in the school of public health and biostatistics at the University of Washington. She is a principle investigator for the statistical coordinating center for the breast cancer surveillance consortium and contributed mammography and breast cancer data to the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force.

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Iraq combat veteran and Marine Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Workman went into some of the worst fighting in Fallujah. Nightmare stuff. Killed twenty men in a day.

He came out with the Navy Cross — and a brutal case of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

Now, from the brink of suicide and despair, he’s fought back to tell his story — and the story of many thousands of other veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He’s fighting for acknowledgement of all that they bring home. All.

This hour, On Point: A Marine hero’s story of the battle there, and here.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Workman joins us from Los Angeles. An eight-year combat veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he served in Fallujah in 2004 and was awarded the Navy Cross for valor. His new memoir, “Shadow of the Sword: A Marine’s Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption,” chronicles his time in Fallujah and his subsequent struggle with PTSD.

Read Chapter One from “Shadow of the Sword.”

From San Diego we’re joined by Heidi Kraft, former clinical psychologist in the U.S. Navy.  She led a combat stress unit in Iraq and wrote the book “Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital.” She continues to treat combat trauma.

More links:

You can read Jeremiah Workman’s posts at the Huffington Post.

The Washington Post offers a list of PTSD resources.

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Sarah Palin’s new memoir, “Going Rogue,” is just out and already a bestseller. It’s in the bookstores today. She’s on Oprah. Her tour bus is hitting the road.

The book settles scores with McCain advisers the ex-Alaskan governor sees as having crimped her style on the vice-presidential campaign trail. Payback is the word. A little redemption, a little revenge. And a lot of stage-setting for whatever comes next.

Will she run for President in 2012? She’s not retreating, reports Sarah Palin. She’s reloading.

This hour, On Point: “Going Rogue” and the political future of Sarah Palin.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us today from Washington are:

Todd Purdum, national editor for Vanity Fair. His August article about Sarah Palin was headlined “It Came from Wasilla.”

Candy Crowley, senior political correspondent for CNN. She’s been reporting on the new Palin media blitz.

David Winston, GOP political consultant and president of The Winston Group. He served as director of planning for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He currently consults for the House and Senate Republican leadership.

(Photo: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid via Flickr)

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Brilliant tinkerers made the American economy. From Thomas Edison to Henry Ford to the Apple computer guys, late nights tinkering in the garage, the basement, the workshop changed the world.

In the late 20th century, big corporate R&D seemed to take over. Bright young Americans headed to Wall Street.

Now, a bunch of them are headed back to the garage. Tinkering again — this time turbocharged by new high-tech tools that put tinkering in high gear.

Could the next big thing, the economy’s turnaround, come out of your garage?

This hour, On Point: The return of the American tinkerer.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Justin Lahart, reporter for The Wall Street Journal. His article “Tinkering Makes a Comeback Amid Crisis” appeared on Thursday.

Bre Pettis, professional tinkerer. He’s co-founder of NYC Resistor, a tech workshop in Brooklyn, New York and co-founder of MakerBot Industries. More information about his projects at www.brepettis.com.

David Hounshell, David M. Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of History, Social and Decision Sciences and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, at Carnegie Mellon University.

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, center, and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees (from left: Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh) will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, the Obama administration announced on Nov. 13, 2009. (AP Photos)

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After eight years — on the run, in secret CIA prisons, being water-boarded, in Guantanamo — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is headed to New York City.

The alleged Al Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and five others, will go on trial in lower Manhattan, “just blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood,” said Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday.

It will be, without doubt, the trial of this young century. A vindication for American justice, say some. A circus and a threat, say others.

This hour, On Point: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, American justice, and the trial of the century.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Evan Perez, reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy (1997-2000). He’s now president and dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center.

Walter Huffman, former  Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Army (1997 to 2001). He’s dean of the Texas Tech University School of Law.

Josh Gerstein, White House reporter for Politico.

Jonathan Safran Foer (Photo: David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)

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Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer made his name young and powerfully.

In two startlingly fresh books — “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” — he brought a new generation’s eye to the Holocaust and to the shock of 9/11.

Now, the young novelist has gone non-fiction to look at the most elemental of human habits: what we eat. Specifically, the factory-farmed meat Americans consume in titanic volumes.

He thinks it’s wrong. He may persuade you.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer on his new book, “Eating Animals.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Jonathan Safran Foer joins us from New York. He’s the author of the acclaimed novels “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” His new book,  “Eating Animals,” is a  nonfiction appeal for a moral reconsideration of meat eating.

You can read an excerpt from “Eating Animals” at the book’s website.

Soldiers Cross, honoring those who lost their lives in last week's shooting, is seen near the podium where President Barack Obama will speak at the memorial service, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas. (AP)

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A solemn week on the war front, at home and abroad.

Taps and empty boots at Fort Hood, Texas and troubling questions about the alleged killer, Nidal Hasan.

A Veterans Day with much to ponder on costs already born and still to be born. An Afghanistan debate in Washington and Kabul that grows deeper with time.

On health care, abortion lands in the middle of reform efforts — and could be the poison pill.

From Guantanamo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 9/11 mastermind, will stand trial in a civilian court in New York City.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us in our studio is Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning and nationally syndicated columnist for The Boston Globe.

Also in our studio we’re joined by David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served as an advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Detail from a front page of The Onion, as featured in "Our Front Pages" (simonandschuster.com).

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For two decades and counting now, the satirical news source The Onion has been churning out the headlines that make you laugh or cry or both.

“Amish Give Up.” “Inner Cities to Receive Soothing Heroin.” “Cheney Vows to Attack U.S. If Kerry Elected.” “God Outdoes Terrorists.”

And, the day after last year’s presidential election: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Oh, my.

It all started as a college humor paper in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, it’s everywhere.

This hour, On Point: Hot headlines and the truth in bleak humor. We’ll peel back The Onion.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Joe Garden, features editor for The Onion. He joined the staff in 1993, after dropping out of the University of Wisconsin, when the paper was still produced out of Madison. The Onion’s new book is “Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America’s Finest News Source.”

Also from New York we’re joined by Seth Reiss, a staff writer for The Onion. He’s been on staff for three years, at the New York base The Onion has had since 2001.

From Pasadena, Calif., we’re joined by Robert Niles, editor at the Online Journalism Review, published by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

And with us in our studio is star On Point intern Suzanne Merkelson, late, great editor-in-chief of The Colby Echo in Waterville, Maine.

A paper cutout of U.S. President Barack Obama is displayed at a shop Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 in Shanghai, China. China signaled Thursday that it's ready to allow its currency to rise just days ahead of a visit by President Obama. (AP)

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President Obama, on his way to a week in Asia today. A quick stop in Alaska, then Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul, South Korea.

Every stop has its agenda. Bucking up old allies. Talking trade, military bases, America’s commitment in the Pacific.

And at the heart of it all, Washington’s dance with China. Our “vital partner and competitor,” as the president calls it.

Obama will be face to face with China’s top leaders. They build, we buy. They lend, we borrow. It’s a giant relationship at the heart of the world economy.

This hour, On Point: The president goes to Asia.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington, D.C., is James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic. He’s covered East Asia for more than two decades, and he just finished a three-year stint living in China. His latest book is “Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China.”

From Lincoln, Neb., we’re joined by Susan Shirk, professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She oversaw U.S.-China policy at the State Department from 1997 to 2000, and she founded the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, a forum that right now is sponsoring high-level talks between North Korea, the United States and others over Korean peninsula nuclear issues. Her latest book is “China: Fragile Superpower.”

And from Shanghai, China, we’re joined by Shen Dingli, professor and executive dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, in Shanghai. He’s director of Fudan University’s American Studies program. He’s also a fellow at the Asia Society. For a sense of how he sees China-U.S. competition in the coming decades, see his recent paper for the Centre for European Policy Studies.

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A year ago, with a giant economic stimulus package in the works, many Americans envisioned a rebuilt nation. Infrastructure. Bridges. Green cities.

It hasn’t exactly happened. But the design of all that surrounds us — all that’s built, old and new — is a daily message to us about who we are and what we aspire to.

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Paul Goldberger wants to remind us of why architecture matters, in shaping lives and cultures. From ancient Rome to the next wave of American — or Asian — building.

This hour, On Point: Paul Goldberger, on the power of the built world around us.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic and Sky Line columnist for The New Yorker. He’s professor of design and architecture at The New School, and author of several books, including “Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York” and “Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture.” His latest is “Why Architecture Matters.”

Read an excerpt from “Why Architecture Matters.”

Richard Meier is a Pritzker Prize-winning architect. He’s designed many world-renowned buildings, including the High Museum (Atlanta), the Frankfurt Museum for Decorative Arts, the Hartford Seminary, the Atheneum (New Harmony, IN), and the Getty Center (Los Angeles).

See a gallery of designs by Richard Meier & Partners Architects.

Terry Harrington, center, stands with his daughter Nicole Brown, left, his mother Josephine James, right, and family and friends outside the Clarinda Correctional Facility after Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack signed a reprieve for Harrington, Thursday April 17, 2003.

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Terry Harrington was seventeen when a retired police captain working as a night watchman was shot and killed in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Harrington and another black teenager were convicted of the murder and sentenced to prison for life without parole.

After 25 years behind bars, both were freed by the Iowa Supreme Court. Vital evidence pointing to a more likely suspect, the court found, had been withheld.

Translation: Terry Harrington was framed. Now his case is before the US Supreme Court.

This hour, On Point: Terry Harrington, framed for murder, speaks.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate magazine, where she writes about legal affairs. Her piece about Terry Harrington’s case, “The Framers on the Framers,” examined whether the Constitution protects prosecutors who fabricate evidence.

Terry Harrington, plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Pottawattamie County v. McGhee. He was 17 years old in 1977 when he was arrested for the murder of a retired police officer. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. His murder conviction was overturned in 2003 by the Iowa Supreme Court and Harrington was set free. Both he and co-defendant Curtis McGhee are suing the county prosecutors.

Douglas McCalla, member of Terry Harrington’s legal team and a veteran civil rights attorney. He was at the Supreme Court in Washington last week for the oral arguments in the cae. He is former partner, now counsel, with the Spence Law Firm in Jackson, Wyoming.

Pigs press together on a farm on the outskirts of Xicaltepec in Mexico's Veracruz state, April 27, 2009. (AP)

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The H1N1 virus is more commonly known as “swine flu.” That doesn’t mean you can catch it from a pig, but it does point to the source of the infection.

And it’s far from the only disease that can make the jump to humans from other species. Avian flu. Rabies. Ringworm. Hantavirus. West Nile Virus. Even Ebola and HIV likely originated in animals and made the leap.

Now, with the world a global village and populations soaring, experts warn these species-hopping diseases may arise more frequently, and become more dangerous.

This hour, On Point: animals, people, and disease.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Donald G. McNeill Jr., science and health reporter for The New York Times.

From Columbus, Ohio, we’re joined by Lonnie King, dean of The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine and former director of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases.

And from Oklahoma City, we’re joined by Susan Little, professor of veterinary parasitology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, Oklahoma State University. She’s a member of the board of directors of the Companion Animal Parasite Council, which is sponsoring the “Pets, People and Pathogens” conference in Providence, Rhode Island next week.

Raj Rajaratnam, billionaire founder of the Galleon Group, a major hedge fund, is led in handcuffs from FBI headquarters in New York on Friday, Oct.16, 2009. Rajaratnam was charged with insider trading in the stock of several companies including Hilton, Clearwire, and Google. (AP)

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This latest Wall Street story is ready-made for the big screen — insider trading cases as colorful and egregious as they come.

At the center, Galleon hedge fund chief Raj Rajaratnam, an outsized personality with a Rolodex spanning Silicon Valley and beyond. His counterpart — “Octopussy” — well, the name speaks for itself.

The cases unveil a world where everyone is after an edge. Where regulators are shut out. Where hot tips turn into huge windfalls. And where the difference between a tip and insider information can be a very blurry line.

This hour, On Point: big insider trading busts, and what they mean for the rest of us.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Gregory Zuckerman, a senior writer and columnist for The Wall Street Journal who has closely followed these insider trading cases. Read his recent coverage here and here. His new book, out this month, is “The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of how John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History.”

From Philadelphia, we’re joined by Arthur Laby, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law. Before joining the Rutgers faculty he served nearly ten years on the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Also from New York, we’re joined by Richard Sylla, professor of economics and the history of financial institutions at New York University Stern School of Business. His books include “The American Capital Market” and “A History of Interest Rates.”

It was part of an MIT event held on Thursday, Nov. 5, to commemorate computer science professor Michael Hammer, who died last year. Here’s video of the full interview, courtesy of WBUR.org:

Among other things, Schmidt said the possibilities of the unfolding revolution in technology are greater than many people even realize. “Think about a world of an infinite amount of new sources of information, an infinite number of digital devices, all GPS-located, attached to people,” he said. “Imagine the scale of the kinds of questions you could ask that you could not ask before.”

We’ll pull out a couple of excerpts here.

Tom probed Schmidt on the business scale of Google and on fears that it is getting too big:

TOM ASHBROOK: Google is enormous. We see a lot of your strengths. On the front of vulnerabilities: Do you see your major vulnerabilities as economic or political? And in particular when it comes to scale, Christine Varney is President Obama’s new antitrust chief – I know we all saw the Fortune article “Obama and Google: A Love Story.” But their bottom line was that your scale has become such you may well be a target of antitrust attention by the federal government. How do you look at that? Are you an out-of-control monopoly, sir?

ERIC SCHMIDT: (laughter) I can’t think of the appropriate response, aside from “no.” (laughter)

TOM ASHBROOK: Christine Varney will review the tape later, but go ahead. (laughter)

ERIC SCHMIDT: That’s right. There’s a number of different sort of ways of approaching that subject. We get a lot of criticism as a company, I think, fundamentally because we’re disruptive, and also because we are a scale company, as you said. And then finally, because people care a lot about information. So we’re used to that side of the issues, and I don’t think that’s going to go away. What we do believe is that as long as you are on the side of the consumer, you’re pretty much on the right side of all these debates. And that there’s a lot of sort of hem and haw, going on and on and on and on about it. But the fact of the matter is – and people will review what we do and so forth – but as long as we’re consumer-focused, we’ll be fine…[Google co-founder] Larry Page in fact wrote a memo which, early in our years as a company, that said, “If we were to become big, what were some of the principles that we would establish?” And we’ve established those. And one of the most important ones is that you own your own data. So, we don’t trap end users. So if you, for example, decide that you’re unhappy with Google services we make it easy for you to take the data that we have of yours, and you can go to a competitor or whatever you want to do. We recently announced the oddly named “data liberation front” group at Google, whose sole job was to make this actually happen. So we’re real serious about this.

And Tom asked Schmidt about the physical side of Google’s operation:

TOM ASHBROOK: Give us a sense of the scale of Google’s own infrastructure at this point. We’re hearing about server farms the size of cities, or maybe that’s just in our imagination. Give us a sense of that.

ERIC SCHMIDT: Well, people like to imagine all of that stuff. We benefit from centralization. So we have some number of relatively large data centers which are attached very near to power dams, literally hydro, water systems because we need a constant supply of base load to power these things. And we don’t say the exact number, but think that we benefit from Moore’s Law, and we build our own essentially super computers out of p.c. components. Connected with them is a fiber-optic network that we own and control, which we bought…Remember everybody built all that fiber and it was all cheap? Well, we bought a whole bunch of it. Technically, we bought. It was a great deal. Trust me. And we span the globe with that. And we needed to do that in order to move all the data around. When you look at the scale of YouTube, had we not done that, with the growth of YouTube, YouTube would have taken Google out, simply because of the amount of video and audio and so forth that is used. And again, those of you who are scientists can do the math in your head. But imagine that number of video streams, even with compression, and yet we’ve been able to handle it. So we engineered Google in the same way that Michael [Hammer] would have, with a notion of scale. And when you imagine the next set of applications that will be real time intensive, data intensive, maps intensive, we’re ready for that.