Jazz legend Sonny Rollins joined us to reflect on his storied career and give us his thoughts on the future of music. To celebrate his 80th birthday, the hugely influential tenor saxophonist is embarking on yet another national tour.

The Department of Defense provided On Point with some statistics about IED attacks in Afghanistan, where there has been an increase in the use of such weapons over the past 14 months. It’s striking to see the spike in numbers — from 2,677 IED incidents in 2007 to 8,159 last year.

U.S. Ambassaor to Iraq Christopher Hill spoke with On Point live from Baghdad today as early voting gets underway, part of the run-up to Sunday’s elections. “So far so good,” Hill said, despite scattered violence. Hill said that the plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops by Sept. 1, and to leave only a residual advisory force of 50,000 or fewer, remains “very much on schedule.” Observers worry that a spike in violence could derail that timeline.

For radio listeners, a key element of our conversation about the Supreme Court gun-rights case was conspicuously absent: the audio recording of the oral arguments. Here’s why.

We had a great crew in the studio today to talk about Lydia Diamond’s new play, “Stick Fly.” It’s currently being produced in Boston by the Huntington Theatre Company. You can see some photos below we shot during the broadcast.

Listen to the On Point segment, and see some video clips from the play itself on [...]

Two members of the military, one of them an infantry commander from Fort Drum, N.Y., recently returned from Afghanistan, called into our show on Marjah and the Afghan surge. Listen to what they had to say.

In our first hour Thursday, looking at Congress, campaign money and the call for a constitutional convention, Tom asked legal scholars Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Turley: “If you could snap your fingers and have it happen, what outcome would you like to see? What’s the amendment you’d put in the Constitution?”  Here’s what they had to say…
Lawrence [...]

New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler, author of acclaimed books on contemporary China, joins us in our second hour to talk about his latest, “Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory.” Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter.

There are still empty roads in China, especially on the western steppes, where the highways to [...]

Eve Ensler performed a couple of monologues from her new book, “I Am an Emotional Creature,” in our second hour on Wednesday — and got a big reaction. Listen to them here, and tell us what you think.

Princeton historian Julian Zelizer joined us at the end of Thursday’s second hour for a look back at Howard Zinn, the groundbreaking American historian, activist, and author of “A People’s History of the United States.” Zinn died of a heart attack Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 87.
Zinn had twice been a guest on the show. In 2002, he [...]

Vanguard founder John Bogle took on Wall Street and endorsed the “Volcker Rule” reforms put forward by President Obama. Here’s what he had to say, along with his exchange with Steve Bartlett of the Financial Services Roundtable.

Sandra Bullock won a Golden Globe on Sunday night for her role as Leigh Ann Tuohy in “The Blind Side,” the story of NFL player Michael Oher and the woman who took him in as a homeless teenager and helped him turn his life around.
Back in 2006, On Point talked with author Michael Lewis, on whose book the film is based, and [...]

We’ll hear the latest on Haiti from The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg this morning, and we’ll have a full hour on the quake’s aftermath on Thursday. Let us know what you’re hearing on Haiti, from relatives, friends, coworkers, or anyone you may know.

A new U.S. financial crisis looms, and the seeds of it are in the Federal Reserve itself. That’s the view of MIT’s Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who is arguing that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should not get a second term.
Johnson told Tom Ashbrook today that Bernanke did a good job [...]

Last November we spoke with Terry Harrington, a man framed for murder whose case was before the Supreme Court. The case has now been settled out of court. We gave him a call to ask how he feels.