Professor Pilo inspects a skull in the killing fields of Bogoro, Ituri, eastern Congo. (Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos)

When the International Criminal Court, the ICC, was formed in 2002, its goals were big — to arrest and prosecute warlords for mass murders and genocide, for crimes committed against humanity.

But those big goals met with equally big challenges. How does a prosecutor in the Netherlands arrest a warlord at large in the jungles of Congo?

“The Reckoning,” a new PBS documentary, tracks the struggle to make the International Criminal Court, from the courtrooms of The Hague to refugee camps in Uganda and the killing fields in Sudan.

This hour, On Point: Warlords, war crimes, and the International Criminal Court.

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

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Pamela Yates is director of “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court,” which was featured at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and is airing on PBS. She’s a 2008 Guggenheim fellow and co-founder of Skylight Pictures, the documentary production company.

You can watch the film online at PBS.org through September 14.

Christine Chung was the first senior trial attorney to work in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She directed the ICC investigation which led to the first ICC arrest warrants, for Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda’s rebel “Lord’s Resistance Army.” She also worked on the ICC’s investigations in Darfur and the Congo. She’s now a partner at the law firm Quinn Emanuel.

Watch the trailer for “The Reckoning:”

from "Every Little Step"

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The smash Broadway musical “A Chorus Line” opened in 1975.

It was a monster hit – the longest-running Broadway production in history in its day. It had now-famous songs: “What I Did for Love” and “At the Ballet.” A famously unusual story – of seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for the show.

For the 2006 revival, 3000 dancers showed up to audition. Their struggles are the subject of a new documentary.

This Hour, On Point: “A Chorus Line” and “Every Little Step.”

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

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

James Stern, co-director and co-producer of the new documentary, “Every Little Step.” He has produced over 50 Broadway shows and feature films. On and off-Broadway, he’s produced 16 shows, including “The Producers,” “Hairspray,” and “Stomp.” Most recently, he produced Will Ferrell’s “You’re Welcome, America.”

Adam Del Deo, co-director and co-producer of the new documentary, “Every Little Step.” He has collaborated with James Stern on two other feature documentaries, “So Goes the Nation” and “The Year of the Yao.”

Baayork Lee, actress, director, and choreographer. She created the role of Connie in the original production of “A Chorus Line.” She choreographed the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line” depicted in “Every Little Step.” She’s co-author of the book, “On the Line: The Creation of a Chorus Line.”

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In legend, at least, philosophers were once great sages who walked among the people. Plato and Socrates in the public square.

These days, they seem locked away in ivory towers, writing inscrutable treatises for each other.

Filmmaker Astra Taylor has sprung them from the tower. Taken today’s big-name philosophers and put them in the street, in the backseat of a car, on foot, in public — turned the camera on, and given our wise ones ten minutes each to tell us what they’ve got.

It’s funny. It’s fascinating. And maybe we need it.

This hour, On Point: Our philosophers, on the hoof, on film.

You can join the conversation. Do you live the examined life? Do we need our philosophers to climb down with us, into the streets? What would you ask a big thinker in the backseat?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from San Francisco is Astra Taylor. A writer and documentary filmmaker, her latest film is called “Examined Life: Philosophy Is in the Streets.”

And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Philippe Petit on his 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers. (Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris Images)

In the early morning light of August 7, 1974, an almost unbelievable thing happened in the skies above lower Manhattan.

One hundred and ten stories above the streets far below, 24-year-old Frenchman Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire secretly pulled between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and for 45 minutes, as police raged and pedestrians looked on dumbfounded, danced in the sky.

Now, of course, the towers are gone — since 9/11, just a memory above Ground Zero.

That absence has changed the context and meaning of Petit’s story. But in a way, that brings only more mystery and awe to it.

This Hour, On Point: Philippe Petit and a new documentary about his legendary New York performance, “Man on Wire.”

-Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Joining us from Shokan, New York, is Philippe Petit, world renowned wire-walker. In his youth, he planned and executed a number of daring, unsanctioned wire walks — between the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, off the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, and between the 110-story World Trade Center towers. Now 58, he continues to perform and lecture and write. His 2002 book “To Reach the Clouds” is a memoir of his World Trade Center experience.

And joining us from New York City is James Marsh, director of the new documentary “Man on Wire.” It won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The New York Times’ A.O. Scott calls it “thorough, understated and altogether enthralling.” It has just opened in New York, and will be hitting theaters across the country over the next month.

Click below to watch the trailer of “Man on Wire”:

The Paskowitz family was maybe literally like no other.

Nine kids plus mom and dad living in a 24-foot camper. Never going to school. Raised on the beaches of California, Mexico, and Hawaii with surfing as their be all and end all, and the sea as their teacher.

If you’ve ever dreamed of taking your family, your life, way off the grid, here’s the ultimate example.

A new documentary, “Surfwise,” captures the thrill of escape and the deep ambivalence of grown children looking back on being raised, as one says, “like wolves.”

This hour, On Point: Off the grid, and “Surfwise.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jonathan Paskowitz, the second of nine Paskowitz children and producer of “Surfwise.”

Moses Paskowitz, the fifth of nine children.

Doug Pray, director of “Surfwise.”

War by war, icon by icon, public television documentarian Ken Burns is putting his trademark video stamp on American history.

With his colossally popular renderings of the Civil War and baseball, Mark Twain and jazz, Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark and more, Burns — often with collaborator Lynn Novick — is shaping our collective memory of what we’ve been, our sense of what we are.

This time out it’s with a massive retelling of World War II. Millions are watching.

This hour, On Point: Ken Burns and co-producer Lynn Novick discuss their latest march on American history – “The War.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ken Burns, one of the best known documentary filmmakers in American history. He is co-producer of the new documentary “The War,” a 15-hour, seven-part series about World War II airing on PBS.

Lynn Novick, longtime collaborator with Ken Burns and co-director and co-producer of “The War.” She began working with Ken Burns in 1989 on the series “The Civil War.” She then worked with him on the “Baseball,” “Frank Lloyd Wright,” and “Jazz.”