They lost loved ones in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Their search for solace and understanding took them thousands of miles away from home to Afghanistan. From Ground Zero to the rubble of Afghanistan, reflections on war, peace, and healing from the true moral arbiters in the War on Terror: 9-11 families.
Guests:
Rita Lasar, Rita’s younger brother [...]

When it comes to retirement, Americans are on their own. The security of company pension plans? Fast disappearing. In its place? The promise of the stock-dependent 401(k). In the booming market of the 1990s, American workers watched their retirement funds skyrocket. Then, recession settled in. Companies went under, stocks dwindled down to nothing, and thousands [...]

With little fanfare outside Moscow, Russia’s last independent national television broadcaster was closed down this week. Many westerners are seeing this as one more step in Russian premier Vladimir Putin’s clampdown of all opposition. Outside watchers criticize Putin’s dismissal of regional governments and silencing of the news media, but among the Russian people, Putin enjoys [...]

He’s witty, straight-talking, and gets more air time than perhaps anyone in the Bush Administration, including the President himself. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is anything but politically correct. He admitted he would like to see Osama bin Laden dead. He openly said he “did not feel even the slightest concern” about the treatment of the [...]

Most Americans get their history not from history class, but from the bookstore. The genre of “popular history” has undergone explosive growth in the past few years, with books by David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Stephen Ambrose rocketing to the top of the best-sellers list. But Ambrose’s recent admission of plagiarism has fired heated [...]

From its very first days, scientific inquiry has revolved around curiosity. Scientists follow their intellects and probe and test and hypothesize, and every once in a while make a big discovery. World War II and the Manhattan Project introduced the idea of applied scientific research to the world — the idea that scientific research should [...]

Today, the nation observes the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. King was the great practitioner of non-violent and peaceful protest. His philosophy became the backbone of the civil rights movement. But in recent decades, even supposedly peaceful protests have become tinged with violence. This hour, is non-violent resistance dead? After September 11th, the voices [...]

Salman Rushdie once said that, “A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” Since the events of September 11th many have turned to the wise words of poets for insight in the troubled world around them. This [...]

According to this teenager from Marin County, the path taken by John Walker Lindh from that same liberal Northern California County to the deserts of Afghanistan is hardly surprising.
Guests:

The reports from Afghanistan have been replaced with in-depth discussions of Michael Jordan’s divorce and Prince Harry being caught smoking marijuana. To many, September 11th and its aftermath represented journalism’s finest hour. But in January of 2002, many are lamenting that the news industry has returned to business as usual. This hour, we look at [...]

As a nation, we work more hours per year than the laborers of any other industrialized country. Much of our identity, our sense of self, and our feelings of satisfaction are derived from our jobs. The September 11th attacks forced Americans to reassess many things — including the role of work in their lives. For [...]

September 11th was not the first time a world power has “received a staggering blow but then scrambled to recover from the wound,” says historian Paul Kennedy. The British struggled with the guerilla tactics of the Afrikaaners in South Africa a century ago. Russia got beaten up by the Japanese around the same time. In [...]

Paul Auster, The New York writer reads from this piece written after September 11th, during the strangest of Autumns in New York.
Guests:

The 1990’s were a golden age for the United States. The economy was booming, crime was down, and the prospect of world peace did not seem to be totally out of the question. But below the surface, trouble was brewing. Militant Islam and anti-American sentiment were on the rise worldwide. Terrorist groups were becoming more [...]

David Hicks, an Australian who fought for the Taliban and was captured by the Northern Alliance, wrote this poem, which was recently published in Australian newspapers. Read by WBUR’s Ian Docherty.
Guests:

Fifty accused terrorists have been transported to a prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Several of the former members of al Qaeda and the Taliban have vowed to kill Americans before they leave the naval base, according to a Marine general. But although the prisoners being shipped to Cuba are [...]

He was a cowboy, a straight-shooter, a President who pushed the role of America as the global policeman. The parallels between Teddy Roosevelt and George W. Bush are many. The current President is reading the new biography of Roosevelt, perhaps to learn from his predecessor who held the office a century ago. “In the Western [...]

Fran Leibowitz is the social critic and quintessential New Yorker. Here she reads from EB White’s 1948 book “Here is New York”
Guests:

The campaign against Afghanistan was not the first test of the war on terrorism, says tonight’s guest, Navnita Chadha Behera. That part of the war was easy. The Taliban already had no friends, a coalition was easy to build, and the United States had a clear reason to begin a military campaign. Kashmir presents much [...]

“If a dozen years ago you had asked an ecologist uninterested in politics to name the countries with the most fragile environments, the most urgent public health problems and the most severe overpopulation (measured against available resources), ” says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond, “the answer would have included Afghanistan, Burundi, Haiti, Iraq, Nepal, Rwanda, [...]

The investigation of the largest bankruptcy in American history is gathering steam. Some experts are accusing Enron executives of manipulating their books to keep stock prices high, allowing them to cash in while but screwing investors and employees when the stock prices collapsed. Several members of the Bush Administration have close ties to Enron, leading [...]

The week of the terrorist attacks, “The Late Show With David Letterman” went off the air. It returned in a subdued form the following week. Somehow, the world didn’t seem funny anymore. Fast forward to late December, and “The Late Show” featured the Top Ten Osama bin Laden Complaints (#1 being “What the hell do [...]

As the rest of the world returns to some sense of normalcy, the neighborhood formerly in the shadows of the World Trade Center, Tribeca, continues to face enormous obstacles. Twenty-four hours a day, loud work crews continue to clear the debris from the World Trade Center. Troubling questions about the air quality in the region [...]

David Carras is a photographer from Belmont, Massachusetts, who takes pictures of other artists’ work for portfolios. He says much of his clients’ artwork recently is reflecting the post-September 11th psyche. He now has different ideas about what he wants do with his work.
Guests:

During the month of December, the United Nations’ World Food Programme delivered an unprecedented 116,000 metric tons of food into Afghanistan. But much more help is needed, and the challenges posed by winter blizzards, extraordinary security, and treacherous roads in Afghanistan make aid delivery difficult. While aid workers disguise shipments, bribe warlords and scramble to [...]

Four months after the terrorist attacks, New Yorkers and tourists alike are flocking to the former site of the twin towers in New York. Here are the thoughts of some visitors there this week.
Guests:

When John Ashcroft issued a heightened state of alert in September, the nation took notice. Reports of a terrorist threat to Boston a couple weeks after the attacks resulted in stores shutting their doors for the weekend and noticeably smaller crowds downtown. Passengers forced to wait in long lines at airports were patient. But that [...]

On Monday, President Bush warned that the federal budget could slip into a deficit for the first time in four years. Democrats have been quick to blame the tax cut that the President pushed through last year. But Bush says the blame lies squarely on the economic slowdown and the war on terrorism. In the [...]

They are America’s key ally in the Persian Gulf region. But as many as 15 of the September 11th hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. The ruling royal House of Saud practices an ultra-stringent form of Islam, Wahhabiism, that some claim is a breeding ground for Muslim militants. And yet, the United States has a strong [...]

Many Americans have turned to prayer for comfort and support since 9-11 and so have our political leaders. But some find the combination of patriotism and religion being practiced in the marbled corridors of Congress deeply troubling, given how embedded the idea of separation of church and state is to the nation. Last month, [...]

Economic prospects in the Middle East are frequently discussed through the optic of Islam and modernization. Tonight’s guest, Jeffrey Sachs, says it’s wrong lens to use. Instead, he argues, the waxing and waning of Islamic economics and military fortunes can be better understood as a reflection of deep ecological and geographic factors rather than cultural [...]

Despite all of the talk about how life changes and advances, Robert Kaplan argues that the world is pretty much the same world it was 3,000 years ago. It’s a violent world, one where the strong survive and the weak are crushed. The best Chinese and Greek philosophers would have no trouble understanding or navigating [...]

The Hamid Karzai era has begun in Afghanistan. But don’t be fooled into thinking Afghanistan will see the dawn of a new day, says New York Times Magazine correspondent Peter Maass. Karzai is merely a U.S.-chosen figurehead, with more of a following in Washington than in his own country. The real leaders of the new [...]

Probably no one person in the music world has had to respond as much to the events of September 11th and its aftermath as the church music director and church organist. Many have turned to the church since the terrorist attacks and have found as much comfort, hope and strength from the music of the [...]

It’s been a common catch phrase since September 11th: the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington completely changed the world as we know it. But historian Niall Ferguson says a broader view would say otherwise. “Tragic and spectacular though it was,” Ferguson writes, “that event was far less of a turning point than is [...]

Roland Austin is an 84-year-old pacifist from Binghamton, New York. He explains how he began to believe in the immorality of all conflict. He explains what he believes the US should do as a result of the 9/11 attacks
Guests:

Europe unveiled its new currency yesterday — a further step in the uniting of the continent. Western Europe has been the United States’ greatest ally over the past 50 years. But our guest this hour says Washington and the great cities of Europe have major differences in how they view several critical issues — and [...]

Americans are constantly exposed to decidedly American points of view on the war on terror. Donald Rumsfeld seems to get an hour a day on CNN for his daily press conferences. Countless radio talk shows feature American guests debating the best way to proceed with an American host moderating. With the exception of footage from [...]

The United States trumpets itself as the international protector of human rights. But critics would argue that the U.S.’s actions are not consistent with the mission it claims to champion. “America has spent a half-century supporting dictators and tyrants all over the world (and in the Muslim world, in particular),” writes Vir Sanghvi, editor of [...]

When the terrorists struck the twin towers, they struck the symbolic heart of global capitalism. This hour, one of the country’s top business scholars, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Law School, explores rising social expectations and risks for big business in the post 9-11 world. For example, during the anthrax scare, Secretary of Health and [...]

From the mosques and religious schools of Cairo to the bustling cities and desert villages of Iran, WBUR’s documentary unit “Inside Out” asks whether the shattered dream of Pan-Arabism has inevitably led to political Islam. The radio documentary also examines the political shadow the American-led war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban has cast on [...]

Since this program began on September 17th, the listeners of our program have shared their thoughts and voices in the form of Radio Diaries. These diaries have brought insight and feeling to our program and helped us see beyond the news. And they’ve served to document this remarkable, tragic, historic time.
Tonight, as we begin a [...]