Halloween is the perfect night for a scary film fest. From Frankenstein, to Friday the 13th, to Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, our Movie Maven Garen Daly comments on the history of the Fright flick.
Guests:
Garen Daly, Film reviewer, owner of the Dedham Community Theatre in Dedham, MA and On Point’s Movie Maven.

America’s own ill-prepared response can do more damage to its citizens than any single attack by a terrorist, concludes a blue-ribbon panel co-chaired by former Senator Gary Hart.
The panel report comes a week after CIA Director Tenet warned Congress that the terrorist threat is as grave as it was before the September 11th attacks.
In this [...]

After officially becoming Minnesota’s democratic candidate for senator last night, former Vice President Walter Mondale began campaigning this morning. He’s got five days. With less than a week until election day, the latest from Minnesota.
Guests:
Bill Wareham, political editor, Minnesota Public Radio

Seventy-five years ago today, a then fairly unknown Hoagy Carmichael walked into Gennett records to record what would become one of his greatest hits… “Stardust”. In this radio diary, we give the story of “Stardust” and how it became such a popular jazz standard.
Guests:
Will Friedwald, author of “Stardust Melodies”

It’s five days now until America goes to the polls, and still there is a near silence from America’s politicians on the looming crisis that will arguably affect the real lives of more Americans than any other: the fully forseeable collapse of Social Security.
The date is now calculated on which Social Security will go [...]

Today Labor party leader, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, resigned as defense minister. Other Labor party members followed suit. What will be the consequences of the collapse of the Sharon government?
Guests:
Dan Ephron, Jerusalem correspondent, The Boston Globe

“Verily,” says the Qu’ran, “the party of God will be victorious.” And from that line of Islamic scripture, Hezbollah, or the party of God, takes its name.
Before September 11 last year and the onslaught of Al Qaeda, no terrorist group in the world killed more Americans than Hezbollah. Even now, with American guns turning [...]

It isn’t easy to take on the establishment. And its beloved worldview. Just ask Galileo, sent into exile by the pope when he argued the Earth was not the center of the universe. Four-hundred years later, MIT psychologist, Steven Pinker, is shaking things up again. Rejecting the notion of humans as a blank slate, [...]

Guests:
Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist at MIT, author of the new book “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”

A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis, and wounded 18 others yesterday at a gas station in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank town of Ariel. In response, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers who were harvesting olives in a nearby village. The settlement issue is back on the front burner and heating up [...]

Reaction in Russia and the latest news on the violent end to the hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre. More than a hundred civilians died from inhaling gas used to end the siege.
Guests:
Fred Weir, correspondent with The Christian Science Monitor in Russia

Allen Sinai may not like to say I told you so, but the fact is, when it comes to the economy, he did. He told us to watch out for the sharp downturn of the early 80s, to position for the mid-80s bull market, to run before the October crash of Black Monday. [...]

One hundred thousand protestors marched on Washington this weekend. United in action against the war, the peaceful demonstration was the largest of its kind since the Vietnam Era. The Administration has put forth its reason supporting an attack on Iraq. This hour, the flip-side, a look at the case against war.
Guests:
Rev. Robert Edgar, General Secretary [...]

Investment banker turned banjo star, Alison Brown left behind a promising career at Smith Barney to follow her true love — music. Today, she’s enjoying success as the founder of a successful record label and leader of her own quartet. Today ,she’s enjoying success as the founder of a successful record label and [...]

Killled in a tragic plane crash today, Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was a champion of health care coverage expansion and environmental concerns, and was considered by many to be one of the Senate’s most liberal members.
Senator Wellstone held a key Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate and had been criss-crossing the state in [...]

Guests:

Prime Time Crime. While DC-area residents heave a sigh of the relief over the arrests of two men suspected of carrying out the recent weeks’ sniper attacks, media watchdogs and law enforcement officials wonder
whether “all-sniper-all-the-time” coverage of the investigation helped or hindered.
Guests:
Gail Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor;Chris Hanson, 20-year print journalist and professor at The University [...]

The Russian musical was in full swing, in a full house in Moscow. A rousing celebration of patriotism, the show was celebrating its first year on the big stage. And suddenly, the hall was full of Chechen rebels, in masks and camouflage, firing automatic weapons and wired to blow up the theater.
Twenty-four hours [...]

In the last fifteen years, the number of children with profound autism receiving services from the state of California has almost tripled. Last week, a new study appeared to confirm Californians’ worst fears: that the surge in autism is not about an influx of sick children from out of state, or about a new [...]

The Bush administration has made concessions on a draft resolution, but France and Russia are still threatening to veto when a Security Council vote is held.
Guests:
Colum Lynch, UN reporter, The Washington Post

“Predators of the twenty-first century will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. … There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
Familiar words. Unfamiliar messenger. The quote belongs to Bill Clinton, the former [...]

This year might be a record low for the number of 18-25 year olds hitting the polls.
Although volunteerism remains high for this age group, many Generation Ys are feeling apathetic and disenfranchised to the political system. With political platforms covering social security, Medicaid and prescription drugs, many of our youngest voters don’t know where [...]

Chinese president Jiang Zemin is in the country tonight. He stepped off his plane at O’Hare Airport today to a U.S. Navy brass band, a red carpet and a thousand Chinese-Chicagoans shouting “warm welcome” and waving tiny red and gold Chinese flags.
Mayor Richard Daley was there, as was the CEO of Chicago-based Motorola. [...]

Everyone wants to unmask the sniper. The serial shooter with a fierce aim and apparently random reasons for wreaking terror in suburban Washington. The mind’s eye paints pictures of the perp that are as various as the victims themselves: A brooding loner. A foreign terrorist. A criminal kid.
False alerts about arrests earlier today heap [...]

The Vatican has asked for changes in the priest sex abuse policy adopted by American bishops in Dallas in response the scandal that was tearingthe church apart. The tough measures had called for a sweeping zero-tolerance policy to quickly remove priest who are accused of sexually
abusing minors and were put into effect immediately, pending [...]

The bar room, the tavern, and the coffeehouse are not the places you’d expect to find an accomplished classical cellist performing the works of Bach, but the Israeli-born musician Matt Haimovitz says it fits in just fine. Matt Haimovitz is rethinking the way we listen to and perform classical music by taking it out of [...]

The market has turned around in recent weeks with the Dow and Nasdaq making gains. What’s the relationship between what we’re seeing on Wall Street and what we’re seeing with the economy?
Guests:
Greg Ip, economics reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Arthur Levitt made his name building one of the hottest stock brokerage firms in America. Then he was head of the American Stock Exchange. But in the 1990s, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt the ultimate insider became Arthur Levitt the crusading regulator.
He crusaded for new rules and practices [...]

Over the past year, the word “evil” has once again entered our vocabularies…evil acts, evil empire, axis of evil. Evil pointed to the Middle East, al Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein. Evil in our own country with school shootings, child abductions, and a faceless, murderous sniper.
Tonight we look at evil’s many faces through the [...]

As if Iraq weren’t enough. Last night the Bush Administration revealed that North Korea has been secretly developing nuclear weapons over the past several years. It’s an admission that puts the government of Kim Jong Il in direct violation of the 1994 non-proliferation framework brokered by the Clinton Administration, and within reach of [...]

Photographer Elsa Dorfman shares her experience photographing women with breast cancer for the documentary “No Hair Day,” a Cambridge Studios Production in association with WGBH/Boston
Guests:
Elsa Dorfman, photographer

This afternoon in Washington, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon emerged from Oval Office talks to say that Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than George W. Bush.
With war on Iraq now looming, the Israel factor also looms large in the minds of military strategists and Middle East watchers. The temptation [...]

They are franchise terrorists. Working out of basements, toiling in apartments, hiding out in remote areas around the world, hatching plans for terror. They lend their name, al Qaeda, and co-opt the causes of radical Islamic groups in countries the world over. Then they go to work.
A look at al Qaeda by way of Indonesia. [...]

Daniel Ellsberg started the Vietnam-era as a cold warrior and Pentagon Insider and ended it one of the country’s most passionate anti-war activists. In 1971, he released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Ultimately, his actions lead to the end of the Vietnam War and resignation of President Nixon.
Guests:
Daniel Ellsberg, activist and writer, [...]

Two explosions in the Kuta Beach tourist area in Bali on Saturday left more than 180 people dead and hundreds missing. President Bush attributed responsibility for the attack to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, which was behind the September 11th, 2001 attacks in the US. Does this recent activity represent a new form of terrorism?
Guests:
Jane [...]

Christopher Columbus redux: He loved god, worshipped gold and craved glory. And in 1492, Columbus set sail in the name of all three. Somewhere between the explorer hero of American schoolbooks and the murderous mariner of history’s dark side, there’s a complex tale of outsized ambition, ruthless subjugation and questionable honor.
Tonight On Point: Rediscovering the [...]

With Congress slated to approve the war resolution in Iraq, the Pentagon has begun a slow and steady buildup of military forces in the Gulf Region. Is military action imminent, with or without Congressional blessing?
Guests:
Bradley Graham, military affairs reporter, The Washington Post

Robert Byrd, the silver-haired senior statesman from West Virginia stood valiantly but alone on the floor of the Senate today.
Waiving a worn copy of the Constitution, he warned against giving President Bush sweeping military powers in the Middle East. “Congress is ceding, lock, stock and barrel, its power to declare war - handing it over [...]

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian who survived Auschwitz as a teenager, won the Nobel Prize in literature. Hear an excerpt from his 1975 debut novel “Fateless.”
Guests:

Election season is in full swing and political candidates across the country are going from town to town shaking hands, kissing babies, and giving speeches hoping to woo the undecided. Hollywood has captured the stump speech many times on the silver screen. We look at a few of them with our Movie Maven Garen [...]

Life in the eye of the storm. They are women who live and work in Ramallah. Tending to families and friends, going to work in schools and universities. They move in the shadows of tanks and within the confines of curfews. But always, there is community.
Tonight On Point, a conversation about the rigors and [...]

The never-ending nine. They’ve been appointed for life and blessed with longevity. And not since 1823 has the Supreme Court sat for so long, without a single new appointment.
It’s been nine years of 5 to 4 votes, fewer decisions annually, and surprise rulings. Abortion rights have prevailed; clergy-led prayer at public school graduations has not. [...]

“Dear Policeman,” said the already infamous Bowie, Maryland tarot card. “I am God.”
With those three words, the sniper-scared population of greater Washington DC appeared to get its first thin glimpse today into the mind of a hideously efficient killer. Six are already dead. Two wounded. An entire community, targeted and terrorized.
The weapon: a well-aimed, [...]

Guests:

Bankruptcy in Brazil. Latin America’s largest country — and once the eighth largest economy in the world — is set to elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Worker’s Party candidate. His election could signal the rise of a new Latin economy, turning Brazil’s presidential election into a campaign against globalization.
Guests:
Timothy Power, professor [...]

Slumping stocks, stalled recovery. After a summer of corporate scandal, why corporate reform has fallen flat. Highflying executives march to the courthouse to pay for their misdeeds, but has anything changed behind boardroom doors?
Guests:
James Post, professor of management, Boston University and author of “Redefining the Corporation”
Kurt Eichenwald, reporter, The New York Times
Leon Panetta, [...]