The countrified songs and rebellious politics of rocker Michelle Shocked broke ground at the height of the hair-band 1980’s. Older, wiser, and free from a binding record contract, Michelle Shocked has come full circle with a re-release of her 1988 hit, “Short, Sharp, Shocked.”
Guests:
Michelle Shocked, singer, songwriter, social activist, and CEO of Mighty Sound Records.

Medicare and means testing. As massive reform bills reach the final stages in Congress, we look at the new push behind means testing and the future of the social compact of American entitlement programs.
Guests:
Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Pulitzer Prize winners Louis Menand and Roger Wilkins share their thoughts on the meaning of patriotism.
Guests:

Firefighters battle to stop wildfires from destroying two beloved Southern California getaways, Lake Arrowhead and the historic mountain town of Julian, east of San Diego. One firefighter was killed, bringing the death toll to 20. Tony Perry, is covering the story for the Los Angeles Times and he joins us with the latest developments.
Guests:
Tony Perry, [...]

Two weeks ago, Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez was toppled from power. The wealthy and cosmopolitan leader was friendly to the United States and its global objectives.
His ouster is seen by some as a rejection of globalization and rising anti-Americanism. in the region. Efforts by the United States to “get serious” about Bolivia’s coca crops have [...]

Today’s economic figures charted even more growth in the US than analysts hoped for: a whopping 7.2% increase in Gross Domestic Product; growth of this magnitude has not been seen since 1984. We take a closer look at the data and assess their meaning.
Guests:
Kathleen Madigan, Business Outlook editor, Business Week Magazine

“Is Valerie your real name?” That’s what Ambassador Joseph Wilson asked his future wife when she revealed to him that she was a CIA operative. The new question is who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to a Washington columnist.
Did the White House out Plame to get back at Wilson for his public criticism of the [...]

Russia’s richest man is behind bars. Mikhail Khodorkovsy’s dramatic arrest comes amid deep tensions between the government of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs.
Mr. Khodorkovsy has financed opposition parties in advance of the December parliamentary elections and some Kremlin-watchers are speculating that this is what drew the ire of President Putin.
The arrest comes at [...]

Patt Morrison from the Los Angles Times reflects on the California wildfires and what keeps Californians living on danger’s edge.
Guests:

President Bush takes tough questions from reporters in a Rose Garden press conference.
Guests:
Maura Reynolds, White House reporter for the Los Angeles Times

His “slightest utterance can move markets,” the Wall Street Journal once said about George Gilder. The 1990s visionary and founder of the Gilder Report railed against regulations, and saw enormous potential and profit in fiber optics and wireless technologies. Then the bubble burst and Gilder’s empire collapsed.
Tonight On Point: why George Gilder still [...]

Today, the SEC filed complaints against mutual fund company Putnam Investment Management and two of its former managing directors. It’s the latest in a string of questionable dealings that the SEC and state lawmakers, most notably, Elliot Spitzer, have uncovered.
How big is the problem? Ninety-five million Americans invest their rainy day savings and [...]

R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to NATO on the challenges to the organization and his hopes for the role NATO should have in resolving conflicts in the Middle East.
Guests:
R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to NATO

Ten major wildfires that destroyed more than 800 homes andkilled more than 13 people continue to burn from the Mexican border to the suburbs of Los Angeles. Tony Perry, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times joins us with the latest developments.
Guests:
Tony Perry, San Diego-based correspondent for the Los Angeles Times newspaper

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on where the U.S. economy has been, and where it’s headed next.
Guests:
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University and author of “”The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade”

The first day of Ramadan was greeted with disaster in Baghdad. At least 35 Iraqis were killed this morning after a series of bombs exploded during rush hour. The attacks followed a rocket attack on a hotel that nearly killed Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz.
The U.S. military is quick to point to “foreign fighters” [...]

A prize bull gets cloned into five baby breeders. Scientists and farmers await the nod from the FDA to let them loose in the food chain. We’ll look at the future of clone burgers.
Guests:
Don Coover, rancher and owner of SEK Genetics, a meat cattle genetics company
Michael Hansen, senior research associate, Consumer Policy Institute
Paul Billings, [...]

Americans say that on September 11th, 2001,”everything changed.” But some Middle East observers say the real day that “everything changed” was October 23rd, 1983 — 20 years ago today. On that day, a truck bomb destroyed the American Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American soldiers. It was then that the [...]

For only the second time since the September 11th terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States held a press conference for American reporters today. Speaking at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in Medford, Massachusetts, Prince Bandar bin Sultan said that relations between the U.S. and Saudi governments is as solid as ever, despite [...]

In Madrid, the first day of an international conference on Iraqi reconstruction costs has ended. The meeting, attended by delegates from 78 countries, was called to spread the cost of the 55 billion dollars that the UN and IMF estimate is needed for Iraq in the next five years. Roula Khalaf of the Financial Times, [...]

As the case for war in Iraq evolved and changed so did the intelligence that was used to make it. For months the airwaves were filled with accounts of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi nuclear programs pushing toward building a bomb. Post-invasion, those weapons and programs have not been found.
Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for [...]

On Monday, a judge in Eagle, Colorado, ordered basketball superstar Kobe Bryant to stand trial on charges that he sexually-assaulted a 19-year-old hotel concierge. But you wouldn’t have been able to read about the ruling in the nearby Aspen Daily News.
The editor of the daily newspaper with its circulation of 12,000 has decided that [...]

Last June, Army Lieutenant General William Boykin was named the Pentagon’s Deputy Undersecretary for Intelligence. His job includes working with governments of Islamic nations to track down Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Since his religion-charged remarks came to light in reports by NBC News and the Los Angeles Times last week, pressure has grown [...]

Indianapolis resident Susan Suess Kennedy is tired of the labeling and name-calling that dominates American political discussions, even at the highest levels. In this radio diary, she questions why Americans are so obsessed with political categories.
Guests:
Sheila Suess Kennedy teaches law and public policy at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

For 13 years, it was a largey private family tragedy. In 1990, Terri Schiavo, a 26-year old woman, with her whole life ahead of her, suffered a heart attack. She was left brain damaged and has been in a vegetative state ever since.
Now, it seems everyone knows her story. A bitter legal battle between her [...]

Guests:
Eduardo Gamarrra;

The Senate voted today to ban a procedure, described as “partial birth abortion.” President Bush says he will sign the bill. Opponents have vowed to challenge it, and the legislation faces hurdles in the courts. Sheryl Stolberg, reporter for The New York Times, reports on the latest.
Guests:
Sheryl Stolberg, reporter for The New York Times

This month, air-condition company Carrier Corporation announced it will lay off 1,200 workers in Syracuse, NY. It’s one of a string of sobering announcements from American manufacturers grappling with globalization. The developing world, too, is adjusting to the global economy, and buckling under the pressures of industrialization.
MIT economist Lester Thurow encourages countries to embrace [...]

President Bush is on his way to Bali, Indonesia, the latest stop on a whirlwind tour of Asia. Since World War II, the United States has been the pre-eminent power in Asia. And the business of Asia has been, ultimately, business. But this time out, the American president’s agenda is all about security, [...]

Virginia Judge LeRoy Millette today approved sniper suspect John Allen Muhammed’s request to represent himself. Michael Ruane, a reporter for the Washington Post, is covering the trial and reports on the latest developments.
Guests:
Michael Ruanne, covering the trial for the Washington Post

In 367 AD, a directive from the newly organized Catholic Church listed 27 books that would go on to form the New Testament. All other so-called “apocryphal” or “gnostic” accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus were to be destroyed. But some were secretly preserved, buried in the soil of upper Egypt. [...]

The United Nations Development Program published a report today calling on Arab states to combat a growing knowledge deficit. The paper, the second in a series, observes that reformers committed to the free exchange of ideas face deep-seated obstacles in the Arab world. And its authors, who are Arabs themselves, suggest sweeping changes from within.
Meanwhile, [...]

Tom Ashbrook and Jack Beatty look back at a week in news that included the deaths of three Americans in Gaza and World Series’ thrillers.
Guests:
Tom Ashbrook host “On Point”
Jack Beatty, “On Point” News Analyst, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly magazine

After nearly 40 years of experience as an artistic force in America, choreographer, director and Tony-winner Twyla Tharp is not slowing down. She shares her hard-won insights on creativity and courage.
Guests:
Twyla Tharp, dancer, choreographer, director, and author of “The Creative Habit.”

This Sunday, Mother Teresa will be beatified in Rome–the first step toward her canonization as a saint. On Point spoke with Linda Schaefer, the last professional photographer to be granted full access to Mother Teresa before her death, from Vatican City earlier today about the life and legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning nun.
Guests:
Linda Schaefer, [...]

With three killed in Shiite held Karbala and one in Baghdad the death toll in the Iraq war jumped on Thursday. Tensions are high in Karbala due to infighting between rival Shiite clerics.
Guests:
Joel Brinkley, foreign correspondent for the New York Times in Baghdad

In 1986, a seven-year-old Southern Sudanese boy, Francis Bok, made his first trip alone from his village to the nearby market town. It was also his last. That day, Piol Bol Buk, as Francis was known to his Dinka people, was kidnapped and forced into slavery by an Arab militiaman from Northern Sudan.
Now 23, Bok [...]

Senator Edward Kennedy explains why he will vote ‘no’ on the Iraq spending bill.
Guests:

As AOL Time Warner officially drops the “AOL” from its name, Wall Street Journalist columnist Kara Swisher weighs in on the media merger debacle.
Guests:
Kara Swisher, technology columnist, The Wall Street Journal and author of, “AOL.com” Her new book is “There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest [...]

As America makes plans for rebuilding Iraq, some U.S. officials are looking to an old source, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His 1957 “Plan for Greater Baghdad” was culturally sensitive, but never built.
In this radio diary, Dr. Mina Marefat, who uncovered Wright’s plans for a 1999 essay, talks about his architectural homage to the city [...]

The Geneva Accord is set to be signed in Switzerland on November 4. Its Israeli and Palestinian signatories have no power to implement this peace plan. But their goal is to establish a path toward peace that officials might one day follow. Their plan asks for major concessions from both Israelis and Palestinians. [...]

Tomorrow in Rome, 83-year-old Pope John Paul II celebrates 25 years as head of the Catholic Church. His goal he signaled early on was to cross every threshold, never be a prisoner of the Vatican. He has kept that promise.
The pope who skied has crisscrossed the globe for the past quarter century. He [...]

Turkey’s preparations to send troops to Iraq are answered by a suicide bombing at the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad. Will Anakara’s troops help or hurt the U.S. occupation?
Guests:
Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Former US Ambassador to Croatia, current professor of national security studies at the National War College, his recent work has focused on Iraq, the [...]

Nationally-syndicated political columnist Molly Ivins looked out at the world last week and saw politicians outraged over Bill Clinton’s affairs making light of nasty sex charges against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Never mind the rich getting richer or American democracy getting poorer.
During the 2000 election, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose wrote “Shrub,” skewering George W. Bush’s record [...]

A year after a series of shootings terrorized the Washington DC-area, the trial of suspected sniper John Allen Muhammed began today in Virginia Beach. The 42-year-old Muhammed pleaded not guilty, but if convicted, Muhammed could face the death penalty.
Pulitzer-Prize winning Washington Post reporter Sari Horwitz has co-authored a new book that looks back at [...]

He may not be a role model, but he is followed with a vengeance. When The Rush Limbaugh Show aired for the first time on August 1, 1988, he was a relatively lonely voice of leg-breaking conservatism on the radio dial. Now, the airwaves are full of conservative pundits, and Americans are listening.
Last week, Rush [...]