Susan Orlean, best-selling author and staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine has made a great career in intimate profiles of the celebrated and the unheralded. We spend an hour with the author of “The Orchid Thief,” and much more.
Guests:
Susan Orlean, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of “The Orchid Thief,” [...]

President Bush said today that he, too, wants to know the facts about prewar intelligence failures regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities. But he stopped short of supporting calls for an independent investigation of how and why Washington followed flawed intelligence to war. Maura Reynolds, White House correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, reports on what [...]

Since 1995, New York Times investigative reporter David Cay Johnston has been unbundling the tax breaks and loopholes that make the top 1 percent of Americans obscenely rich.
In his new book “Pefectly Legal,” he explains how the rest of us got cheated. The super rich, he says, have further enriched themselves and duped the rest [...]

With the primary season now in full-swing, the Democratic presidential candidates are looking for every opportunity to forge a human connection with voters. Wesley Clark served up pancakes in Oklahoma City today. John Kerry always has his wife nearby. And last week, the fiery Howard Dean took to late night TV to try and [...]

In his new book “American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush,” political commentator and former White House strategist Kevin Phillips takes on the Bush dynasty, and traces four generations of aristocracy, fortune and politics.
Phillips says that each Bush generation is firmly rooted in oil, investment banking money, and [...]

New estimates released today by the White House project the just-enacted prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul will cost one-third more than promised just weeks ago and predict a deficit exceeding $500 billion for this year. Gail Chaddock who covers Congress for The Christian Science Monitor discusses the political consequences of these new estimates.
Guests:
Gail Chaddock, [...]

Exit polls this week showed fixing health care as the number one concern of voters in New Hampshire. Almost 44 million Americans have no health insurance. Millions who are covered fear they one day won’t be or that the coverage they have isn’t good.
Democratic candidates on the campaign trail and President Bush in Washington have [...]

More details of the harrowing events of September 11th were released yesterday by the commission investigating the attacks. One of the things released was the tape of a dramatic phone call made by Betty Ong, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first jet to ram into New York’s World Trade Center.
In [...]

The last century saw an explosion in the fast food industry in America. Now, a new movement back to the local farm is sprouting up in Vermont. Tod Murphy has opened a diner that strives to use ingredients that were grown and raised as close to home as possible. Murphy’s “Farmers Diner” serves dishes made [...]

The much anticipated Hutton report was released today, and it exonerates prime minister Tony Blair on charges of lying to the British parliament about the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. Former chief American weapons inspector David Kay also testified before a Senate Committee today, saying that poor intelligence gathering was responsible [...]

John Kerry wins the New Hampshire primary, but the fight for the Democratic nomination has a few more rounds to go. Howard Dean showed he’s still a contender with his second place showing in New Hampshire. Wesley Clark and John Edwards virtually tied for third place and say they still hope to blow the race [...]

We are broadcasting tonight from Manchester, New Hampshire where at this minute polls are closing in the nation’s first primary vote of the 2004 presidential campaign. By eight o’clock tonight Eastern Time, one hour from now, polls will be closed across all of New Hampshire, and exit polls should be giving us a pretty good [...]

We are broadcasting tonight from Manchester, New Hampshire where at this minute polls are closing in the nation’s first primary vote of the 2004 presidential campaign. By eight o’clock tonight Eastern Time, one hour from now, polls will be closed across all of New Hampshire, and exit polls should be giving us a pretty good [...]

We are broadcasting tonight from Manchester, New Hampshire where at this minute polls are closing in the nation’s first primary vote of the 2004 presidential campaign. By eight o’clock tonight Eastern Time, one hour from now, polls will be closed across all of New Hampshire, and exit polls should be giving us a pretty good [...]

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, On Point talks with a roundtable of New Hampshire voters about who they want to see run against Bush in 2004.
Guests:
Nan Stearns, 68-year-old Army wife and a Dean supporter from Amherst, NH
Mark Anderson, 43-year-old software engineer and an Edwards supporter from Manchester, NH
Eleanor Kjellman, 57-year-old special education [...]

The transfer of power in Iraq has proven to be more complicated than American officials had anticipated. As key Iraqi political figures test their wings in a fledgling democracy the US struggles to influence the shape of Iraq’s future government. On Point looks behind the curtain at the the transfer of power in Iraq
Guests:
Dan Senor, [...]

History suggests the roman emperor Nero played a mean organ. In the medieval era, the great pipe organs of Europe drew crowds to God. Mozart called the organ the king of instruments. A century ago, American towns and cities prided themselves on local organs.
New York Times reporter Craig Whitney was a [...]

A surging stock market, 8.2 percent economic growth in the third quarter, low interest rates and a robust housing market may mean the good times are back.
Or the news may be hiding problems ahead.
Tonight, On Point, bull run or bubble, the stock market’s incredible climb.
Guests:
Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and [...]

Those who urge a restoration of the social safety net are quick to point to growing disparity between rich and poor as an indication of the imbalance of the American system but Jacob Hacker, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University argues that a more important and troubling trend is the growing economic insecurity [...]

The Inuit people continue to live traditional lives above the Arctic Circle. They travel by kayak and hunt food from the sea. The surprise is that they host the highest human concentration of toxins on earth.
Guests:
Marla Cone, Environmental Reporter for “The Los Angeles Times”
Christopher Furgal, Researcher, Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments
Ken [...]

Today, Americans choose, from thousands of options, everything from their Friday night DVD to the “right” college, to investment alternatives for their 401K. So is this freedom? Or a new tyranny of choice?
Psychologist Barry Schwartz says that in spite of their wealth of options today on many fronts, American consumers are not necessarily [...]

General Wesley Clark spoke in front of veterans and later, before students at the University of New Hampshire today. WBUR political reporter Fred Thys spent the day following Clark on his campaigning and reports on the latest.
Guests:

As the war in Vietnam raged, John Kerry engaged in an internal battle over the legitimacy and methods of America’s efforts in Southeast Asia. Despite being decorated five times for bravery for injuries sustained in battle, Kerry went on to become one of the war’s most articulate critics. Through war and peace, John Kerry formulated [...]

In the hour before President Bush’s State of the Union address, we provide advance analysis of what the President will lay out in this major election year speech.
Guests:
Eleanor Clift, national political correspondent, Newsweek
Michael Waldman, head speech writer for President Clinton from 1995-1999, author of “My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches of America’s Presidents, from [...]

Martha Stewart pled not guilty Tuesday to five criminal counts, including conspiracy, for her 2001 sale of Imclone stock. Lawyers from both sides began narrowing down the field of potential jurors.
Guests:
Barney Gimbel, court house reporter for Newsweek

The surprise Kerry and Edwards showings in Iowa have shaken up the Democratic race. The candidates are now focused on this election year’s first primary, in New Hampshire. We look ahead to the January 27th vote. Tonight, On Point, the changing presidential race.
Guests:
Kathie Obradovich, political editor, Des Moines Register
Gerald Pomper, professor of [...]

Across the country, Americans are honoring Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday today. Massachusetts teacher Michael Obel-Omia honors King every year by reading the “I Have a Dream Speech” to his classes.
In this radio diary, he says the power of King’s message still resonates, even with the high school students he teaches.
Guests:

An expected 100,000 Iowans are attending nearly 2,000 local precinct caucuses tonight, where, polls indicate, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt may be locked in a dead heat.
Karen Tumulty, political reporter for Time Magazine, reports on the latest election results at the Iowa caucauses.
Guests:

The world was transforming in the late 1990s, in exciting and unforeseeable ways. Those who believed in the limitless potential of technology and invested in it, got rich.
In his memoir, “American Sucker,” New Yorker film critic David Denby chronicles his head-first dive into the stock market bubble, in a desperate wide-eyed attempt to get rich [...]

American, British and Iraqi officials today asked United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to send a U.N. team to Baghdad to help salvage plans for putting a provisional Iraqi government in place there by July. Anan was non-committal today, but Washington is suddenly pushing hard for the U.N.’s help.
Warren Hoge, U.N. Bureau Chief for [...]

The number of American troops who have died in Iraq hit 500 in a road side bombing over the weekend. As the number of killed and wounded grows, the true cost of the war in Iraq increases as well.
Views on whether the war is justified or not vary greatly but the support and concern [...]

On Point host Tom Ashbrook and On Point news analyst Jack Beatty discuss the main news stories that made the headlines this past week.
Guests:

Guests:

Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 film, “The Battle of Algiers,” was a celluloid textbook for 1960s revolutionaries as it recreated the 1950s Algerian independence struggle against French colonials. The film was banned in France, instigated riots and theater bombings in Europe, and was required watching for America’s Black Panthers.
Now, a new print of the film has been [...]

An arctic blast of frigid air is shattering low temperature records across the Northeast and upper Midwest this week. Last week, a major snowstorm paralyzed much of Oregon resident Susan Nielsen’s state.
In this radio diary, Susan Nielsen shares her dread as she looks forward to nine more weeks of winter and wishes that she [...]

The latest polling data from Iowa suggests Monday’s key Democratic presidential caucus continues to shift from a two-man battle between Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt to a real horse race, with John Kerry and John Edwards pushing forward. The most ground has been made by Kerry, who, according to today’s Reuters-MSNBC-Zogby poll, has opened up [...]

The expected two-way race between Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt for first place is now a four-man race that includes John Kerry and John Edwards. John Harwood is National Political Editor for The Wall Street Journal and joins us from Des Moines with the latest news.
Guests:
John Harwood is National Political Editor for The Wall Street [...]

In his first novel, “Bombardiers,” Po Bronson profiled the cutthroat world of bond trading on Wall Street. Then he turned, famously, to Silicon Valley’s wild 1990s joyride.
After the bust, Po Bronson interviewed nearly a thousand Americans in the throes of life-altering change for his bestselling book, “What Should I Do with My Life?” They [...]

Seventy-six years ago tomorrow, in the winter of 1938, Benny Goodman brought his swing band to the bastion of “serious music” — the stage of Carnegie Hall. A raucous, provocative, and wildly successful night followed. Jazz had a newfound respectability as America was coming to see this new fusion of African and European influences as [...]

Born in Brooklyn in 1930, Norman Podhoretz was raised the son of Jewish immigrants. He joined a gang and said that in the 1940s he learned never to back down in a fight. As a young man, he took that hard-nosed will, matched it with a towering intellect, and quickly became one of America’s [...]

Like many refugees who left Afghanistan over the past three decades, Rina Amiri has kept a close eye out for news of her war-torn homeland. In this radio diary, Rina Amiri talks about the role of women in the new Afghanistan, and the cautious role of a returned native.
Guests:
Rina Amiri, Political Affairs Officer for [...]

Saying her campaign had offered Americans “a unique opportunity for progress,” former Senator Carol Mosely Braun withdrew from the 2004 Presidential race today and endorsed Howard Dean.
“The funding and organizational disadvantages of a nontraditional campaign could not, in the end, be overcome,” she said in today’s announcement in Carroll, Iowa.
Hear more from her withdrawal speech.
Guests:

The first round in the fight for the Democratic nomination comes next Monday at the Iowa Caucus. With polls showing that about one third of caucus voters are still undecided, the competition for their support has become fierce.
The race is shaping up to be a four way heat between Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards, [...]

Like many refugees who left Afghanistan over the past three decades, Rina Amiri returned, fresh from graduate school, to help citizens communicate their needs to the Loya Jirga in June 2002. She was there again during the most recent council of Afghan tribal elders and other leaders to debate a new constitution paving the way [...]

New Yorker media maven Ken Auletta has passed through many of America’s newsrooms, and interviewed its most colorful reporters, editors, and publishers. He has also written about the stories they cover, from the 1996 presidential race to President George W. Bush.
In a new collection of articles, “Backstory: Inside the Business of News,” Ken [...]

Alan Meyers is a Boston-based pediatrician traveling with a group of medical professionals in the West Bank, who are working with the human rights group, “Physicians for Human Rights — Israel.” The group co-authored a report charging that the Israeli Army has obstructed medical services to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Hear Meyers report from Nablus [...]