One year ago, the Voorhees family of Beverly, MA, embarked on a four-and-a-half month journey through time. John Voorhees, his wife Michelle, and their 11-year-old son Giacomo, joined 23 others as colonists in a small 1628 New England town for PBS’s “Colonial House” series, which concluded last week.
From eating muskrat to using leaves for toilet [...]

When historians paint the United States in its greatest glory, they conjure up the image of the shining city on a hill. But Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Walter McDougall sees a nation of hustlers in that city.
In a new book, Walter McDougall says that a history of hustling gave America, from the moment of its inception, [...]

There are many different kinds of bravery being demonstrated right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last month, Robert Kaplan, writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, witnessed the U.S. Marines’ push into Fallujah, Iraq. Kaplan’s full account will appear in the July/August edition of the Atlantic Monthly.
Hear Kaplan read an excerpt from his account.
Guests:

After the Civil War, Memorial Day was first conceived as “Decoration Day,” a day of remembrance of those who gave their lives in service to their country.
There is no greater symbol of courage and sacrifice in battle than the Congressional Medal of Honor. General George Patton once remarked that he would “give his soul” to [...]

Self-proclaimed candy freak Steve Almond fondly remembers the day he discovered he could buy candy by the pound. He turned to candy as a boy for solace and comfort instead of to his harried family. And he never turned back. When relationships soured or writing projects stalled, sugary confections helped him through. [...]

The Iraqi Governing Council has tapped Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, doctor and founder of the opposition to be prime minister in the interim government that will take over after the June 30 handover.
Guests:
Rod Nordland, correspondent in Baghdad for Newsweek

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One social critic sees a new dichotomy in American life. “Hard America” - ruled by competition and accountability; “Soft America” - tries to protect people from such realities. We take a close look at the battle between these two halves of the nation.
Guests:
Michael Barone, senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, author of “Hard [...]

Current predictions have world oil production peaking somewhere between 2005 and 2035, with demand steadily rising as growing economies like China and India start consuming more and more.
But the oil-fired economy, and the lifestyle that comes with it, is nearing an end, says writer Paul Roberts in his new book, “The End of Oil.” A [...]

Earlier today in Seattle, WA, in the first of three major speeches to be delivered over the next 11 days, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry put forth his national security policy.
Hear excerpts from the speech followed by a step-back look with On Point news analyst Jack Beatty.
Guests:
Jack Beatty, On Point News Analyst, [...]

US-led coalition leaders have agreed to suspend offensive operations in Najaf after Shiite leaders negotiated an end to the standoff with radical Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Thanassis Cambanis is a correspondent for The Boston Globe and spoke with us from Baghdad just minutes after returning from Najaf.
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Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks has covered conflict around the globe and may be the country’s toughest, most plugged-in observer of the uniformed U.S. military officials whose duty it is to carry out the policies of Pentagon and White House civilian leaders.
Ricks was part of the Washington Post team that won the 2002 Pulitzer [...]

A report by Amnesty International released today condemns the United States for carrying out a war on terror that is flouting human rights in a failed attempt to gain security.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded that the U.S. is a leader on human rights and said that the war on terror has protected the human [...]

A new threat of terrorism cast a shadow of fear over America today. At FBI headquarters in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller announced that law enforcement authorities have “credible intelligence from multiple sources” that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the United States this summer or early fall.
“Several upcoming [...]

Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Diretor Robert Mueller held a press conference today about increased concern over possible terrorist attacks on U.S. soil this summer.
Guests:
Josh Meyer, covers terrorism for The Los Angeles Times

Michael Moore’s new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize yet still has no U.S. distributor. In it, Moore goes right for the throat of President George W. Bush and he doesn’t let go.
Confrontation suits Moore. He has been launching video grenades from the far left since his breakout agit-prop [...]

Bernard-Henri Levy spent several months at the end of the last century in what he calls the world’s “forgotten war zones”: Sudan, Burundi, Angola, Sri Lanka, and Colombia.
In his newly translated book, “War, Evil, and the End of History,” Levy discusses the nature of those conflicts, and what they tell us about the face of [...]

President Bush vows to go the distance in Iraq and is now reaching out to the U.N. to get it done. Critics, including Democratic challenger John Kerry, say he has not reached out nearly enough, and that a major internationalization of the Iraq challenge is key to avoiding catastrophe.
But is internationalization of the Iraq effort [...]

Colum Lynch, who covers the United Nations for the Washington Post, says that reaction is mixed to a U.S.-British proposal put before the U.N. on the handover of power in Iraq.
Guests:
Colum Lynch, covers The United Nations for The Washington Post.

Bush will make the first in a series of speeches designed to stem the rising tide of uneasiness over his war effort in Iraq. The White House has been badgered by falling poll numbers, a wide ranging prison scandal, and dissention within the Republican ranks.
The administration hopes that the speech will show the American [...]

In a televised prime time speech, President Bush will detail his plans for turning over Iraq’s rule to an interim government on June 30 and describe the U.S. role after that.
Click the “Listen” link to hear some of the country’s top political and military minds look ahead to Bush’s speech.
Guests:
Maura Reynolds, White House Correspondent, The [...]

One need not go to the movies to see epic moral battles. On the battlefields of Iraq, war, peace, and heroism are being fought under the watchful eyes of the world.
A similar battle is being fought on the movie screen. “Troy,” the newly released movie starring Brad Pitt, is number one at the box office. [...]

Host Tom Ashbrook and On Point News analyst Jack Beatty look at and discuss this past week’s major news.
Guests:

Beyond the high-profile court martial of a low-level army trooper the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal has been growing in scope this week. A flurry of investigative reports have focused on who knew and who ordered what up the military chain of command. Adding fuel to the fire, more graphic photos and video footage of debasing [...]

September 11, 2001 brought Al Qaeda and the rest of the Muslim world into the headlines. Americans came to associate the terrible attacks and the seething anger against the United States with the attackers’ religion — Islam.
The religion that Muslim-American writer Asma Hasan practices, however, promotes equality and open-mindedness. In her new book [...]

Against the backdrop of an ongoing war on terror and a messy war in Iraq, rock star Bono has spent much of the week calling for a war on AIDS and poverty in Africa.
On Tuesday, Bono testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, saying “The attention of the world might sometimes be elsewhere, but history is [...]

Fifty years after the desegregation of American schools, the black/ white achievement gap in school performance still looms. A new book argues that the fixation with school reform and testing overlooks the real problem: poverty, and all the conditions that come with it.
On Point looks at social class and the academic achievement gap.
Guests:
Richard Rothstein, [...]

In its heaviest raid in years, Israeli troops entered the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza earlier this week in a hunt for suspected militants. Yesterday, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunships fired on a crowd of protesting Palestinians, killing dozens and wounding scores more.
Some U.S. observers argue that as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worsens, American hopes [...]

Guests:
Dan Ephron, Newsweek correspondent based in Gaza

The Internet changed the way we work and live. But that was just the beginning.
By 2011, cable television networks will be obsolete and replaced by Internet services, predicts Wired magazine. By 2015, half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. will be navigated by computer. And by 2017, some predict, all phone [...]

Tim Russert joins us for a conversation about his father, growing up in Buffalo, NY and being king of Sunday morning Washington talk. We go one-on-one with the host of “Meet the Press.”
Guests:
Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” His new memoir is “Big Russ and Me: Father and Son — Lessons of Life.”

Guests:
Vivienne Walt, reporter in Baghdad for Time magazine

Guests:
Army Archerd, senior columist Variety

Just days after her unexpected win in India’s elections, Sonia Gandhi said she would “humbly” decline the post of prime minister.
Guests:
Scott Baldauf, South Asia correspondent, based in New Delhi for The Christian Science Monitor.

BusinessWeek’s Michael Mandel pushes back at economic doomsayers. It’s time, he says, for a little rational exuberance about the U.S. economy.
Guests:
Michael Mandel, chief economist, BusinessWeek Magazine and author of “Rational Exuberance: Silencing the Enemies of Growth and Why the Future is Better Than You Think”
Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and member [...]

The Bush-appointed September 11 commission met in New York today for the first of two days of public hearings. The commission focused on communications gaps and conflicting instructions that could have been avoided.
Guests:
Raymond is a reporter for Newsday.

Between public backlash over the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison and concern over intelligence failures prior to September 11th, the Bush White House has faced mounting criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Now, a new series of public opinion polls show that Bush also boasts less support among Americans than ever before.
We [...]

President of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzedine Salim, was killed this morning in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint near the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. He is the second member of the Iraqi Governing Council to be killed.
Guests:
Tod Norland is Baghdad Bureau Chief for Newsweek

Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg looks at the language used in the media, business, and politics, and pays special attention to President Bush’s rhetoric surrounding the U.S. occupation of Iraq. From Bush’s labeling Iraq and North Korea rogue states to his vague exhortations against evil-doers, Nunberg alerts us to how language impacts our policies and [...]

When the clock struck midnight, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriages. Across the state, same-sex couples have applied for marriage licenses, and some have joined in matrimony.
Gay marriage is legal but not everyone is saying “I do” to the whole idea. Some critics are opposed on religious grounds, [...]

Guests:

Almost a decade ago, the Los Angeles Times called singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter the “boomer poet by default.” For over 25 years, the Ivy League grad from the New Jersey suburbs has been drawing her own rich thread through the country music scene.
Now, with five Grammys, two Country Music Awards, and 12 million records [...]

Setbacks for the United States characterized the week’s events in Iraq: the expanding controversy around prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, continued fighting in Karbala, and the beheading of an American civilian.
Should we stay the course, or is a radical correction needed? Through the doom and gloom, is there real progress in Iraq? We [...]

Monday marks the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. In the half-century that has passed since that decision, lawyers have used Brown to end legal segregation in all public schools and facilities.
But its legacy has not been all positive, as the court’s reluctance to demand the immediate integration of public schools resulted in [...]

Opposition leader Sonia Gandhi delivered a crushing election defeat to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today, plunging India into political uncertainty that may threaten crucial economic reforms and peace talks with Pakistan.
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Women in high-powered careers left their jobs for extended periods to take care of their children. Now, many are trying to get their foot back in the office door.
But gaps in their resumes and a workplace that has changed dramatically are making it difficult. Tonight, On Point: women fighting to reenter the workplace.
Guests:
Hilary [...]