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  • A Portable History of the Language

    Archive from 7/16/07 – It’s often said that the English language is the hardest to learn. What makes English so strange and why does it seem that the language was created without any plan or rules? We talked last month with Seth Lerer, Avalon Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University and author of “Inventing […]

  • Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

    Archive from 7/16/07 – Got pets? Jon Katz does – four dogs, four donkeys, a cat, several chickens, a herd of sheep, and a giant steer named Elvis – although he considers some of them livestock. Katz, who frequently writes about his menagerie for the online magazine Slate, was our guest last month to discuss […]

  • The International Peace Movement

    Archive from 7/12/07 – Is there a path to peace? Where does it begin? According to the organizers of the 3rd International Women’s Peace Conference – in Dallas last month, “the power to make peace happen begins with you.” We spent an hour with Professor Jody Williams, founding Coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban […]

  • Angel of Death

    Archive from 7/12/07 – What would motivate a “sweet, soft-spoken nurse” to begin murdering her patients? Skip Hollandsworth waited years to find out. He interviewed Nocona nurse Vickie Dawn Jackson for his July, 2007 Texas Monthly cover story “Angel of Death.” Hollandsworth joined us for an hour last month.

  • Art and War

    Archive from 7/6/07 – How are art and war related? During World War II, the Nazi’s looted European art treasures by the thousands. Author and film producer Robert M. Edsel tells the story of this theft and the subsequent Allied recovery in his book “Rescuing Da Vinci” (Laurel, 2006) and the documentary film “The Rape […]

  • A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

    Archive from 6/13/07 – Everyone wants to do a good job, but doctors are under constant pressure to perform perfectly. Dr. Atul Gawande knows first hand what it’s like to work under stressful conditions. The 2006 MacArthur Fellow and general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is the author of “Better: A […]

  • How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity

    Archive from 6/28/07 – What makes a country? What makes America what it is today? Author Andro Linklater argues that changing territorial markers and frontiers played an important role in the creation of our country’s personality. His book is “The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National […]

  • The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

    Archive from 5/23/07 – We’ve heard many theories and there are still questions surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. Vincent Bugliosi, author of “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy” (Norton, 2007), joined us in May.

  • Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989

    Archive from 6/4/07 – What does it take to be a really great President? Perhaps no one is better suited to discuss the question than historian Michael Beschloss. He joined us for an hour in June to talk about his latest work “Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989” (Simon and Schuster, […]

  • Understanding Your Child's Unique Core Personality

    Archive from 5/17/07 – How do you decide how you’ll raise your kids? Will you take your parents’ advice? What about friends and what you’ve seen in the media? Michael Gurian, author of “Nurture the Nature: Understanding Your Child’s Unique Core Personality” (Jossey-Bass, 2007) joined us in May to explore the issues that parents face […]