The Abortion Battle in the States March 31
Hour 1 Last week, South Dakota passed an abortion bill that requires a woman to wait a three days and receive counseling before she can get an abortion — this is the longest waiting period in any state.  [...]

Digging into Spring and Your Backyard Garden March 31
Hour 2 Spring is here. The daffodils are blooming and the tulips, azaleas, flowering dogwoods, crabapples, and cherry trees are getting ready to pop.  That means it’s time to turn your attention to your garden — clean up [...]

Teacher tenure under fire March 30
Hour 1 As states and school districts grapple with severe financial issues and efforts to improve America's public schools advance, the issue of teacher tenure for public school teachers has taken center stage.   In New Jersey, for example, [...]

Rawhide Down: The 30th Anniversary of President Reagan's Assasination Attempt March 30
Hour 2 Thirty years ago today, President Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton hotel by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan didn’t know he was shot at first, but a Secret Service agent noticed blood on the 40th president’s [...]

Making sense of the emerging 'Obama doctrine' & Libya March 29
Hour 1 The morning after President Obama’s prime-time speech about his decision to intervene militarily in Libya, we take stock of the emerging ‘Obama doctrine’ guiding U.S. foreign policy. Citing a controversial and new United Nations principle known [...]

How images in the news shape our understanding of a story March 29
Hour 2 Why is it that we can read a story in the news about death but struggle when we look at pictures that document that tragedy? Why do the images make us squeamish and the accompanying words [...]

Modernize or Privatize the State Liquor Store System? March 28
Hour 1 Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and Harrisburg Republicans have given new emphasis to the push to privatize the commonwealth's state stores and its monopoly on alcohol sales. In response, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has unveiled a [...]

Lighting the Future: Incandescents, Compact Fluorescents, or LEDs? March 28
Hour 2 There’s a run on 100 watt incandescent bulbs.  With new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs going into effect in 2012, 100 watts will become obsolete leading some people to hoard them.  Under the 2007 law, [...]

NJ & PA political roundup, with John Baer & Tom Moran March 25
This week’s political roundup looks at the similarities and differences between the Republican governors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Tom Corbett and Chris Christie. Both are slashing budgets, especially targeting public-employee unions and education, which received spending increases [...]

How to be a happy stepmother March 25
Hour 2 Stereotypes about stepmothers abound– wicked, evil, home wrecker, cold, selfish, narcissistic.  Just look at stepmothers in fairy tales — those of Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel — to see what a bad rap they [...]

Stopping prison rape: What's it going to take? March 24
Hour 1 Prison rape is no joke, though it’s been a staple of innuendo and humor about incarceration for many years. In fact, it’s an epidemic that has united unlikely allies in an effort to address it, hopefully, [...]

Anna Deavere Smith lets it down easy March 24
Hour 2 Actress, playwright and author ANNA DEAVERE SMITH comes in to the Radio Times studio to discuss her one-woman show, “Let Me Down Easy” which explores the failing American healthcare system, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and [...]

'The Jersey Sting', with reporter/authors Josh Margolin & Ted Sherman March 23
Hour 1 The arrests, 44 of them, in New Jersey in July 2009 sounded like the stuff of fiction, or at least the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Three mayors, five Orthodox rabbis, two state legislators and the deputy [...]

The Curious Collection of Swallowed Objects March 23
Hour 2 Philadelphia is home to the Mutter Museum, a medical museum famous for its anatomical specimens and medical oddities.  One of the most interesting collections is in a set of drawers that contain nearly 2,000 objects that [...]

'Operation Odyssey Dawn' — The U.S. role in Libya March 22
Hour 1 As U.S. and coalition forces continue attacking Libya by sea and air in an effort to enforce a U.N.-sanctioned no-fly zone, we'll talk about the goals and objectives of the U.S. intervention. While originally framed as [...]

Bringing Accountability to the U.S. Federal Budget Process March 22
Hour 2 The federal budget needs to be cut, but what realistically can go? How much of the domestic discretionary spending can be reduced for Americans to be safe, healthy and educated? Are Social Security and Medicare entitlements [...]

Finding Common Ground on Gun Control March 21
Two months after the Tucson shooting, the Obama administration is taking on the issue of gun control.  In a recent op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star, the President stressed the need to improve the national background-check system so [...]

Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein March 21
Hour 2 Journalist JOSHUA FOER has proven one can improve one’s memory. His new book, Moonwalking with Einstein, describes his year learning mnemonic techniques, some going back to the Greeks and Romans, to become the 2006 U.S. Memory Champion. [...]

National political roundup, with David Mark & Elizabeth Williamson March 18
Hour 1 Crises to the right of him, meltdowns across the sea, President Obama’s stuck in the middle of polls that have him at about 50 percent approval. But that may give him a leg up on his [...]

Andrew Ferguson's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College March 18
Hour 2 The United States higher education system is an international bragging right. Many overseas families send their children off to the States, investing in a commodity that is supposed to have infinite returns. Some brilliant non-legacy teenagers [...]

Nuclear Power Policy/Science of Radiation Exposure March 17
Hour 1 The ongoing disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has many Americans questioning our own nuclear power policy.  Workers at the Japanese power plant are desperately trying to cool the reactors as radiation levels continue to [...]

Birds and birding in the Delaware Valley March 17
Hour 2 The Delaware Valley is home to more than 300 species of birds, and a community of birders numbering in the tens of thousands. From Cape Henlopen in Delaware to Hawk Mountain in east-central Pennsylvania, from Cape [...]

Reaction to the charges of child sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese March 16
Hour 1 On Monday, two current priests, a defrocked priest, and a former lay Catholic school teacher charged with sexually abusing or endangering minors appeared in a Philadelphia courtroom along with an Archdiocese official accused of concealing and [...]

Social networking and work — and why you should be careful online March 16
Hour 2 Let's just say you are at work and you've had a little disagreement with a colleague — or your boss for that matter.  Then, in a moment of anger, you log onto your Facebook page and [...]

An update on natural gas, fracking & the Marcellus Shale: Water March 15
Hour 1 The natural gas industry drilling into the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and neighboring states along the Appalachian mountains is at the forefront of many conversations in the state and the country today. With drilling supporter [...]

A conversation with David Brooks about his new book "The Social Animal" March 15
Hour 2 In his new book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks takes on the topic of human nature by exploring the motivations behind the conscious and unconscious decisions people make about the their lives.  [...]

The ongoing investigations of the Philadelphia Housing Authority March 14
Hour 1 Since Carl R. Greene was fired from his post as head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) late last summer, the agency has been under investigation by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor and the [...]

The High Price of Oil March 14
President Obama spoke on Friday about the high gas prices that are threatening to derail the U.S. economic recovery.  Crude oil prices have reached $105 a barrel and gas prices continue to creep closer to $4 a gallon. [...]

President Obama lifts the ban on military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay March 11
Hour 1 On Monday, President Obama approved the resumption of military trials for detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ending a two-year ban on such proceedings. He had vowed to close the prison when he [...]

Writer Leslie Daniels Cleans Nabokov’s House March 11
Hour 2 LESLIE DANIELS has dealt with characters her whole life. Raised by psychologist parents in the White Flight years of West Philadelphia, she was an early admissions student at the age of 15 at the University of [...]

Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin on the prospects for democracy in Egypt and the Middle East March 10
Hour 1 Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin recently returned from Egypt, where conversations with Nobel Laureate Mohamed El Baradei, representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, and protesters and Egyptians of all ages led her to conclude that the country is [...]

Reactions to Gov. Corbett's 1st Pennsylvania budget proposal March 10
Hour 2 The budget proposal that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett unveiled on Tuesday did usher in his much-ballyhooed “day of reckoning,” slashing state spending by 3 percent and raising no new taxes. Among the departments facing dramatic cuts [...]

How come the only Democrat who wants to be mayor is the Mayor March 9
Hour 1 With Philadelphia's May 17th primary election just around the corner, it looks like the only Democrat who wants to be mayor is the mayor.  A recent Franklin and Marshall College poll found that 53% of the [...]

Should 16- and 17-year-olds be able to vote? March 9
Hour 2 Should teens younger than 18 be allowed to vote? That’s the finding of new research by Camden-Rutgers childhood studies and nursing professor ROBERT ATKINS and DANIEL HART, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center [...]

Reforming Pennsylvania's Prisons March 8
Hour 1 Pennsylvania's prisons are in trouble.  The state has among the highest incarceration rate in the country – even with a recent slowing trend.  In the past 30 years, Pennsylvania's prison population has grown 500% and state [...]

Todd Reynolds fiddles around with new music and technology March 8
Virtuoso violinist, composer, conductor and arranger TODD REYNOLDS comes in to the Radio Times studio to discuss his new work, “Outerborough,” and how he finds new spaces and genres to express his compositions beyond classical music traditions. He’s [...]

An Economic Update March 7
Hour 1 There was some good economic news recently.  Last week’s Labor Department report showed that the United States added 192,000 jobs in February.  And a Federal Reserve survey found that the economy is growing.  But along with [...]

The Future of Digital Media March 7
Hour 2 There have been some big changes on the digital news media landscape — AOL’s  merger with The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast’s merger with Newsweek.  This hour, we’ll talk about some of the online shakeups [...]

National Political Roundup, with Dick Polman & Susan Milligan March 4
Hour 1 It’s been an interesting week in national politics, from the showdown in Wisconsin between the public employee unions and Governor Scott Walker to the showdown in Washington between Republicans and Democrats over the federal budget.  This [...]

Emotional and mental health as we age March 4
Hour 2 MARC AGRONIN is a geriatric psychiatrist in Miami, where his average patient is 90 years old. Based on his experiences working with older people, he challenges the conventional wisdom that as we age, we are less [...]

Bullying in Philadelphia Public Schools March 3
Hour 1 On Tuesday the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations released its report on bullying in Philadelphia public schools.  The report, “Widening the Circle of Our Concern”, is based on 11 public hearings held in the aftermath of [...]

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, Gaza gynecologist, grieving father March 3
Hour 2 Dr. IZZELDIN ABUELAISH lost three of his daughters and his niece to a shell launched at his apartment in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces in January 2009, while another daughter was critically injured. Moments later, Israeli [...]

White House abandons legal case against gay marriage March 2
Hour 1 In December, when President Obama signed the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and allowed gays to serve openly in the armed services, he reaffirmed that he does not support marriage for same-sex [...]

3 updates: 'The King's Speech,' Pan Am Flight 103 and Moammar Gadhafi, & 'Curveball' and his lies about Iraq's 'WMDs' March 2
Hour 2 We so enjoyed our interview with DAVID SEIDLER, who wrote the screenplay for The King's Speech, that we decided to air it again after Seidler won an Oscar for his work Sunday night.  If you didn't [...]

The history of and hysteria around vaccines March 1
Hour 1 PAUL A. OFFIT, MD, has a new book titled Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. SETH MNOOKIN’s new book is The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. Offit’s perspective [...]

The Science Self-Control and True Grit March 1
Hour 2 We all know what self-control is – it’s saying no to second helpings and yes to the gym.  It’s making ourselves practice piano, finish up a project at work, quit smoking or log-off from Facebook.  Researchers [...]