Hour 1 A few days after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was abducted in 2005, GERSHON BASKIN got a phone call from a Palestinian professor and colleague asking for his help in negotiating the soldier's release.  Gershon was put in touch with a spokesman for the Hamas government and for five years, as an intermediary between [...]

Filed under: history, journalism, religion, world |

Hour 1 In Philadelphia, over half of all students drop out from high school.  In the U.S., only seven of 10 ninth graders will get high school diplomas. Locally, Mayor Michael Nutter has made raising the number of high school graduates a priority, setting goals to halve the dropout rate.  On the national level, in [...]

Filed under: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, business, economy, parenting, teens, world |

Hour 2 [REBROADCAST] When an international conflict such as Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan arises, political pundits and theorists wrestle with how various political theories and worldviews differ in their responses. But how would geopolitical stances such as neoconservatism, realism and liberalism respond to the ultimate threat: zombie hordes overrunning borders in their insatiable quest for [...]

Filed under: author, culture, politics, world |

Hour 2 Just over a hundred years ago, Roald Amundsen and four companions were the first human beings to stand at the South Pole. Using skis and dog sleds they beat Robert Falcon Scott’s British expedition by just a few weeks. Scott and his men reached the South Pole only to find Amundsen’s Norwegian flag [...]

Filed under: animals, author, environment, history, science, world |

Hour 1 The Obama administration recently rejected the hotly contested proposal to build a 1,700-mile pipeline from Western Canada to Texas. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry 800,000 barrels of oil from the tar sands in Alberta across to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama said that his administration denied the permit because [...]

Filed under: business, economy, environment, politics, technology, transportation, world |

Hour 2 Philadelphia artist ZOE STRAUSS pays attention to the joy and the pain that comes with the city’s neighborhoods – the poverty, substance addiction, segregation and cultural diversity – and captures scenes many of us would never notice. Strauss was known in the art world the last decade for her annual one-day shows featuring [...]

Filed under: Philadelphia, arts, culture, history, military, world |

Hour 1 All eyes and ears were on Capitol Hill last night as President Barack Obama delivered his third State of the Union address.  Before a packed house of Congress, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and special guests,  he laid out his vision for the coming year focusing mostly on economic initiatives which he described [...]

Filed under: economy, politics, world |

Hour 2 Last year’s Japanese tsunami provoked fears of widespread radiation leaks and set off a nuclear crisis as clean up crews furiously raced to contain the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Meanwhile another environmental concern resulting from the devastation has emerged. Several recent reports indicate that over 15 million tons of wreckage [...]

Filed under: author, environment, world |

Hour 1 [REBROADCAST] NPR’s Morning Edition co-host, STEVE INSKEEP, says we are living in the age if the “instant city” when metropolitan areas’ growth are unprecedented. Karachi, Pakistan the most heightened example if this as its population has grown from 400,000 in the 1940s to more than 13 million people today.  With all the development [...]

Filed under: author, economy, politics, world |

Hour 1 As the first anniversary of the uprising in Egypt draws near, military leaders, the Islamists who won the third and final voting in recent parliamentary elections, and the activists who sparked the revolution continue to be at odds over the country's future.  In his new book, The Struggle for Egypt, STEVEN A. COOK, [...]

Filed under: author, history, world |