What’s love got to do with it? For most of the long history of the wife, not very much.

Women married for other reasons: economic support, cementing relationships between their families or tribes, to have children, to counter loneliness or to be like all the other women. Once upon a time, women wore the title “wife” like a badge of honor. These days, many women don’t need to marry to have an income or to have children. It’s accepted, even expected, that couples will live together before marriage.

The link between love and marriage is relatively new, and some say the whole institution of marriage is dissolving before our eyes. But tell that to the young women who read inch-thick copies of Bride Magazine. Tell that to single-sex couples who want to have the state legalize their unions.
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Marilyn Yalom, author of “A History of the Wife.”;

Nancy Cott, author of “Public Vows.”;

E. J. Graff, author of “What is Marriage For?”;

The image of two planes colliding over the South China Sea is as perfect a metaphor for China-US relations as you could hope for…or dread.

Like its fighter jet, China is fast moving onto the world stage, if somewhat out of control. This burgeoning superpower is inscrutable to America, inescapable too. Watching the diplomatic dogfight that has followed the crash, the world community is worried: Can the new US president and his team of tough-talkers handle some very delicate maneuvering? China wants an apology, President Bush wants his plane and people back. Taiwan frets over its missile defense, and many are concerned that the markets stay open and the nukes stay in their silos.

With tensions high in East Asia, who is really calling the shots? Mr. Bush, this is not your father’s PRC. China – kid gloves or big stick?
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Robert Kapp, president of the US-China Business Council.;

Erik Eckholm, co-chief of the New York Times Beijing Bureau.;

Evan Feigenbaum, executive director, Asia-Pacific Security Initiative, Kennedy School, Harvard University.

Bring me your tired. Your tight. Your hungry for spiritual enlightenment. Your yearning to be lean. But bring your own sticky mat.

And don’t forget to show up fifteen minutes early. Welcome to yoga twenty-first century-style. The four thousand year old practice is hotter than Calcutta in July, though its original practitioners might not recognize it. Some accuse today’s gurus of being more adept at marketing than meditation. And with classes like “yoga for jocks” and “bootcamp yoga,” one wonders where the relaxation part comes in.

But it’s all the same to the masses of multi-tasking men and women who’ve found balance and, yes, a better butt, along the way to enlightenment. They’ve given up feeling the burn so they might feel something deeper. So why are you still doing aerobics?
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Baron Baptiste, founder and director, Baptiste Power Yoga Institute, Cambridge, MA

Patricia Walden, co-founder, BKS Iyengar Yoga Center, Somerville, MA

Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, spiritual head, Himalayan International Institute, Honesdale, PA

Elizabeth Wipff, creative yoga director, Crunch Fitness, New York City.

Afghanistan. It’s about the size of Texas – but this is not your typical “Home on the Range.”

If there’s any place that American sees as “other” today, it might be the mountainous, land-locked Land of the Afghans. Or, we should say, the Taliban. This ruling faction has taken over 95-percent of the war-torn country in the last decade – and in American eyes has suppressed women’s rights, starved and killed millions of Afghans, and harbored the largest collection of international terrorists in the world. If this isn’t the recipe for the bad guy, what is?

But behind policy pronouncements lies the spectre of so-called Islamic fundamentalism, memories of embassy bombings, and images of towering Buddhas razed to the ground. Policymakers try to stick to the facts, but our wide-angle lense projects a culture that America struggles to understand,as it struggles to decide what to do with Afghanistan.
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Roving Envoy Sayed Ramatullah Hashimi from the Taliban;

Julie Sirrs, former analyst for the Department of Defense;

Neamat Nojumi, former freedom fighter in Afghanistan

Richard Hoagland, State Department Director of Public Diplomacy for the South Asia Bureau

Laylee Helms, Taliban advisor in the United States.

Popular culture these days is full of guardian angels, always swooping down to save someone from disaster to fill them with love and grace.

But you don’t hear that much about guardian devils, out to do people harm and pull them to perdition. With one exception: Millions of readers know about Screwtape, that cynical, sarcastic senior devil who’s trying to teach his naive nephew Wormwood how to lure a young man from the jaws of Christianity. C. S. Lewis wrote “The Screwtape Letters” in 1941, as war engulfed Europe and evil seemed to be gaining the upper hand.

His book, on the surface shows sympathy for the devil. But it’s actually a defense, even a recruiting poster, for the Christian life. It was a bestseller then. It remains a bestseller today. In our cynical, sarcastic age, the Connection considers the continuing resonance of a book that takes the Devil seriously.
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”;

Dr. Armand Nicholi Jr., professor of clinical psychiatry who teaches a course at Harvard Medical School on contrasting world views of C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud.

In 1967 Fidel Castro told Playboy magazine, “I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.”

Talk about not following your own advice… Cuba, and its enduring chief-comrade have been thorns in the side of American leaders for decades. With Soviet support – Castro could laugh at U-S policy — since the early nineties however – Cubans have struggled to make ends meet. But despite the lack of access to the huge American market — the island holds the rest of the West in its thrall, hosting the world’s playboys and party girls – flying in the face of America’s embargoes.

And for every American president denouncing Castro’s regime, there’s been a wave of Cuban fascination that’s made many Americans wonder what all the fuss is about. The pariah next door – the forbidden Carribbean.
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Jane Franklin, historian and author of “Cuba and the United States”

Tom Gjelten, National Public Radio National Security Correspondent who has covered Cuba since 1994

Jesus Diaz, author and Cuban dissident.

The gig is up for Slobodan Milosevic!

It was the stuff of movies: a “High Noon” stand-off, a drug-induced oblivion, a daughter – guns ablaze – crying, “Death before dishonor!” But don’t roll the credits just yet… The Yugoslav government casts a cold eye on international crime-busters in The Hague – and Slobo may never face charges of crimes against humanity. And what about the rest of the region? As Belgrade struggles to rebuild, and the Bush administration edges towards an exit – Macedonia still shudders with gunfire, and Montenegro’s on the brink.

Is it really all about one man – the shaker and breaker of Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo – the man who inspired NATO bombs and Hitler comparisons? With his arrest – the very meaning of international justice goes on trial.

Guests:

Michael Scharf, author of “Balkan Justice”

Nikola Djuric, journalist and former owner of City Radio in Nich in the former Yugoslavia

Sylvia Poggioli, NPR correspondent in Belgrade

Jean-Jacques Joris, special political advisory to Prosecuter at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague

Alexi Djilas, sociologist and historian in Belgrade.

Iraq – In the Bible it’s Eden or the place of pleasure – a fertile crescent – a birthplace of language.

This is the land of Gilgamesh, Babylon — Adam and Eve. Now – Iraq has the highest infant mortality rate in the world, economic sanctions, and the unsinkable Saddam Hussein. Go back eleven years – the pre-pariah era… Baghdad was more friend than foe, more rich than poor – more regal than rogue. Ronald Reagan sold their army weapons to fight against Iran, and congressional visitors asked, “Human rights abuse? What human rights abuse?” The Gulf War broke bonds between Iraq, its neighbors and the world – Saddam went from democratic bulwark to international criminal.

But now much of the world is begging to break embargoes and re-engage Iraq. While George W. plots to overthrow Hussein – we’re looking at what makes Iraq America’s great enemy.
(Hosted by Judy Swallow)

Guests:

Patrick Clawson, Director of Research, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Joe Stark, Iraq Specialist

and Dr. Ra’id Abdullah, Associate Professor of Pediatric Cardiology at Rush Medical Hospital in Chicago

Clovis Maksoud, former ambassador to the UN for the Arab League, now a Professor if International Relations at American University