Martin Luther had a dream, and the Civil Rights movement he led fills chapters in the story of this country’s history. But Todd Boyd says, MLK’s day is done.

It’s time to turn down the volume on his speeches, and tune into the new voice of Black America, that’s hip hop. Through lyrics, lifestyle, and music, Boyd says Hip Hop is redefining Black culture, creating a new identity and changing the rules of race in America. It’s not all about guns, money, and fancy cars, hip hop poets are creating the language for a new generation, taking an underground movement turned billion-dollar industry into the mainstream, and making statements more powerful than Washington marches.

Todd Boyd and Hip Hop, the people he calls the New Head Niggas in Charge.

Guests:

Dr. Todd Boyd, professor of Critical Studies, USC School of Cinema-Television and author of “The New H.N.I.C.”

There is a question that’s tearing Venezuela apart, exposing class divisions raising the specter of a political meltdown in the heart of Latin America; the question is, Who’s side are you on?

Supporters of President Hugo Chavez see their democratically-elected leader as a champion for the country’s poor. But the growing ranks of those in opposition argue Chavez has become a tyrant, strangling Venezuela’s economy and abusing the very democracy that brought him to power.

At the center of the fight is the nation’s oil industry, with managers and unions quarrelling over allegiances to the company and the country. Crude oil and crude politics, who’s side are you on, and how long can Chavez hold on?

Guests:

Ricardo Hausmann, professor of economic development at Harvard University and former minister of planning in Venezuela

Phillip Gunson, reporter for the Christian Science Monitor

Refugees are the sort of people who too often live in our minds as a group, like “the homeless” or “the disabled.” The theater director Peter Sellars says it’s easier that way, to see them as television images, as long lines of bedraggled people stuck at some border somewhere.

In a new production of an old Greek play, Peter Sellars is asking people to look longer, and think harder, about what it means to be a refugee. In “The Children of Herakles”, real refugees occupy the stage with Euripides’ play about people who were caught without a home 2400 years ago.

It is a reminder that what separates theater and politics is our own desire for comfort and entertainment. Democracy and drama, the past and present.

Guests:

Peter Sellars, director, “The Children of Herakles,” American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge MA

Sunday’s suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, was the 86th such attack since the latest Palestinian Intifada began two and a half years ago. It was precisely this type of terrorist attack which drew Israel’s opposing parties together into the solidarity of a national unity government. But politics being what it is, that coalition eventually fell apart.

Since last fall, Labor and Likud, led by the retired generals Mizna and Sharon have been insisting that they alone should lead the nation. In the first of a four-part series on the Israeli election: violence and politics in Israel. We’ll talk about how anger, sorrow and resilience are playing on the pending ballot, and the shift to the right.

Guests:

Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Come on, you know it. The story about the butterflies. How the flapping of their tiny, delicate wings somewhere on, say, the South American continent, will influence a storm in upstate New York or Southern California. The story is used to illuminate a central tenant of what has come to be known as chaos theory, the idea that an act so small, so distant, so seemingly random and irrelevant can have monstrous, life and universe-changing consequences.

The theory applies to more than just the weather, it can be used to explain the course of history, HIV/AIDS, interplanetary gravitational pulls, and yes, even our own messy lives. James Yorke coined the phrase “Chaos Theory.” He’s this year’s winner of the prestigious Japan Prize for his contribution to science. He’s with us this hour, bringing order finally, to our chaos

Guests:

James Yorke, Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Maryland.

Cost-conscious criminal justice. After years of being tough on crime, America has incarcerated more people than any other country in the world, more than 2 million, at last count.

In the boom years of the ’90s, money didn’t matter when it came to sentencing criminals. But today, facing deep budget deficits, most states don’t have the cash for all of those $25 thousand prison beds. So many states are taking emergency action.

Last month, Kentucky enraged prosecutors by releasing more than 500 non-violent inmates early. On Christmas Day, the outgoing Michigan governor signed legislation repealing mandatory minimum drug sentences. Are these changes, a sign of a country going soft on crime, or the beginnings of a rational sentencing policy?

Guests:

Jeff Sauter, Prosecutor, Eaton County, Michigan

Nicholas Turner, Director of National Programs, Vera Institute of Justice

Charles Jones, Louisiana State Senator.

Sixteen years ago, Newsweek Magazine printed an infamous cover story called “Too Late for Prince Charming.” It predicted that a 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being attacked by terrorists than she did of finding a husband.

More recent studies find the odds for these women marrying are much higher, but that original scary Newsweek statistic planted itself firmly in conventional wisdom, and today remains part of the consciousness of many single women in America.

Television sitcoms and films glamorize the plight of sophisticated, educated, women looking for long-term love, but some observers are saying that plight is not something for each woman to bear, but one that society needs to examine, to start finding new ways to play matchmaker.

Guests:

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of Why There are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman, and Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.

The politics and the ethics of economic stimulation. President Bush is set to unveil his 600 billion-dollar package of tax cuts. The centerpiece of the plan is the elimination of taxes on corporate dividends, a move that would primarily benefit wealthy investors.

Republicans are making no apologies. It’s economics 101 they say, cutting taxes for the rich is simply the best way to create jobs and boost the stock market. Democrats say nonsense, that such a move is both unfair and unwise, doing little to help the little guy and even less to stimulate the economy. Better to give relief to lower and middle class families, that those are the people who really need it. The new political debate.

Guests:

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform

Robert Reich, professor of economic and social policy at Brandeis University and former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.

The National Endowment for the Arts is looking for a new leader. Ever since the “culture wars” of the ’80s, the NEA has seen its budget, already one of the smallest in the federal bureaucracy, slashed and its influence diminished.

Now, the Senate is about to hold hearings on Dana Gioia. President Bush’s nominee to head the agency is a former executive for Kraft – General Foods. But while Gioia spent his days focused on Kool-Aid and Jello, he spent his nights writing poetry. He writes for opera. He translates. He has published three collections of his own poems. His essay “Can Poetry Matter?” set off a national debate over whether poetry had become over intellectualized, out of touch with readers.

Now, he says, poetry is back where it belongs, in our midst.Can a poet matter?

Guests:

Dana Gioia, poet, “Interrogations at Noon”;
author, “Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture”

advisory editor, “Poetry Speaks: How Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath”

With Congress back in session this week, New York Representative Charles Rangel is recruiting supporters for a bill to bring back the military draft. He says only three of his colleagues have sons or daughters in the military, and therefore Congress is woefully out of touch with the horror of war and ill-equipped to make informed decisions about a conflict with Iraq.

Bring back conscription, citizen soldiers, and a sense of shared sacrifice, Rangel argues, and Congress would be much more likely to give peace a chance. No one on the Hill gives this proposal a chance of passing, but it has set off a debate over the gap between the values and attitudes of those in uniform and those they are sworn to protect. Debating the draft, amid the winds of war.

Guests:

Peter Feaver, director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University and co-editor of “Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security”;
David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, at the University of Maryland.