Some say it’s a classic mother-daughter story. Feminists who 30 years ago fought to open the workplace to women are astonished by young feminists who are choosing to stay at home with their kids.

These younger, so-called third wave feminists are now saying that their mothers weren’t as amazing as they thought they were. First, they weren’t around. They were too busy shaking the “social power structure” to be home when their kids got back from school. Some of the younger women say their mothers tended toward martyrdom, valuing the movement more than their families.

The older feminists say, “Oh, clean up your room! And stop blaming your mother.” Feminists from two generations talk about motherhood and moving forward.

Guests:

Suzanne Braun Levine, author of “Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First”

Amy Richards, co author of “Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future”

Wall Street lied. That was the headline after New York’s Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, speaking from the basement of the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced a settlement deal with 10 of the oldest and largest banks in America.

Under the deal, the banks will pay $1.4 billion in fines for committing fraud. The list of accusations is long, filled with sorry, sordid tales of Wall Street executives, in bed with their corporate clients, hyping and selling stocks even as they privately called those same stocks dogs, pigs, or worse.

Spitzer’s deal is intended to clean up Wall Street, but the fines are paltry and worse, the banks have admitted no fault. Investors who lost their retirement and college funds are not getting any of their money back, and it’s still not clear if the new rules will really change the game.

Guests:

Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Producer, “The Wall Street Fix”, for PBS Frontline

Chuck Hill, Director of Research, Thomson First Call and a longtime stock analyst

Ever since the collector Jean Dubuffet hailed the artwork of the wild, untrained geniuses who toiled far from the academies, so-called “outsider art” has occupied a genre all its own. Dubuffet was the first to spot Adolf Wolfli a resident of a Swiss asylum in the early 20th century. Wolfli, a pedophile who was very likely insane, created a vast body of work that dazzles critics for its aesthetic refinement…and creeps them out with its dense and disturbing imagery. Some say the term “outsider art” is patronizing and that it’s not necessary to single out artists who lack the advantages of means or mental capacity. Let the work be evaluated for what it is, not for the particular struggles of the artist. The line between inside and out.

Guests:

Roberta Smith, art critic, The New York Times

John MacGregor, historian of the psychiatry of art and author, “Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal”

Kerry Schuss, owner, K.S. Art, a Manhattan gallery specializing in Outsider Art

How about some time taking in the sights and sounds, the architecture and art of old Havana. If you’re an American, you can forget it. For those with a USA passport, the only way to get to Cuba legally, recently, has been to sign up for an officially approved “people to people” tour sponsored by a University, or museum.

But now the Bush Administration is putting an end to these trips — claiming they are little more than salsa dancing and mojito drinking extravaganzas, masquerading as “cultural exchanges.” and that the money spent helps prop up Fidel Castro. Others argue that such trips actually undermine Castro’s power by introducing Cubans to the outside world, and educating Americans about Cuban arts and culture. Closing the curtain again.

Guests:

Gustavo Perez-Firmat, professor of Humanities at Columbia University, poet, fiction writer, and author of many books, including Life on the Hyphen (1994), which won the Eugene M. Kayden University Press National Book Award

Delia Poey, professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Florida State University, and author of “Iguana Dreams,” an anthology of contemporary Latin fiction

Terry Karl, professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

The New Yorker magazine calls Jon Lee Anderson a staff writer. Jon Lee calls himself a storyteller. For more than twenty years he’s been traveling to, and writing about, conflict zones around the world. From El Salvador to Uganda, Ireland to Israel.

Not surprisingly, his latest narratives come from Baghdad. Anderson checked into the Al Rashid Hotel weeks before the bombs started falling on the Iraqi capital. And he stayed in the city as the tanks rolled in and the looting began. What makes his work so distinctive from the daily wash of news is the people he writes about. The barber. The doctor. The violinist. The painter. The Ba’ath party official. Snapshots of those who live deep beneath the headlines. And would have otherwise stayed there, if not for his reporter’s eye.

Guests:

Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and author of The Lion’s Grave, Dispatches from Afghanistan.

For months, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spread unchecked in China. It comes on like the flu. It’s known to be highly infectious and can be fatal. Around the world, the fear of SARS has also caused severe economic repercussions.

In China, the disease is already causing political unrest. The new leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have come under intense criticism for failing to move quickly enough or, for precious months, even to acknowledge the existence of SARS. Now they are heading up a high profile public campaign against the disease, but it’s still not clear if they acted in time to ensure the health of the people and cover their own political future.

Guests:

Ross Terrill, Author, “The New Chinese Empire”, Research Associate, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University

Dali Yang, Author, “Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions of China,” Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

Rob Gifford, NPR correspondent, Beijing.

Perhaps Azar Nafisi’s greatest act of defiance was gathering seven women in her living room to talk about books. On its face, this may not sound so remarkable. But Nafisi held her book group in Tehran, during the post-revolutionary days of the Islamic Republic, when people caught reading the works on her list, novels by Henry James, Jane Austen, and Nabokov, could be tossed in jail.

Nafisi has written her own book about the dark days in Iran that left her and many other intellectuals, feeling, as she writes, “irrelevant.” Part memoir, part literary criticism, part social history, it is a celebration not just of survival, but of imagination, and the essential spirit of literature.

Guests:

Azar Nafisi, Director of the Dialogue Project, Visiting Professor of Culture and Politics at John’s Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and author of “Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”

An eye for an eye. That was once the essence of justice in Iraq, back when Hammurabi wrote his code of laws in Babylon. The law was harsh four thousand years ago, but under that code, all men were to be treated equally.

More recently, when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, some citizens were more equal than others. The president and his men issued death warrants at will. Baath Party bosses were supposed to be above the law, but those out of favor with the regime were powerless if falsely accused. Now, Iraqis themselves, and Americans, are puzzling over how to uncover the past and bring justice to the families of victims. Building a future on the unmarked graves of the past: war crimes, truth and reconciliation.

Guests:

Samantha Power, Pulitzer prize winning author of “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” and lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

Charles Forrest, CEO of Indict, London-based group that compiles evidence of alleged war crimes in Iraq.

Thirteen years ago Arturo Sandoval made the news as a man fleeing the constraints of Fidel Castro. Now he is recognized around the world as one of the finest, one of the most versatile, trumpet players of all time.

His life, from his early days as the son of a mechanic living in a dirt floor house, to his Carnegie Hall collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie has been retold in a movie. His music, is a synthesis and a celebration of all the greats who came before him and shaped his sound.

We’ll take a musical tour through the brass turns of trumpet history, from stars like Louis Armstrong and Chet Baker, and a few other lesser known horn players, and hear the music of a man who stands at the top. The low soft ballads, and the amazing high notes of Arturo Sandoval.

Guests:

Arturo Sandoval, Grammy-winning trumpeter.

Crime ridden communities, public safety, and civil liberties. For years, the homicide rate in Richmond, Virginia was one of the highest in the nation. Much of the violence occurred in open-air drug markets around public housing projects.

What it meant for the residents, mostly single moms and their kids, was filthy streets, constant fear, and the persistent threat of drive-by shooting and stray bullets.

Six years ago, in an attempt to reduce crime, the city of Richmond turned the streets and side walks of some of the projects into no trespass zones. Today, some residents say the policy makes them safer, and keeps the drug dealers at bay. Others claim it compromises the constitution, and restricts individual rights. The Supreme Court is about to have its say.

Guests:

Marilyn Olds, President of the Tenant Council at Creighton Court in Richwood, Virginia

Joseph E. Brooks, Member of the City Council of Richmond, Virginia

Sa’ad El-Amin, Member of the City Council of Richmond, Virginia.