Babies were once “put up” for adoption. Today they’re “placed.” The women once called “wayward mothers” or those “bad girls” are now known as “birth mothers.” The language of adoption has changed dramatically in a century. But the painful emotions and conflicts remain.

In an exhibit named “EVERLASTING”, A Rhode Island artist is taking us back to the days a generation ago before Roe v. Wade. She’s recording the stories of women forced to give their children away. Many were shunned by their families, sent away to institutions to secretly give birth, and then expected to come back and pretend nothing had happened. Years later, the grief remains.

Guests:

Ann Fessler, Professor of Photography, Rhode Island School of Design

Barbara Melosh, professor of English and History, George Mason University, and author, “Strangers and Kin”

Paula Henderson, birthmother and adoption advocate.

Downtown Kabul, summer 2003: hope and despair live side by side. In internet cafes, Afghans go online. Foreigners join them to sip espressos and chat. The roads are choked with government limousines and gleaming suvs. But on those same streets, countless beggars struggle to survive. This is the story of Afghanistan: schools are being rebuilt, ministries are working. But one in five Afghans still dies before the age of five.

Beyond Kabul, powerful commanders, the warlords, still hold sway. And, in the south, the Taliban are returning to their strongholds. Now, nearly two years after Kabul became the focus of world attention, the U.S. is planning to triple its aid to the country. NATO peacekeeping troops are preparing to move into Kabul.

Guests:

Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner,” a novel set in Afghanistan

Omar Zakhilwal, senior advisor to Afghanistan’s minister of rural reconstruction and development

Ian MacWilliams, BBC Correspondent in Kabul

Sarah Chayes, Kandahar Director, Afghans for Civil Society

No two days on planet Earth are ever exactly alike. Our rainforests are shrinking by more than a hundred square miles a day, the human population swells by another quarter of a million. In fact, every day it seems to get worse.

Species go extinct. Carbon floods the atmosphere. Drinking water is wasted. But in the midst of this, most of us just go on living our lives. We take cheap flights, we drive our cars, and we flush and flush our toilets. Do we ever feel a bit guilty? Could we live differently? If each of us changed the way we live, could we help save the planet? But do we really want the inconvenience, the bother, the need to think about every thing we do? Today we speak to one man trying to live the ethical life.

Guests:

Leo Hickman, features reporter, The Guardian newspaper, and author of “How to Buy”

Renee Eliot, founder, Planet Organic

Barclay Crowther, former resident, EcoHouse, and lead singer of Lucyfantastik

We’re calling all Middle East experts. Do you have an informed hunch about when Saddam Hussein will be captured or killed? Do you know where Osama bin Laden is hiding? Or maybe you can forecast where Al Qaeda will strike next. Would you like to make some money for getting it right, and help the United States make the world a safer place?

That was the idea behind the Pentagon’s new terror futures market. But last week, the program died a swift death after outraged members of Congress called it “harebrained” and “unbelievably stupid.” But some economists and Middle East watchers are now mourning the program’s passing. Forget morality, they say. Markets are good at one thing, and that’s prediction. They do it for oil futures, pork bellies, and elections. Why not let them do it for terror?

Guests:

Robin Hanson, an economics professor at George Mason University who worked on FutureMap

James Surowiecki, financial columnist for the New Yorker

Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, who currently teaches Economics and Finance at Columbia University.

Guests:

Sabermetrics: no, it’s not the latest aerobic workout craze, it’s the science of winning baseball. At least that’s what super-statistician Bill James says.

James, current advisor to the Boston Red Sox, claims those who focus on traditional stats like batting average and E.R.A. to analyze performance are way off base.

When your little league coach used to shout, “A walk’s as good as a hit” according to James’ sabermetrics, he was right. Stats like On Base Percentage, Runs Created, and DIPS: Defense Independent Pitching Statistics are the real numbers to crunch. And these modern measures are transforming teams like the Oakland A’s from Bad News Bears to playoff perennials.

Guests:

Bill James, baseball writer, analyst, and Senior Baseball Operations Advisor for the Boston Red Sox

Dan Okrent, baseball author, editor-at-large for Time, Inc., and founder of Rotisserie Baseball

When the president of the United States holds a press conference, it’s not your typical Q & A. Not all the questions get asked, and not all questions get answered. But the time the president spends in front of the Washington press corps reveals as much about the man, as his message.

President George W. Bush is not known for enjoying press conferences. He has held only nine solo performances since his term began. By this time in their presidencies, his father had held 61 and President Clinton had held 33.

Like it or not, the presidential press conference has been part of the job description since Woodrow Wilson held the first one in 1913. All presidents hold them, but each one does it differently, for different reasons, and with different results. The Connection explores the history and histrionics of the presidential press conference.

Guests:

Martha Joynt Kumar, Professor of Political Science at Towson University, formerly Director of the White House 2001 Project

David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, served as an advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Clinton, and served as Director of Communications for President Reagan

Dana Milbank, White House Correspondent for the Washington Post

Mike McCurry, former Press Secretary to President Bill Clinton, currently Chairman of Grassroots Enterprise in Washington, DC.