Guests:

Stephen Prothero, chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University, author of “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon”;Robert Thompson, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and Professor of Popular Culture at Syracuse University

This country has seen nothing like it since President Kennedy’s funeral more than 40 years ago. The riderless horse, the glass cassion, the solemn march up the Capitol steps. Though Americans are frequently criticized as deniers of death, they seem drawn to an elaborate funeral.

A society fascinated with public figures turns out in droves to publicly grieve people they never met. Think Princess Diana, JFK Jr, Mother Theresa and the 9/11 memorials. Today, across the country, flags are at half mast. Shrines of flowers and jars of jellybeans stand as personal tributes to President Ronal Reagan. Before the politicians take to the pulpit to prove their love and loyalty to the man, we step back and ask what moves a nation to mourn.

Guests:

Stephen Prothero, chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University, author of “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon”

Robert Thompson, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and Professor of Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

In the history of high-profile mistakes — this was a humdinger. The FBI identified an Oregon attorney as the Madrid bomber and threw him in jail. The evidence? A 100 percent fingerprint match. But the FBI was 100 percent wrong — the print wasn’t Mayfield’s. Some are saying this case highlights the fallibility of fingerprint evidence. We’ve all heard that no two fingerprints are alike, but no one knows if that’s really true. Without uniform standards, critics say that fingerprint analysis is an art, not a science.

Supporters say it is the most reliable system of evidence in the world. And prosecutors still tell juries if the prints match, you’ve got your man. Tell that to Brandon Mayfield.

Guests:

Robert Epstein, a federal public defender in Philadelphia

Steven Wax, a federal public defender for the district of Oregon

Pat Wertheim, fingerprint analyst for the Arizona Department of Public Safety

Brandon Mayfield, a Portland, Oregon attorney.

Guests:

Tamara Wittes, Research Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC

Guy Dinmore, Washington Correspondent for The Financial Times

Bill Emmott, Editor of the Economist magazine

and TBD.

Brilliance can be rough on friendships. In the tender story of her relationship with the writer Lucy Grealy, novelist Ann Patchett is the dutiful gardener to Grealy’s demanding flower. Grealy endured a lifetime of excruciating surgeries to repair the lower jaw she lost to cancer as a child. Her best-selling memoir, Autobiography of a Face shot her into the spotlight and a swirl of financial and emotional chaos. Patchett was there to clean up the mess.

When Lucy Grealy died in 2002 of an apparent drug overdose, Patchett was left to clean up for herself. Her new book is an elegy to a friendship, with all its truths, beauties and imperfections. It’s the powerlessness of watching a friend not waving, but drowning.

Guests:

Ann Patchett, Pen/Faulkner Award-Winning novelist and author of the new memoir, “Truth & Beauty.”

When Tony Blair swept into 10 Downing Street seven years ago Brits collectively wept with joy. After nearly two decades of increasingly stale, increasingly stuffy Conservative leadership, the British embraced their fresh faced 43-year old and his New Labour’s vision of “New Britain.” While on American shores Bill Clinton was mired in Monica-gate, in Britain, Tony Blair was finding time to charm the masses and, apparently, his wife, a man of the world, a man of the hearth.

But for Brits, the honeymoon ended when Blair’s shoulder to shoulder, many say poodle to lap, support of George Bush and the war in Iraq began. Paradoxically, that’s exactly why so many Americans still love him.

Guests:

T. R. Reid, London correspondent for The Washington Post from 1998 – 2002

Michael Brown, political columnist for The Independent and former Conservative MP.

Call it the opera version of extreme makeover. Tosca, Giaocomo Puccini’s enduring tale of love and murder first played in Rome in 1900, and has been re-invented more than a century later as Tosca: Desperate Love. The new pop interpretation comes complete with a slim soprano, synthesized sound, amplified voices and high drama that would make even a diva blush.

Some opera purists charge that it’s nothing more than a sexed-up, dumbed-down knock-off that would have Puccini rolling in his grave. But something funny happened on the way to the opera: throngs turned out for the production. And loved it. Opera purists are decrying it as the death of their beloved. An old art’s new incarnation.

Guests:

Marc Scorco, President and CEO of Opera America

Ian
Campbell, General Director of the San Diego Opera

Anthony Tomasini,
Opera Critic for the New York Times.

Guests:

Marc Scorco, President and CEO of Opera America;
Ian Campbell, General Director of the San Diego Opera

Anthony Tomasini, Opera Critic for the New York Times

Guests:

Cindy Williams, Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Security Studies Program and editor of the recently published Filling the Ranks: Transforming the US Military Personnel System

Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow in Defense and National Security Studies at American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC

Andrew Exum, soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq and author of the new memoir, This Man’s Army

Pam Hess, Pentagon Correspondent for UPI.

Pop quiz. Gwyneth named her baby after (a), a poet; (b) a yoga pose; or (c) a fruit. Well the answer is (c)…but you probably know that already. Movie stars and their mating habits are objects of endless fascination. Now, the famous and the people who love them have become a science.

Researchers say they can rate the worshippers, from casual star-gazers to serious stalkers. Anthropologists suggest that our love affair with luminaries is just an extension of a centuries’ old instinct to imitate successful people. If our prehistoric predecessors worshipped the hunters, today’s celebrity seekers hunt the worshipped. On the pages of People and via the 24/7 crush of cable. Harmless hobby, or too much of a habit? American idols. American idolatry. The slippery slope of celebrity worship.

Guests:

James Houran, clinical psychologist and one of the authors of a study on personality and celebrity worship

Cintra Wilson, journalist and culture critic

Mary Ladd, writer and Cher fan

Francisco Gil-White, evolutionary anthropolgist at the University of Pennsylvania.