In the next five years, nearly half of all public high school principals are expected to retire.

School districts from Seattle to New York are struggling to find someone willing to take on a job filled with stress, school violence, long hours, and shrinking budgets. One man says he has the answer. Jon Schnur is spearheading an effort to recruit and train people like military colonels and business executives to be principals. His thinking is, if you can lead an Army unit in Iraq, you can turn around a failing school in New York City.

Guests:

Jon Schnur, founder of New Leaders for New Schools.

Gail Baptiste, principal of PS 308 in Brooklyn, NY.

Morton Orlov, principal of Chelsea High School in MA.

After September 11th, military planners opened the Office of Strategic Influence to sway international public opinion toward the United States, but the office was closed six months later when it was revealed as a place from which to plant fabricated stories in the media. The Pentagon is still thinking of using the same tactics to win over hearts and minds in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Deception on the battlefield is a timeless tool. But when the military begins using it on the media, as well as its enemies, some say it erodes the credibility of U.S. armed forces both at home and abroad.

Guests:

Mark Mazzetti, Pentagon Correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

Stephen Pietropaoli, Chief of Information for the U.S. Navy from 2000-2003, previously served as special assistant for public affairs to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Many young children spend a lot of time with playmates who don’t really exist. And that shouldn’t make parents uncomfortable. The imaginary friend it turns out has survived the invasion of video games and cartoons. A new study shows that at least two-thirds of all children have pretend friends. Researchers discovered that most of these friends hang around longer than previously thought, and there are even signs that the childhood instinct to create character companions doesn’t ever really go away.

Guests:

Dr. Stephanie Carlson, Psychology Professor at Washington University

Dr. Marjorie Taylor, Professor and Head of the Psychology Department at University of Oregon and author of “Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them.”

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has named Jan Pronk special representative for the Sudan. His job is to bring peace to a country that has known civil war for most of the past 50 years. Pronk, called “Minister of National Conscience” in his native country of The Netherlands, is known as an untiring and honest broker. He gives us an insider’s look at war and peace in Sudan.

Guests:

Jan Pronk, United Nation’s Special Representative for Sudan.

Susan Orlean has a plum job. As a writer for The New Yorker, she travels the globe to get at the essence of what makes a place a place. She won’t tell you which hotel has the fluffiest towels or where to eat the best seared foie gras. Instead, we get traders at the taxidermy convention in Springfield, IL, comparing notes on bear claws.

From Boise to Bhutan, Susan Orlean hunts for the eccentric, the unsung, and the astonishingly obsessed. With equal parts curiosity and amusement, her stories dig beneath the surface of what might at first repel us, to find what is human, and strangely familiar.

Guests:

Susan Orlean, staff writer for The New Yorker, author of “The Orchid Thief,” and most recently, “This Must Be The Place: Travel Stories From A Woman Who’s Been Everywhere.”

The Defense department reports today that 9,765 soldiers have been wounded in action in Iraq. What’s not pointed out is that many of those soldiers might have died had it not been for the medics and the surgeons on the frontline.

Thanks to advances in battlefield medicine, soldiers today are surviving injuries that would have killed those in previous wars. With insurgents continuing their deadly attacks, and the number of those injured increasing, we look at the war from the perspective of doctors on the frontlines.

Guests:

Dr. Atul Gawande, general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, columnist for The New England Journal of Medicine, his most recent is: “Casualties of War: Military Care for the Wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Army Col. Stephen Hetz, General Surgeon who had command of the 3st Combat Support Hospital in Balad, Iraq.

In the 800 columns he’s penned for USA Today, Walter Shapiro has covered everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush; he’s followed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and written about everything from high school to his own father. But as Shapiro wrote in his final Hype and Glory column last week, life is changing, and the role of the columnist is changing too. Or perhaps the columnists as we knew them are disappearing. Shapiro says the more the nation divides by red and blue, the greater the appetite for rage and outrage, and the case for middle ground disappears.

Guests:

Walter Shapiro, USA Today columnist.

If you’ve been to Europe lately, you know that the U.S. dollar doesn’t buy as many baguettes as it once did. But the gradual decline of U.S. economic supremacy is harder to calculate. Some economists see the currency’s dive as a sign that America’s borrowing and spending spree is beginning to compromise its economic future. Consumers — following the lead of the administration — are carrying a hefty load of debt with very little savings. The optimists say that as long as the economy continues to grow, all will be well. But a growing chorus of critics warns that there’s a price to pay for all those unpaid bills.

Guests:

Rebecca Patterson, Currency Strategist at J.P. Morgan.

David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States.

Richard Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University and Director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For the past four years, as a reporter with the Washington Post, the White House has been Dana Milbank’s beat. There was that article he wrote a couple of years ago about how facts in the Bush White House are “malleable.” That led to Milbank being frozen out by an administration that complained about reporting that they called biased or aggressive or irreverent. But Milbank says it doesn’t really matter if you’re in or out with this administration — access is still impossible.

A week after leaving the press corps, Dana takes us back inside the Bush White House for a lesson in what happens to reporters who don’t observe the one question rule.

Guests:

Former Washington Post Reporter Dana Milbank.

Seven thousands GIs have been affected by the Pentagon’s “stop-loss” rule, a policy that keeps soldiers in uniform well beyond their active duty tours. The military says it’s the best way to keep its staffing consistent, especially when so few seem to want to reenlist. Critics say it’s a backdoor draft. And eight soldiers who recently took the military to court over this policy just found out that no matter what you call “stop-loss,” it’s still the law of the land.

Guests:

Gary Solis, Visiting Professor of Law at West Point.

Stacy Bannerman, wife of Sargeant Lorin Bannerman, currently serving in Iraq.

Lt. Colonel Pamela Hart., U.S. Army spokeswoman.

Staughton Lynd, lawyer for the eight soldiers suing the army over its stop-loss policy.