Father Greg Boyle’s motto is that nothing stops a bullet like a job, and he’s spent the last 20 years trying to bring those opportunities to the darker corners of Los Angeles.

The people who work with Father Boyle don’t fit a typical employee profile. Most have never held steady work, or even finished school. Many are covered with tattoos that identify them as a member of a particular gang. Others have gunshot and knife wounds that tie them to a past they are desperate to leave.

Guests:

Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, a job placement service for former gang members in East Los Angeles.

A new lending market appeared to serve those with no credit history. It’s called sub-prime lending, and while a decade ago it was a $30 billion industry, last year it made $300 billion available for the purchase and refinancing of homes. It’s not all good news. Hordes of shady brokers swept in, slick talkers who meet you at a church picnic and offer an easy loan to make your dreams of home ownership or debt consolidation come true. Many customers wind up stripped of what little savings they had. Some even lose their homes.

Guests:

Mark Pearce, President, Center for Responsible Lending.

Steve Bartlett, President of the Financial Services Roundtable.

Wilma Perry, Truckstop manager, former homeowner.

For hundreds of years, people from all over the world have journeyed to the island of Manhattan. New York is an immigrant city. The writer and journalist Pete Hamill is the son of parents who made their way from Ireland. All his life, Hamill has moved through the neighborhoods of his hometown with a reporter’s eye and an inhabitant’s heart. From Broadway to the Bowery, Trinity Church to Times Square, Hamill has mapped the history, the stories, and the sweet music of the city’s wildly beating heart. His new book is a love letter to Manhattan.

Guests:

Pete Hamill is the author of numerous books including “Snow in August,” “Forever” and his memoir, “A Drinking Life.” His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Newsday. He was also the Editor in Chief of both The New York Post and The New York Daily News. His most recent work is “Downtown: My Manhattan.”

Training a new Iraqi security force has been one of the biggest challenges since the fall of Saddam. But it’s the key to Iraq’s future as long as America’s calling the shots.

In recent weeks, insurgents have ratcheted up their attacks on Iraqi National Guard, police, and soldiers. Hundreds have been killed and thousands have fled their posts. And while the U.S. pushes forward with the January election deadline, many wonder if peace and democracy can be found without a substantial security force run and staffed by Iraqis.

Guests:

Ahmed Fadaam, Iraqi Journalist working with Agence France Presse.

Pam Hess, Pentagon Reporter for UPI.

Colonel Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East and South Asian Intelligence and Counter-terrorism for Department of Defense.

1st Lt. Seth Moulton with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Najaf.

In warfare, it’s often the image, not the word that best tells the story. These images make us witness what is most savagely human about all of us. The first witness is the one behind the lens.

New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks wrestles with conscience and danger to show us war up close. In his pictures of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hicks introduces us to soldiers from all sides: from the Taliban fighter shot at close range to the U.S. Marine mourning the death of fellow soldier. They are the pictures that ask us to look squarely at the wars fought today.

Guests:

Tyler Hicks, New York Times photographer, winner of several awards including the ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism, World Press and Pictures of the Year.

Penicillin used to be considered a miracle drug — but today, it just doesn’t have that same magic.

Evolution has been hard at work, and over time new bacteria have emerged that are resistant to the wonder drugs of the 20th century. But while the bugs have evolved, the drugs haven’t. There isn’t a lot of money to be made inventing new antibiotics, so the big drug companies aren’t investing in new cures. All this means that those new tough-to-treat infections which once stayed inside the hospital are now becoming widespread and popping up in prisons and schools.

Guests:

Todd Weber, Director, Office of Antimicrobial Resistance
for the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Stuart Levy, Professor of Medicine and Molecular Biology at Tufts University and Co-founder of Paratek Pharmaceuticals.

A friend or a co-worker raves over a new restaurant or a cool pair of sneakers. Harmless right? Maybe not. You might have been the latest one drawn into a marketing campaign, that those inside the advertising business call “word of mouth.” Or more simply, “buzz.”

Cutting away from the clutter of commercials on TV and radio, companies are going underground to market their products — co-opting your friends and family to “buzz you” by talking up everything from batteries to jeans, perfume and kitchen countertops. Some say it’s bringing more truth to advertising — others say it’s a pernicious form of consumer camouflage.

Guests:

Dave Balter, founder of Bzz Agents

Rob Walker, author of The New York Times Magazine “Consumed” column

Bob Garfield, writer for Ad Age Magazine and host of “On The Media”

Melanie Murphy, Bzz Agent.

The Ukrainian Supreme Court has ruled that new elections will go forward, even with the country still in political crisis. The high court’s recommendation gives a surprising and decisive victory to the opposition, and yet President Leonid Kuchma is making it clear that he is not letting his opponents walk away with victory. Ukraine’s president and his friends in Moscow blame the mess on western interference, the United States and Europe of trying to manipulate Ukrainian politics. Others say the real spoiler is Russia. So just who will be marking the next round of ballots?

Guests:

Fred Weir, Russian Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.

Grygoriy Nemyria, Ukraine Director for the Center for European and International Studies in Kiev.

Stephen Nix, director of Eurasia for International Republican Institute.

Masha Lipman, Scholar in Residence at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace’s Moscow Center.

Nadine Gordimer is a long-time member of the African National Congress, and is a close friend of Nelson Mandela’s. And while politics has been a constant preoccupation, Gordimer is a writer. Her stories mapped the fragmented landscape of the white suburbs, and the black townships, always probing the personal toll that apartheid took on all South Africans. Today, Gordimer has turned her activist’s energy to the growing AIDS epidemic, but still she writes in words she considers the most powerful, words of fiction.

Guests:

Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize-winning, South African writer, author of numerous short stories and novels including “The Conservationist,” “July’s People,” and “The House Gun” and editor of the recent anthology of short stories, “Telling Tales.”

The U.S. government says that under its new rules of engagement, war time is all the time, the battlefield is everywhere and the enemy might just as likely be found sitting at a computer as carrying a gun. More than three years after the War on Terror was declared, 550 “enemy combatants” remain locked up at Guantanamo Bay. Many have yet to see a lawyer. Six months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the detainees have the right to have their cases heard in U.S. courts, but government lawyers continue to argue that it can’t happen and it won’t be done.

Guests:

Mark Jacobson, visiting scholar at Ohio State University, former special assistant at the Office of the Secretary of Defense

Tom Wilner, Partner at Shearman and Sterling LLP, lead counsel in the Al-Odah case.