The Bush Administration is launching a major PR offensive designed to convince people that America is winning the war in Iraq. The White House is now hearing rumblings from the halls of Congress that started last week when two Democrats and two Republicans called on the Administration to come up with a strategy by the end of this year, for withdrawing U.S. troops.

It was an about face for Republicans who have stood solidly behind President Bush in this fight, but beyond the halls of Congress, polls show that public patience with the war is wearing thin.

With over 1700 American soldiers now killed, and an insurgency that every day claims the lives of Iraqi security forces and civilians, many in this country are wondering — how does it end? And wondering when that will become part of this President’s calculation.

Guests:

Congressman Marty Meehan, Democratic Representative from the 5th Distric of Massachusetts

Christopher Gelpi, Member of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies

Celeste Zappala, Mother of Sgt. Sherwood Baker, National Guard reservist killed in Iraq

One of the most interesting stories in the debate over sex education came from a classroom writing assignment. A group of girls living in Mission Texas were asked to write about an important problem in their community. Mission has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country — and so they chose to write about that.

Their script was turned into an award winning short film called “Toothpaste.” It was controversial because it talked about condoms, a forbidden subject as far as Texas’ abstinence-only sex ed curriculum is concerned. But they went before their conservative school board and managed to convince it to air the film in classrooms across the state.

This hour, we have a conversation with those students and other teens about how they see the debate over abstinence.

Guests:

Laura Coria and Amanda Ramirez, screenwriters of the film “Toothpaste,” which addresses teen pregnancy issues and won a annual contest by Scenarios USA

Sean Keough, in-school teen abstinence advocate.

Results from today’s presidential election in Iran are expected to be close, and for many people there, not very important.

A number of citizens there aren’t bothering to vote. They say the clerical hardliners still make all the important decisions, and reform is not happening. Others insist that casting a vote is the only way to send a message to the mullahs that people want more democracy.

Some social restrictions have been eased. Candidates have been allowed to hold rallies in public spaces, and play music and enlist girls on roller skates in the effort to distribute their message. But the campaign has also been marred by violence and street protests. Regardless of who wins, observers say one of the key issues at stake is Iran’s nuclear future.

Guests:

Muhammad Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California

Dilip Hiro, author, journalist and commentator on the Middle East

Scott Peterson, reporter for the Christian Science Monitor

Karim Sadjadpour, International Crisis Center.

Lyrical, delicate and powerful, ghazals are poems set to music. They were created in Persia 1,000 years ago and traveled to India 400 years later. Although most are ballads, some can be danced to, and they all have to do with love: falling in and out of it, flirting, melancholy, or even the love of one’s land.

Kiran Ahluwalia was born in Northern India and raised in Canada where she grew up listening to ghazals. After getting her MBA, and a brief stint as a bond trader, she left the corporate life to return to India and study the ancient musical art form.

She released her first album four years back, won the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy for her second, and has just released her third. Today we learn more about this ancient art form and hear it performed in Kiran’s own cross-cultural style.

Guests:

Musician Kiran Ahluwalia. Her new CD is “Kiran Ahluwalia.”

Twice derailed in Congress, a new energy bill is now being debated in the Senate. And the iron is hot. Americans revving up for summer travel face record-high gas prices and a growing distaste for dependency on foreign oil.

One of the most controversial parts of the measure is the bill’s proposal to lift a decades-old ban on offshore drilling. For a while it looked like opposition from Florida’s senators might derail that provision — until a deal was struck that would protect that state’s coast, and its $57 billion tourist trade.

But other coastal states support lifting the ban — as long as they receive a split share of oil and gas revenues. And people in the oil industry say the boost to domestic fuel production would help wean the country off the Saudi spigot. Environmentalists argue there’s a better way. Drilling deep, but in whose back yard?

Guests:

Wes Allison, Washington Bureau Chief for The St. Petersburg Times

Lee Fuller, VP of Government Relations with the Independent Petroleum Association of America

Debbie Boger, Deputy Legislative Director of The Sierra Club.

Did you ever think about another use for your broken walkman? Or does it simply go in trash? Do you ever wonder about finding a second life for an old computer mouse?

A new magazine hopes to inspire the basement tinkerer in all of us. Many people channel their creativity into projects in the house or garden, but opening up a cell phone seems strictly off limits. Most of us don’t have a clue how to fix their computer, Ipod or even how to open one.

The people behind MAKE magazine think there are a lot of people out there with an interest in re-inventing with the gadgets that run our daily lives. So their magazine is a deliberate throw-back to the how-to science manuals of an earlier era — back when technology wasn’t so cheap people did more “do it yourself.”

Guests:

Rosalind Williams, Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT

Phil Torrone, Associate and Online Editor of MAKE magazine

Dale Dougherty, Editor and Publisher, MAKE magazine.

In La Paz, Bolivia, leftist opposition leaders are threatening to shut down the city if their demands are not met. Last week President Carlos Mesa resigned under pressure from thousands of indigenous people who took to the streets. He is the second president driven from power in just two years.

Bolivia is Latin America’s poorest country and it is marked by deep economic, political and ethnic divides. In Bolivia, as elsewhere in the region, dissatisfaction with corruption, poor healthcare and endemic poverty has led to disillusionment with elected officials, government institutions.

Many Latin Americans see their countries economic failures as failures of democracy and are rejecting the U.S. model of a capitalist, free market system — and embracing socialism.

Guests:

Bill Faries, Christian Science Monitor Reporter

Eduardo Gamarra, Director of Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University

Jack Spence, Political Science Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston

When he was young, Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob never dreamed that he would be where he is today. He is of Indian origin, and was hereby considered a second class citizen under apartheid. Also, he was blind.

But as the country changed, so did the opportunities for people like Zak Yacoob. He fought apartheid, and challenged those who saw only his blindness. Today, he is a Justice on the country’s Constitutional Court — a court that was created after apartheid was dismantled in 1994 and the country’s first democratic Constitution was written.

The duty of that court is to define and defend a fundamental belief in human rights and non-discrimination. And, Yacoob believes, that if South Africa, a country tormented by a vicious racist history, can succeed in creating true equality, the rest of the world should be able to follow.

Guests:

Justice Zakeria Yacoob, Constitutional Court Judge in South Africa.

It seems every day brings some new revelation about how the U.S. is treating prisoners in its “War on Terror.”

At first blush, the “interrogation log” from Guantanamo published this week in Time Magazine might sound like more of the same. We have read stories about sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, and forced standing before. But this time it’s different. The government disavowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But in this case, the Pentagon says the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qhatani falls within accepted U.S. policy.

The Pentagon also claims that al-Qhatani was supposed to be the 20th hijacker and therefore says his treatment fits his profile as a “high-value” prisoner. Others say it goes against the Administration’s promise of “humane” treatment for all.

Guests:

Adam Zagorin, reporter for Time Magazine

Scott Silliman, Director of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University Law School

Mark Bowden, correspondent for The Atlantic magazine.

Next month, IBM is set to activate the most ambitious simulation of a human brain yet conceived. It’s a model they say is accurate down to the molecule. No one claims the “Blue Brain” project will be self-aware. But this project, and others like it, use electrical patterns in a silicon brain to simulate the electrical patterns in the human brain — patterns which are intimately linked to thought. But if computer programs start generating these patterns — these electrical “thoughts” — then what separates us from them? Traditionally human beings have reserved words like “reasoning,” “self-awareness,” and “soul” as their exclusive property. But with the stirring of something akin to electronic consciousness — some argue that human beings need to give up the ghost, and embrace the machine in all of us.

Guests:

Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and author of numerous books including the forthcoming “The Emotion Machine”

Brian Cantwell Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada

Paul Davies, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.