January 15th Show

In our first hour today, we'll talk about the future of the pro-life movement. With a pro-choice president taking office next week and a pro-choice majority in the U.S. Senate, many pro-life supporters have to conclude that an outright ban on abortion won't happen in the immediate future. Some pro-lifers say it's time to find common ground with pro-choice groups. But others argue that there can be no compromise with what they regard as murder.

Can there be a common ground on abortion?

Following that discussion, we want to know: Is your relationship suffering under the weight of the recession? Whether your lover has just been hit by unemployment, or you and your spouse are living in a cash-strapped household, Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson will offer some tips on how to keep your relationship from buckling.

If you live in London, Barcelona, or here in D.C., you may have come across an advertisement that reads, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." Those two sentences have sparked a widespread discussion about faith, and particularly atheism. In our second hour, we're going to talk about the ads we've been seeing here. Our guests include the director of communications at the American Humanist Association, and a D.C. resident who ran an ad campaign that promotes belief in God.

At the end of the hour, the chief executive officer for Physicians for Human Rights will talk about investigating the health crisis in Zimbabwe. The death toll from a cholera outbreak in the region has risen beyond 2,000.

-- Gwen Outen

11:56 AM ET | permalink

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Cats, Astley, and Pelosi

This is too good to be true... Right?

Bizarrely enough, it seems that yes, this is an offical video from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi featuring cats and a rickroll. I have no more words.

*Updated To Add: The video's no longer available... What the heck is going on here?

-- Sarah Handel

Tags: Nancy Pelosi | Rick Astley | YouTube | cats

8:57 AM ET | permalink

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Trading Hearts And Kidneys

If you've been through a divorce, you know, there's that moment where you have to spit up your stuff. That first-edition of A Farewell To Arms? Mine. That abstract painting you can see a horse in if you squint? Yours (definitely). And then... there's the little matter of the vital organs. In 2001, when Dr. Richard Batista give his wife a kidney, he didn't expect to ask for it back -- but after their estrangement, he's changed his mind. I know, I know, it's a bit tabloid, but read this interesting take from Sally Satel; she uses it as a peg for her argument that we should be able to pay for organ donation.

-- Barrie Hardymon

Tags: divorce | donation | kidney

4:40 PM ET | permalink

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January 14th Show

Coming up today, Ken Rudin, our beloved Political Junkie, will talk about the first of the confirmation hearings for President-elect Obama's cabinet picks, and President Bush's farewell session with the press corps. And of course he'll have this week's trivia question. Then, Reginald Washington, a specialist in African American genealogy, will shed light on how the White House was built using slave labor.

In our second hour, we'll talk to people who have lost everything. We'll hear about people who are victims of natural disasters. And in this sluggish economy, thousands lost everything when the stock market plummeted. And more recently, investors lost their life savings in the Bernard Madoff scam. What is it like to suddenly lose everything and completely start over? We want to hear your stories. Following that, New Yorker writer Jill Lepore will explain the new rules and battles over breast feeding, and why some women are opting out of nursing their newborns.

-- Gwen Outen

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Six Figure Pay, Own Island, Sign Me Up

I'm a bit behind on this (you probably got an application in already) but what a great gig... your own (basically your own) tropical Australian island! From BBC:

No formal qualifications are needed but candidates must be willing to swim, snorkel, dive and sail. In return, the successful applicant will receive a salary of A$150,000 ($103,000, 70,000) for six months and get to live rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool. .... The new recruit will work for just 12 hours a month. Duties include feeding some of the hundreds of species of fish and collecting the island's mail.

I'll be working on my application if you need me.

-- Scott Cameron

Tags: Australia | island | job

11:20 AM ET | permalink

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D.C. Smells Like Half-Smokes

In D.C., drunks flock here. It's aromatic.

Source: Alicia Griffin

Since I was a little girl, I've always relished the first moment I step into someone's home -- with one sniff of my significant schnoz, I could discern so much about who lives there, and how. Mothballs, spaghetti, Glade Plug-Ins (cheaters! They hide the smells that reveal your secrets); the best are the combinations of smells, like lavender from the kitchen cleaner, fresh laundry, and garlic -- that's what I imagine my home smells like. Your own is the hardest to figure.

Anyway, there are specific, public places that have particular aromas too, and now they're -- where else? -- on a Google map. A Japanese website, Nioibu.com, invites users to plot the smells they encounter around the world. The site's not translated, but even if you can't read Japanese, you can glean quite a bit. Further, from the Chicago Tribune article,

The site's nearly 200 registered users -- who self-generate the scent dispatches -- have produced smell-o-grams from all over the globe, reporting on spots that smell of "steam coming out of a rice cooker," "used socks in the summer," "toasty odor of cow dung" and "cats with halitosis." (These last two come from spots in Japan.)

The U.S. is only sprinkled with reports, including one from Phillips Hall, a dorm at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo.

A translated version of the smell club member's description of her dormitory: "American body odor and perfume and so on create the smell of living in American dormitories. An interesting harmony is created. It's kind of a sweet smell on our floor but the boys' floor smells ... not so good."

Perceptive, and evocative. If I were to plot points, two come immediately to mind: Athens, Ga. smells like roasting coffee, thanks to Jittery Joe's*. And Adams Morgan, the party district of D.C., well... It smells like booze, vomit, and pizza. Lovely! So where and what would you plot on the map?

*Coffee's a dominant scent in the U.S., according to one map user.

-- Sarah Handel

Tags: Google map | aroma | city | odor | scent | smell | town

9:42 AM ET | permalink

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Ta-Nehisi On Michelle

One of my favorite guests, Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, has a great piece in this month's issue about Michelle Obama, called "American Girl: The Radical Normalcy of Michelle Obama." He begins it with this provocative sentence: "The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white."

Coates' dad, Paul, a publisher and former Black Panther, asks him some good questions about that lede in this [hilarious, but incisive] interview, which is on The Atlantic's website:

Read the piece. Tell me what you think.

-- David Gura

Tags: Michelle Obama | Ta-Nehisi Coates | The Atlantic

3:13 PM ET | permalink

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January 13th Show

Take a peek at what we're working on today:

In our first hour today, we'll be joined by Ted Koppel, NPR News Analyst and former anchor of ABC's Nightline, and David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Sanger has just written a book entitled, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Each of them will discuss what the new administration's top foreign policy priority should be. Following that, we'll talk about the buzz surrounding the debut of the all-electric car. Sounds good on paper, but will we really want to drive it?

One week from today, Barack Obama will be sworn in as 44th president of the United States. Millions will pack the streets of Washington D.C. Hundreds will pack the Inaugural Balls. And dozens of streets will be blocked for miles. And did I mention the planned airtight security? We'll look ahead to January 20th with a reporter on Inauguration watch, a historian of the Senate, and one of the Little Rock Nine who has been invited to Obama's inauguration. Got a question about Inauguation day? Call in our blog us in our second hour. (And no, you can't sleep in the NPR building.) Then Jackie Northam, NPR's foreign desk correspondent, will discuss reports that President-elect Barack Obama may issue an executive order to close the prison camp at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay as soon as he takes office. What will it take to close Gitmo?

-- Gwen Outen

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For Your Consideration

To take the whole quiz, or just check it out, go here.

Source: The New York Times

After much hemming and hawing, Gov. David Paterson of New York finally released a copy of the questionnaire every candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton has to take. Wanna be considered? Here are some of the gems you'll come up against:

"Please provide the URL address for any personal website, including any MYSPACE or FACEBOOK page, for you or any member of your immediate family."

And this bit of genius:

"Have you ever maintained, or written for, a weblog (a "blog")?"

Thank god they explained that tricky weblog/blog business. ("Oh my god, that weblog I kept for years with all the nude pictures was actually one of those so-called 'blogs!?'")

-- Barrie Hardymon

Tags: Caroline Kennedy | Governor Paterson | open Senate seat

11:48 AM ET | permalink

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Oh Yeah... Sundance!

Today something finally got through the deluge of inauguration missives and directions -- the Sundance Film Festival starts on Thursday. I can't help but feel that in any other January, talk about Sundance would rate fairly high on TOTN's buzz list, but this year, it's not even the elephant in the room, as my boss pointed out -- it's the flea.

It seems really unfortunate to have the independent showcase going on at the same time as the biggest political event in ages, particularly since the show in Washington, DC is supposed to draw jet-loads of celebrities. It could mean the average Joe has an easier time getting into screenings in Park City, but it could also mean less attention for worthy movies. And, according to Neil Miller at FilmSchoolRejects.com, there are 37 films he plans to see, and 13 films he thinks are the cream of the crop.

Here are four he highlights that sound especially intriguing:

Big Fan: "[Patton] Oswalt takes the lead as a 35-year old Staten Island parking-garage attendant who is the self-described 'world's biggest New York Giants fan.' But after a misunderstanding with one of the Giants' players, he is sent down a path that will test his devotion to the extreme."

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: "It's Jim from The Office. Writing and directing a movie. What more reason do I need to give? Taken a step further, Brief Interviews is based on an very interesting compilation of short stories by the late David Foster Wallace."

I Love You Phillip Morris: "The buzz around this film, which is the one that will forever be known as the love story between a Texas policeman turned con artist (Jim Carrey) and his sensitive fellow prisonmate (Ewan McGregor), is red hot. As in big heaping pile of memorably controversial A-list-actor-kissing-scenes hot. But I've got a feeling that there's much more to it than that. This writer/director tandem (Ficarra and Requa) previously wrote the script for Bad Santa, which as you know was a much more clever movie than it ever received credit for."

Dead Snow: "The story of eight medical students and their encounter with Nazi zombies in the Norwegian mountains, might just be enough to account for a few sleepless nights. And I won't be complaining -- Nazi zombies are f***ing awesome, man."

Quite a lineup! Check out Miller's article, and this film guide, and tell me -- which films are you hoping get distribution deals?

-- Sarah Handel

Tags: Sundance Film Festival | cinema | film | movies

10:44 AM ET | permalink

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January 12th Show

In our first hour today, we'll talk with Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor, and Jonathan Turley, professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, about how the incoming administration should deal with the legacy of President Bush's war on terror. They each represent opposing sides in the debate. Fried's views appeared among two others in the op-ed section of Sunday's New York Times. We'll talk with each of them about what is to be gained in prosecuting a previous presidential administration, and the pitfalls of a possible prosecution. Then on our opinion page, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby will talk about a new campaign in the fight against obesity: mandatory calorie counts on restaurant menus. His op-ed is entitled, "Want a warning label with those fries"?

In our second hour, we'll continue our series on your life in a recession with a look at your STATE in a recession. Reporters in California, North Carolina and Detroit talk about how the recession is affecting people in those areas. And we want to hear from you. How is the economy hitting the state where you live, and how does that affect you? Then, we'll talk with The Mumbai Mirror columnist Aseem Chhabra about the movie Slumdog Millionaire, last night's big winner at the Golden Globe Awards.

-- Gwen Outen

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The Globe Blows Your Mind

Want to totally freak yourself out? The Boston Globe is here to help, with tips on how to make yourself hallucinate LSD-free.

The first thing to know is that the mind isn't a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations.

Intriguing, yes? Here's one of the tricks: Tune a radio station to pure static (preferably not between the hours of two and four, thanks!). Next, lie down and tape half a ping-pong ball over each eye. What you're going for here is sensory deprivation, so I assume some other sort of blindfold could work, but the Globe says ping-pong balls, and I report faithfully. They say that within minutes, "you should begin to experience a bizarre set of sensory distortions," things like seeing "horses prancing in the clouds" and hearing the voice of a dead relative. It's called the Ganzfield Procedure. Trippy!

-- Sarah Handel

Tags: hallucinations | mind tricks

11:16 AM ET | permalink

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Prosecutorial TMI

I feel for this guy... The Smoking Gun reports that a spokesperson in US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office made a "remarkable screw-up" when he emailed reporters a copy of a criminal complaint, accidentally including the names of confidential witnesses.

In announcing felony charges against two men for their roles in an alleged $15 million Ponziesque swindle, the spokesman for Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (he of Rod Blagojevich- and Scooter Libby-prosecuting fame) e-mailed reporters a 62-page U.S. District Court complaint filed against John Walsh and Charles Martin, principals of the now-defunct One World Capital Group. Included in the document was a one-page key that identified by name sources referred to in the complaint only by monikers such as "Employee A," "Customer D," or "Individual F."

The sender reportedly realized his mistake -- and sent an urgent note asking journalists to destroy the complaint. SG posts the list of names, blurred of course.

-- Scott Cameron

Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald | The Smoking Gun | email | regret

12:54 PM ET | permalink

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January 8th Show

In our first hour today, we'll talk about the future of the web with Clay Shirky. Shirky keeps his eye on social and economic trends on the web and will explain what social networking, crowdsourcing and tweeting could all mean for the future of the web. Shirky's latest book is entitled, "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organization". Then, we'll talk to a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle about rioting in Oakland, California over the fatal shooting of an unarmed man by a BART police officer.

Leon Panetta has recently been selected as President-elect Obama's choice as CIA director, and some say Panetta may not have the credentials to meet the challenges of entering the agency at such a difficult time. In our second hour, intelligence experts look at Leon Panetta's appointment and the challenges facing the agency. Following that, travel writer Rick Steves will share his experience as a tourist in Iran.

-- Gwen Outen

12:34 PM ET | permalink

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Is Your Spidey Sense Tingling?

He can sling webs, but can he dance?

Source: cbcastro

Well, it should be. I officially had my mind blown this morning. Poking around the interwebs for story ideas, I found news that a new Spiderman musical is possibly coming to Broadway this year. Ok, next! But wait. Music by U2! Julie Taymor will direct! From the breathless writeup in The Sun:

Speaking for the first time about the project, guitar lord The Edge has revealed: "It is happening. We've written a lot of the songs at this point. "It's in a pretty good state, and I hope it'll open this year. We're not sure where in the world, but most likely it will be in New York."

Now that's interesting! I dug deeper, lest I fall fall for some sort of bizarro tabloid "news." But Wired had it in the fall, so I think it's OK for me to be completely pumped about this final quote from The Edge. He said the show won't have a full orchestra -- it'll still have a small cohort of traditional orchestra players, but "the core will be a rock 'n' roll band." Sweet!

-- Sarah Handel

Tags: Spiderman | U2 | musical

9:41 AM ET | permalink

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