Tools
Midday
Midday
Archive for February 21 - 25, 2005
[ Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday ]

Monday, Feb. 21, 2005
Hour 1 (11 a.m.)
Audio What makes a great president?
What qualities make a great American president? Intelligence? Leadership? Principle? Pragmatism? Personality? Do historians agree on who the greats were and what made them so?

Guests:
Presidential historians Robert Dallek, author of "Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents," and Charles Calhoun of East Carolina University

Related Links:
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Hour 2 (12 p.m.)
Audio Teddy Roosevelt's place in history
Americans seem to enjoy ranking their presidents: best to worst, smartest to dumbest and even tallest to shortest. In this speech at the Minnesota Historical Society in January, historian Kathleen Dalton makes the case that the distinction of "most interesting president" should go to Theodore Roosevelt.

Related Links:
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005
Hour 1 (11 a.m.)
Audio How grave is the bird flu threat?
Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that avian influenza could spark a flu pandemic on the scale of the 1918 outbreak that killed millions worldwide. Why are public health experts so concerned about a virus that has only killed 45 people in the last year?

Guests:
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Related Links:
Document Minnesota health researchers explain bird flu
Document Web Resource: More on avian influenza from the CDC
Document Web Resource: CIDRAP's avian flu Web site
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Hour 2 (12 p.m.)
Audio Toxic Traces
Five years ago, 3M announced it would stop making its Scotchgard fabric protector because the chemicals in it didn't break down in the environment. The announcement led to a major investigation by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, but the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency let two years pass before it began any inquiries. This documentary from MPR and American RadioWorks tells the story of the chemicals, the politics of investigating them and the concerns of people living near the plants where they were produced.

Related Links:
Document Toxic Traces Web section
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005
Hour 1 (11 a.m.)
Audio Pawlenty takes stock of the session
Gov. Tim Pawlenty offers his thoughts on how the 2005 legislative session is shaping up. There are a host of proposals on the table this year, from cigarette taxes to casinos, school vouchers to stiffer penalties for sex offenders.

Guests:
Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, was elected Minnesota's governor in 2002.

Related Links:
Document MPR News: Session 2005
Document House approval of bonding bill puts commuter rail on track
Document Senate committee approves cigarette tax hike
Document Smoking ban heads for Senate floor vote
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Hour 2 (12 p.m.)
Audio LaRussa confronts Canseco's "Juiced" claims
Former Oakland A's outfielder Jose Canseco created quite a stir recently with his book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big," claiming he used steroids with several of his former teammates. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, who used to manage the A's, tried to refute a number of Canseco's allegations and reflected on the state of baseball in this Feb. 11 conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Buzz Bissinger.

Related Links:
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005
Hour 1 (11 a.m.)
Audio Remembering the "Founding Mothers"
Most Americans have at least a passing familiarity with the so-called founding fathers: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the like. But National Public Radio Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts says it's high time that people took notice of the women who influenced the birth of America.

Guests:
Cokie Roberts, a senior news analyst at NPR and a political commentator at ABC News, is the author of the bestselling book "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation."

Related Links:
Document Cokie Roberts' bio
Document Hear Roberts on NPR
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Hour 2 (12 p.m.)
Audio Political analysis from Cokie Roberts
National Public Radio's Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts gives her take on President George W. Bush's European tour, the political climate in Washington and the state of journalism.

Guests:
Cokie Roberts is a senior news analyst at NPR, a political commentator with ABC News and a bestselling author.

Related Links:
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Friday, Feb. 25, 2005
Hour 1 (11 a.m.)
Audio The power and pitfalls of snap judgements
By the time you finish this sentence, you may very well have decided whether or not to listen to Malcolm Gladwell's speech at the Commonwealth Club of California. Gladwell's book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" is about these kinds of split-second decisions: how they are made, why they are often surprisingly good and why they are sometimes tragically bad.

Guests:
Malcolm Gladwell. (Please note: The original broadcast divided the speech and the question-and-answer session over two hours. The online version has combined them into a single hour)

Related Links:
Document Web Resource: Hear Malcolm Gladwell on Midmorning
Document Share your views in the News Forum.
Hour 2 (12 p.m.)
To be announced.
Midday Archive
Browse: