Journalist Elizabeth Neuffer is the Foreign Affairs/U.N. Correspondent for The Boston Globe. She recently returned from Iran and was in Iraq earlier this year. She has also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan. She's also the author of the book, The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, about the war crimes tribunals and the efforts of victims to find justice.
William Taubman is a Political Science Professor at Amherst College and an expert on Russia. He has written many books on the Soviet Union. His latest is a biography of the Russian ruler Nikita Khrushchev who led the country after Stalin’s death and attempted to de-Stalinize the country. It’s called “Khrushchev: The Man and His Era” (W.W. Norton). Taubman will also discuss Russia’s recent veto of the Security Council resolution on Iraq and Russia’s relationship with Saddam Hussein.
Former New York Times Balkans Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges. He's covered war zones in Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans for over 20 years. He'll talk about the mindset of being at war. Hedges is also the author of the book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. (Public Affairs).
Novelist Scott Spencer. His newest book is "A Ship Made of Paper," and it's receiving critical acclaim. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, describes Spencer as a brilliant storyteller. Spencer is the author of seven previous novels, including "Endless Love" which sold over 2 million copies. He's also written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Michael Ignatieff is Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the Director of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. He has traveled to Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan. He discusses his reluctant support of a war on Iraq, and his concerns.
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Thomas Powers. His new book is “Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda” (New York Review Books). POWERS wrote about Iraq after the war in the New York Times article, “The Man Who Would Be President” (Sunday, 3/16/03). He writes, “What then happens to Iraq’s 23 million people, its oil and its relations with its neighbors will remain the personal responsibility of Mr. Bush and his successors in the White House until one of them chooses to surrender it.”
The annual South By Southwest Music Conference takes place in Austin, Texas from March 12-16 this year. Rock Historian Ed Ward revisits the thriving Austin music scene of the late 1970s.
His new book is Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage. During the Cold War, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen and government officials developed spy planes and spy satellites to collect information about Soviet arms. Taubman is the deputy editorial page editor of The New York Times. He has reported on national security and intelligence issues for over 20 years.
James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, will tell us about the current state of affairs between Israelis and Palestinians, and the impact war would have on the region.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews new albums from The Buzzcocks and Paul Weller, the frontman from the band The Jam. The album titles are Buzzcocks and Illumination.
Walon Green is one of the executive producers of Dragnet, the remake of the 1950s crime drama set in Los Angeles. The new show revives the fictional detectives Joe Friday and Frank Smith. Green is a veteran producer and writer of other police dramas including Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, as well as the dramas ER and Law & Order. Green also wrote the screenplay for the classic Warner Bros. western The Wild Bunch, directed by Sam Peckinpah. He also wrote the screenplay for a more recent western, The Hi-Lo Country.
He's the creator and producer of NBC's new series Mr. Sterling, about a freshman senator on Capitol Hill. O'Donnell was a writer and producer for the first two seasons of NBC's The West Wing. Before his television career, O'Donnell was in politics himself. He was Democratic chief of staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance from 1993 to 1995. Prior to that he was senior advisor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan D-NY from 1989 to 1992. Currently O'Donnell is also senior political analyst for MSNBC.
Gordon is a sports journalist and Bonner is a specialist on North Korea. They collaborated on the documentary The Game of Their Lives about the most shocking upset in World Cup History: It was July 19, 1966, and the scrappy underdog North Korean team beat the favored Italians, whose players were some of the finest in the world. Later the Korean team lost in the quarterfinals to Portugal. Then the players returned home and disappeared from view.
