Government & Politics

Vogue Magazine film critic John Powers talks about the year in media: the major events, the trending topics and the evolution of social networking.

Bob Hunter, a member of the secretive religious group The Family, responds to a November Fresh Air interview about the group's role in both U.S. and Ugandan politics. Hunter is credited as the liaison between the Family and leaders of the current Ugandan administration, which has proposed a brutal anti-gay law.

Jeremy Scahill has been investigating Blackwater, a military contractor with a long involvement in the Iraq war. His latest story, published Nov. 23 in The Nation, uncovers the contractor's involvement in a covert program in Pakistan run by the U.S. Joint Special Command.

Critic David Edelstein says the Lord of the Rings director has violated Alice Sebold's celebrated novel with an adaptation marked by tawdry sentimentality and cheap mysticism.

In remote places along the southwest border of the U.S., the consequences of recent immigration crackdown have become evident. Journalist Tom Barry says that prisons here hold both legal and illegal immigrants for deportation, many far away from their homes and families.

Despite the economic recession — or perhaps because of it — the kidnapping business is booming. In his recent New York Times Magazine article, journalist Nicholas Schmidle explores the international hostage market and its impact on workers.

How does organized crime influence terrorism? Investigative journalist David Kaplan discusses the relationship between terrorism and criminal syndicates, and how that relationship may have played out in the recent attacks on Mumbai.

President Obama has said he wouldn't send more troops to Afghanistan if he didn't think the security of the American people was at stake. Peter Bergen gives us an update on the threat: what's left of the Taliban and its connection to al-Qaida.

Martin Scorcese said of Sam Fuller's work, "If you don't like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don't like cinema." The maverick screenwriter and director died in 1997, but a new 7-disc selection of his work embodies what's most enjoyable and enduring about pulp fiction.

A secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians includes some names that have recently been prominent in the headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stuck and Rep. Joe Pitts. Writer Jeff Sharlet describes the men's involvement with the Family, and discusses recent developments within the group.

China expert Orville Schell explains to host Terry Gross how the gates of United States and China are connected, and how the protectionist policies of the past are no longer viable.

Counting words has become a popular new device in assessing political speech. The number of first-person singular pronouns in a speech can turn a modest public figure into a pompous politician. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg suggests that counting words isn't very revealing unless we consider their context as well.

AMC's newest miniseries is an ill-advised attempt at a reboot of the cult-hit '60s spy series: A man known as Six (Jim Caviezel) finds himself trapped in a strange desert village, dogged b y a mysterious watcher (Ian McKellen's elusive Two). Critic David Bianculli says that despite McKellen's captivating performance, the remake has none of the curious genius of the original.

Pakistan has an estimated 80 to 100 nuclear warheads. How secure are they? Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh talks with host Terry Gross about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and what Pakistan and the U.S. are doing to keep it safe.

Advances in military medicine mean that more soldiers are surviving on the battlefieled, but many are coming home with missing limbs. When they come home, those soldiers turn to Colonel Paul Pasquina, medical director of the amputee program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the latest in in prosthetics.

When Marine engineer Jonathan Kuniholm returned to his industrial-designed shop after a tour of duty in Iraq, one of his first projects was personal: He wanted to improve on the design of the prosthetics he'd been using since he lost part of his right arm in an ambush. Kuniholm and his colleagues founded the Open Prosthetics Project, an open-source collaboration that shares its innovations freely.

This month Woody Harrelson stars in a powerful new movie about the costs of war. He plays Capt. Tony Stone, a veteran of the Army's Casualty Notification service, charged with the task of notifying the families of fallen soldiers. The film opens Nov. 13, but Harrelson's performance is already generating Oscar chatter.

Working for Japan's Yomiuri Shinbone newspaper, reporter Jake Adelstein uncovered a world unknown to many of the Japanese public, let alone to foreigners: the world of organized crime. He details its landscape -- and the dangers of covering it -- in a new memoir.

Author Timothy Egan argues in The Big Burn that the forest fire of 1910 — the largest in American history — actually saved the forests, even as its flames charred the trees. It helped rally public support, Egan explains, behind Theodore Roosevelt's push to protect national lands.

Washington Post Pentagon Correspondent Greg Jaffe joins Fresh Air to talk about the military options available to President Obama as he develops a new strategy in Afghanistan. Jaffe is co-author of the new book The Fourth Star, about the four generals who led the US military's efforts in Iraq.