Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren is an expert on bankruptcy and is an outspoken critic of consumer lenders.
Recently she appeared before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the abusive lending practices by credit card companies. She considers the interest charges and late fees imposed by credit card companies to a "hidden tax" on cardholders.
Warren is also the author of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Ned Rothenberg has always been a musical cosmopolitan.
Early on, he studied jazz with George Coleman and shakuhachi flute in Japan. Later, Rothenberg put together his North African-influenced Double Band, and toured in duos with the Tuvan throat singer Saimkho Namtchylak, the shakuhachi virtuoso Katsuya Yokoyama and English saxophone improviser Evan Parker.
Rothenberg's new album, Inner Diaspora, sends him back to his roots.
With his band the MGs, Booker T. Jones created the classic instrumental "Green Onions." But they were also the studio band for Stax Records, making music with soul artists such as Otis Redding, Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett. A new two-CD box set features Stax highlights and Booker T. is now back on tour.
Mike Binder has directed nine feature films, although before his last, The Upside of Anger, he was best known as an actor and for the television series The Mind of the Married Man.
In Reign Over Me, he gives a serious — an extremely serious — part to the comic Adam Sandler, who plays a man whose life is destroyed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Middle East policy expert Daniel Byman talks about the effect of the war in Iraq on state-sponsored terrorism.
Byman is the director at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he is also a professor.
Journalist George Packer's article in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker magazine is called "Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most."
He reports that men employed by Americans as interpreters, construction workers, drivers and office workers are now being marked for death and hunted down as collaborators.
Packers most recent book is The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq.
Weapons expert Joseph Cirincione's new book is Bomb Scare: the History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He talks about how nuclear threats will evolve in coming years.
Cirincione is senior vice president for national security and international affairs at the Center for American Progress. He also teaches at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. And he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Comedian and actor Andy Richter's new sitcom is Andy Barker, P.I. Richter plays an accountant who is mistaken for the detective who formerly occupied the office he is renting. He reluctantly takes on the role of private investigator and discovers he likes it.
The show just premiered on NBC and airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m.
Celebrated Japanese crime writer Natsuo Kirino made her American debut in 2005, when the novel Out was translated into English, and became a finalist for an Edgar award.
Out told the weird story of an abused wife who strangles her husband and then seeks the aid of her coworkers in a boxed lunch factory in covering up the murder. The novel was a sensation not simply because it lured American readers out of the tourist precincts of Japan, but because of its distinctive worldview and tone.
Another Kirino novel, Grotesque, has just been translated into English.
Record producer Joe Boyd has worked with Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Richard and Linda Thompson, R.E.M. and many other musical acts. He has a new memoir, called White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s.
Shes up for an academy award for her portrayal of the mother of a drug addict who is also an addict herself in the film –Requiem for a Dream.— This is her 5th nomination and could be her second win. She won the Academy Award for the 1974 film –Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore.— Burstyns other films include –The Last Picture Show,— –The Exorcist,— and –Same Time, Next Year— (she starred in the Broadway version too and won a Tony).
Ramos is considered a pioneer of Tejano music, the sound known for its traditional Mexican roots infused with the big-band sound of the 1940s, and heavily influenced by blues and rock. He is the bandleader of Ruben and the Texas Revolution. Their most recent recording is –El Gato Negro: A Class Act—. Hes also part of the all-star band Los Super Seven which has a new CD –Canto—
Blackwater USA is a secretive private army based in North Carolina with a sole owner: Erik Prince, a right-wing Christian multimillionaire. Jeremy Scahill talks about his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
In the year 2000, a civilian employee of the U.S. military in Seoul, South Korea, ordered a Korean subordinate to dump a large amount of formaldehyde into a sewer pipe leading to the Han River. The incident aroused violent anti-American sentiment in Korea, and led to the birth of a monster — a monster movie, called The Host.
Actress Betty Hutton died last weekend at the age of 86. Hutton was a singer and actress who starred in classic musicals and comedies of the 1940s and 1950s.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has an upcoming PBS documentary series that tells the story of the World War II through the eyes of the soldiers who fought in it.
Simply called The War, the 14-hour, seven-part series begins airing in September.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. The new movie Amazing Grace is about the British abolitionist movement, focusing on the man who led the fight in Parliament. It's a story that can lead to introspection.
