What Will Obama 2.0 Look Like? from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

President Obama 2.0 after hard times, midterm setbacks, and Tucson. We look at how the President leans now. Guests: Richard L. Wolffe, journalist and author of "Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House"; Clark Judge, speechwriter and special assistant to President Reagan and Vice President Bush, now managing director of the White House Writers Group; Vinca LaFleur, speechwriter for President Clinton, now a partner at West Wing Writers. Listen to the podcast.

Kill the BCS?: College Football and Big Bowl Money from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Death to the BCS? A new book goes after the BCS - the Bowl Championship Series - and the big money fruits of college football. Guests: Jeff Passan, columnist for Yahoo Sports and co-author of "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against The Bowl Championship Series"; Kevin Blackistone, national columnist for the AOL sports Web site FanHouse.com; Murray Sperber, visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Education. Download the podcast here.

Atul Gawande on Health Care Now from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We speak with Atul Gawande, the surgeon and writer who has emerged as one of the country's leading interpreters of what's going on with American health care. His latest book is "The Checklist Manifesto." Listen to the podcast.

Fur, Fortune, and American Empire from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We hear the remarkable history of how fur shaped a nation, with author Eric Jay Dolin. Download the podcast here.

Wider U.S. Strikes in Pakistan? Plus, Chris Hedges from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

U.S. commanders consider expanding operations in Pakistan, some sources say. What would that mean? Guests: Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author; Daniel Goure, vice president with the Lexington Institute. Plus, we hear an anti-war call from activist Chris Hedges. Download the podcast here.

Horse Racing and "Lord of Misrule" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We speak with 2010 National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon about her novel "Lord of Misrule" -- and ride into the world of horse racing. William Nack, author of "Secretariat," joins.

Download that On Point podcast here. She's a Brown University alum, and The Brown Daily Herald had this to say about the author and her recent win for Lord of Misrule:

In fact, her decision to attend Brown for graduate school instead of the University of Iowa was partly due to the fact that there was a racetrack nearby. The other deciding factor was novelist John Hawkes, who was on the faculty at the time. "I'm very proud to say I went to Brown when people ask me where I went to graduate school," Gordon said. "As graduate programs go, this one has a very special character. It welcomes idiosyncrasies." At Brown, she interacted with students and faculty who were "powerful influences." It is also where she met McPherson, then an undergraduate, with whom she worked at Hellcoal, a student-run literary press. Through Hellcoal, they published three books written by prisoners whom Gordon taught creative writing in Cranston.

Read that Brown Daily Herald article here. The New York Times also covered the writer and her publisher, really well; they did well to put in a lot of good context here. It turns out that the publisher, McPherson, is an indie; expected. But they're a special company, with the sole proprietor of the publishing business Bruce McPherson, being its lone full time employee. The publisher is the sort that "the kind of publisher who sometimes seems more concerned with how his books look than how they sell. “Lord of Misrule,” for example, has a full cloth cover and a stitched binding, which is practically unheard of these days." If you believe in "you are what you read," and if you believe in reading well in the same way that people eat well to live well, then you should check out McPherson's catalog. Here's the publisher's website. Here's that NYT piece. Gordon also wrote: She Drove without Stopping: A Novel, Shamp of the City-Solo: A Novel, Bogeywoman (Sun & Moon Classics), Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue

Anne Beattie: "The New Yorker Stories" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Short story virtuoso and New Yorker writer Anne Beattie on the now-long arc of the Baby Boomer generation. Her new book is "The New Yorker Stories."

Download the podcast here.

On Kurt Vonnegut: Indianapolis, Safran Foer, Moody from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

The new Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library celebrates America's great "humanist" writer. Guests: Rodney Allen, author and professor of English at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts; Julia Whitehead, founder and president of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis; Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Rick Moody, author of Purple America, Garden State, and The Four Fingers of Death.

Download the WBUR radio podcast here. See also: Eating Animals, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel, Tree of Codes

Body Scans and Airport Backlash from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Full-body scanners and deep pat-downs have Americans pushing back over the indignities of airport security. With Benet Wilson of Aviation Week, Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union, Douglas Laird, former director of security for Northwest Airlines and current president of Laird and Associates, and Peter Wood, former professor of anthropology at Boston University and author of "A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America."

Download the MP3 File of the podcast here. See also: Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (Norton Library), Aviation and Airport Security: Terrorism and Safety Concerns, Second Edition

"Program or Be Programmed": Rushkoff's Digital Rules from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We talk with big thinker Douglas Rushkoff about his "ten commands" for living right in the digital age. His new book is "Program or Be Programmed."

Listen to the full show here, and make sure to listen to the part about the car analogy. He's so on point with this book. It's all about "driving" versus being the passenger. And this is completely true. This is what our blog is about, in essence; it's about not being passive with the content that you're consuming. And to a large extent, you're seeing passivity reign through venues such as Facebook, even, where you simply just fall in line with certain things. You've got to check out the author's other books as well, super good reads: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say, Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism,

Britain's Cuts: Daring or Daft? from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Britain announced an austerity package that has stunned even the most hard-nosed American deficit hawks. We look at Britain's cutbacks. With guests Alex Barker of the Financial Times; Lord Robert Skidelsky, emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick, and author of "Keynes: The Return of the Master"; Tim Besley, professor of economics and political science at the London School of Economics; Peter Beinart of The Daily Beast and City University of New York; and Robert Bixby of The Concord Coalition.

Listen to the show here. Download the podcast here. See also: John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman, John Maynard Keynes: Volume 1: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920, John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 3: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946

The New Yorker's Alex Ross: Brahms to Bjork from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Alex Ross may be the most celebrated music critic in the country. He knows people are skeptical about music criticism – like whoever said “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” And yet, music moves us so deeply that we want to know why. We want to feel it, understand it – and to think about its meaning. Ross does that across quite a range. On Verdi, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner – he’s there; on Bjork, Nirvana, Radiohead, Sonic Youth – he’s there, too. Today, he’s with us, saying “listen to this,” from Beethoven to Bjork.

Listen to the podcast here.

Eugene Robinson on Race and "Disintegration" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson swings a big stick in national policy debates – and he swings from the Left. But this time out he’s not talking policy so much as race. He’s talkign what it meant to be black in America, and what it means now. In his new book “Disintegration,” Robinson says there is no more “black America.” There are, he says, now a bunch of black Americas. There’s a super-rich tier and a super-poor tier. Blacks are going their own ways. Not on the same boat. Divided.

Listen to the podcast show here.

Literary Tattoos, or "The Word Made Flesh" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We take the full tour today of the world of literary tattoos to see what's there, and why. We speak with Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor, editors of the book, "The Word Made Flesh."

Listen to that podcast show here. Meanwhile, the official website for hte book is here: http://www.wordmadeflesh.org/. Also, this was said on HuffPo:

From "Ecclesiastes" to "House of Leaves," from Dante to Stephen King, "The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide" is a celebration of and tribute to the vibrant and vital Babel that is literary culture today. Our contributors are women and men of all ages, living all around the world (though Brooklyn is, naturally, the best-represented region). Their tattoos stand as testaments to their dedication to literary culture in general, and to books culture in particular. (There are many personal anecdotes shared in "The Word Made Flesh," but not a single tattoo's origin story mentions words first read on a Kindle, iPhone or Nook -- at least none we've seen yet.) As well, the tattoos commemorate personal moments in each of their lives -- tragedies, triumphs, great loves.

Read the rest of that HuffPo piece here.

Annie Murphy Paul's "Origins" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

A conversation with Annie Murphy Paul about how our nine months in the womb may shape our entire lives. Her new book is "Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape The Rest of Our Lives."

Listen to the full podcast show here.