March 2001

Kickboxing Comment -- Commentator Nancy Hall is a wife, mother, member of the PTA. Recently she decided to try something new. She's taken up kickboxing and karate, inspired by her grandmother. Saturday nights, her ladylike church-going granny went to the fights. (2:45)

Who Cares? -- Andrew Kohut of the Pew Center for the People and the Press, talks about reasons that the public isn't interested in campaign finance reform. (3:00)

Infertility -- Commentator Brian Egerston and his wife are having trouble getting pregnant. After seeing a doctor and undergoing surgery -- still no baby. He says they've started to see babies everywhere. And relatives ask them when they will have kids. (3:00)

Hobo Story -- Storyteller Kevin Kling rides the rails. He meets "Ed", a hobo with great recipes, information on the best dumpsters around the country, and knowledge of all things. He can even predict recessions. (4:00)

Stomach Party -- Writer John McIlwraith has been told he has stomach cancer, he will have surgery tomorrow. To prepare for the surgery he decided to celebrate his digestive organ in a unique way. (3:00)

China Basketball-- Writer Ann McBride Norton says in China, basketball is becoming a craze. The NCAA playoffs were broadcast live in China last year. And knock-off NBA gear can be found everywhere. Courts on universities and playgrounds are filled with kids playing and parents cheering them on. It is so popular, says Norton, that the sport seems to be creeping into the most unexpected places. (4:00)

Cuba Anecdotes -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr looks back on the American obsession with Fidel Castro, from the Kennedy administration's assassination plots to the Cuban missile crisis. (3:00)

Bad Service -- Commentator Marion Winik says today's low unemployment rate (relatively speaking) can mean bad service. Knowing you can always find another job means never having to say "Can I help you?" (3:30)

Cuba Trip -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr, just home from Havana, gives his first impressions of last week's Cuban-American conference held there analyzing the Bay of Pigs invasion. (3:00)

Fed Comment #2 -- Some say the financial markets continue to decline because the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by just half a percent earlier this week. Commentator Lyle Gramley, who is a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, says Wall Street's decline is more about the slowdown in the economy. A previous Fed commentary aired yesterday. In that piece, Bert Ely said the Fed's interest rate cut was too little, too late, and that the Fed has a history of either under or overreacting. (3:30)

Drug Profits -- Commentator Merrill Matthews says don't blame the drug companies for not giving away their products. He argues that drug companies are not the most profitable companies and that they function like any other company marking up their products to cover the costs of produciton and distribution. If drug companies just give away their products, they won't have the funds to do the kind of research that leads to innovations and cures. (3:00)

Federal Reserve-- Commentator Bert Ely says yesterday's Federal Reserve interest rate cut was too little, too late, and that the Fed has a history of either under or overreacting. And he says Greenspan gets too much credit for what goes right. He says the market can do a better job than the Federal Reserve of keeping the economy on an even keel. (3:00)

Hawaii Update -- Commander Scott Waddle, skipper of the USS Greeneville, stunned a Navy court of inquiry in Hawaii today by taking the stand to testify without immunity. He is taking full responsibility for the sub's deadly collision with a Japanese fishing trawler. Waddle and his attorney had said he would not testify in the inquiry unless assured that his answers would not be used against him in a court martial or other criminal proceeding. But in a dramatic opening statement, Waddle said he wanted to be heard by the families of the nine killed in the Feb. 9 collision. Linda Wertheimer talks with NPR's Andy Bowers who's at the hearing in Pearl Harbor. (4:45)

Teen Secrets -- Commentator and high school junior Thessaly La Force says it's still pretty easy for a teenager to keep her life a secret from her parents. In addition to feeling she has too much independence, she thinks kids only tell other kids their closest secrets because it's too big a risk to tell an adult. (2:30)

Older Love -- Marion Winik on the woes of adult children dealing with dating parents. The role reversal includes questioning whether mom's date measure-ups and is she practicing safe sex? In the end, though, what we really want for our dating parents is true love--and we want to be able to go for it. (3:30)

Foreign Policy -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr notes some of the foreign concerns on President Bush's mind as he tries to deal with the economy. (2:30)

T.V. Kissing -- Belle Waring wonders why kissing portrayed on television is so savage. She longs for more restrained passion. Waring is a registered nurse and a writer who lives in Washington, D.C. (3:15)

Sheep -- Commentator Donald McCaig talks about the everyday proximity of life and death on his sheep farm. (3:00)

Ballpark Names -- Paul Schersten gripes about the type of names sports stadiums have nowadays. (3:30)

Choral Words -- As an agnostic singing in a choral society each week, Stacy Horn is often puzzled by the words and their meaning, but loves the music. She says she respects people who believe in the words behind the music -- despite no connection to them. Horn is the author of Waiting for My Cats to Die: Morbid Memoir. (2:45)

Carbon Dioxide Emissions -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr takes a look at the "stunning" Bush administration reversal on carbon dioxide emissions. (3:00)

Testing Commentary Pro -- Student Christina Appleberry argues that standardized tests are good for her. She doesn't get very good grades because she doesn't do her homework, but she is smart and always does well on tests. (2:00)

Testing Commentary Con -- Tania Garcia, a high school student in Oakland, Calif., says that standardized tests are a waste of her time. She spends lots of time studying to make sure that she really understands her subjects, and the tests only measure how many facts she knows. (2:00)

Coyotes Roar -- Commentator Carol Wasserman has an essay about menopause. (3:15)

School Shooting -- Commentator Judith Rich Harris says at times there isn't much a parent can do to prevent a child from using a gun at school and that signs are often not obvious. She says the best preventive measure is simply not to own guns. (3:30)

Taliban and Buddhism -- Taliban leaders recently ordered the destruction of two ancient statues of Buddha, carved into a mountain in the third and fifth centuries. The monuments are considered offensive to Islam. But commentator Andrew Lam knows smashing a physical statue will not erase the spiritual message of Buddhism. (2:30)

Conservatives and Liberals -- Commentator Merrill Matthews wonders why so many people think George Bush's agenda is "conservative." According to his dictionary, a conservative is one who resists change, but Bush and the Republicans are the ones calling for change and reform these days, not the Democrats and not the "liberals." From tax policy to education to the military, Bush and the Republicans are behaving like liberals and the Democrats with their resistance to change are acting more conservative. (3:30)

www.babyname.com -- Comentator Kim Lane says there is a new gimick on the Web — registering your baby with his/her own domain name. She thinks it's a bad trend and says people will soon name their babies to match available domain names. (3:30)

Israel Fears -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is forming a government against a backdrop of fear and that there are few signs that the new premier will soon be able to put the Israeli people at ease. (2:45)

Hispanic Power -- Commentator Ruben Navarette says there's a difference between where Hispanics are politically and where they should be in terms of their demographics. While the population of Hispanics is rising, the number of Hispanic representatives at all levels of government hasn't kept pace. (3:30)

Vice President -- NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorrnotes how important it is that citizens perceive political leaders to be healthy. (2:30)

Faulkner -- Seventy-five years ago this week, William Faulkner's first novel was published, called Soldier's Pay. It was inspired by his World War One service in the Royal Canadian Air Force. But it was another war that brought commentator Fred Woodress to Oxford, Mississippi and an afternoon with Faulkner. Having learned about Faulkner in the Army's college program at Ole Miss, he asked a waitress about him in a local restaurant. She was Faulkner's wife, and told Woodress to go see him. He describes the afternoon smoking and rocking on the the Faulkners' front porch, and another visit several years later. (3:00)

FCC and Affirmative Action -- In January, a federal circuit court in Washington DC ruled that a Federal Communications Commission order requiring broadcasters to conduct broad community outreach before making hiring decisions was unconsitutional race discrimination. Today the FCC decided to rehear the case, and commentator David Colesays this is a good thing. (3:30)

Pardon Comment -- Commentator Robert Franklin says that the pardon controversy has demonstrated to the whole country what the African-American community has always known: You are only entitled to as much justice as you can afford. Money and celebrity tend to distort the process of distributing justice. (3:30)


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