Brian Lehrer speaks with Michael Paone, community organizer and anti-hunger activist, and Joel Berg (on the phone), executive director of New York City Coalition Against Hunger about the increase in food stamp enrollment in the midst of the economic crisis.

The New Yorker's architecture critic Paul Goldberger is joined by landscape Architect Michael Van Valkenburgh to discuss the role of public space in the crowded city with guest-host Amy Eddings on the Brian Lehrer Show.

The Obamas opted for a Portuguese water dog. Stacy Alldredge, New York City dog trainer and owner of Who's Walking Who, talks about the pros and cons of shelter vs. purebred dogs as pets.

In America, three out of four people say they believe in the possibility of ghosts, psychics, telepathy or some measure of the supernatural. Why? Bruce Hood tells Brian Lehrer that it's a product of the brain that creates the mind.

"Jane Smith," a former Army sergeant and guard, talks about working with detainees at a maximum security detention camp in Guantanamo.

Her experience--and those of other guards, as well as the detainees--is chronicled in the upcoming documentary Explorer: Inside Guantanamo.

Brian Lehrer spoke with Ikram Sehgal, managing editor of Defence Journal, Pakistan's leading monthly magazine focused on defense and security issues.

Pet owners, like everyone else, are being squeezed in this down economy and looking for ways to save. In Bushwick, Brooklyn recently, about 25 cats and dogs lined up for low-cost vet care. The mobile clinic, run by The ASPCA, charges $75 to spay or neuter a pet and the same services are free if you are on public assistance.

Oscar and his owner Caesar wait to take advantage of low-cost spay/neuter services in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Pit bulls make up a disproportionate number of dogs that enter the shelter system in the city. Joel Lopez of the ASPCA says he started drooling when he saw the two pit bulls come to get spayed.

Fee spay/neuter clinics for the city's stray cats
Every New Yorker has seen them slinking through a fence into a construction site or dashing down an alley. Feral cats. There are tens of thousands of them living on the streets of the city, the offspring of lost or abandoned ...

WNYC reporters Elaine Rivera, Cindy Rodriguez, and Matthew Schuerman join Brian Lehrer to discuss David Paterson's first year as New York's Governor and how his administration has affected New York City.

Paul Bacon, writer, scuba instructor, and author of Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All (Bloomsbury USA, 2009), talks to Brian Lehrer about ticket quotas, stop-and-frisk, who should not consider joining the force and more.

Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, talks about the Obama education plan's effects on local schools, and other matters facing students and parents in the region.

Craig Mullaney, former United States Army captain, West Point graduate, Rhodes scholar and the author of The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education, talks about his new memoir and the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

New Yorkers talk about how the recession is affecting them and which “luxury” items they can’t live without despite the economic downturn.

Mary Elizabeth Williams, culture critic for The Takeaway, host of Salon.com’s Table Talk, and the author of Gimme Shelter, gives her perspective on the recent real estate bubble.

As conservative Republicans call President Obama's economic policies the advent of the U.S.S.A., writer Barbara Ehrenreich offers The Brian Lehrer Show a socialist's view of the economic situation.

It's a snow day today for a lot of kids. New York City public schools are closed today, as are many schools in the suburbs. Updated forecasts are calling for as much as 10 inches of snow in the city by the end of ...

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman talks to WNYC's Leonard Lopate about a plan for responsible eating that is good for the consumer and the planet.

You can listen to Lopate and Bittman's complete conversation here.

The FAA released tapes and transcripts of tower communications with US Airways flight 1549 that made an emergency landing in the Hudson on January 15, 2009. Most of the communications with the pilot are contained in the tape and transcript for New York Tracon.

New York Tracon (note: raw audio, ...

Thousands of New Yorkers welcomed the Year of the Ox at the 10th Annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade on February 1, 2009.

Aniya Dew, Amina Niass, Mbayang Kasse and Kevin Lassiter, all students at the Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem,watch the Inauguration in Harlem. Watch their faces as Barack Obama takes the oath of office.