Jen Poyant

The military ads we see on television often claim that enlisted men and women have the opportunity to gain valuable job skills while serving our country. Whether the dream is to be an engineer or a journalist, the promise is that the military can help that dream to come true. But are these promises real? And what do real veterans face when trying to find work?

A little over two years ago, Ingrid Betancourt,  former candidate for the Presidency of Colombia, was freed in a dramatic military rescue mission after six years of being held hostage. She and other hostages, incluing three Americans, had been taken captive by narco-terrorists known as the FARC rebels.

She has written a poetic account of those six years in her new book, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle.

For many years, an integral part of the American dream has involved making it to the middle class. We associate the phrase with steady, secure work, home ownership and providing for a comfortable — if not lavish — lifestyle for our family. But has middle class America fundamentally changed since the Great Recession hit? Do people that once saw themselves as solidly middle class see themselves differently now?

Tonight is the premier of CBS's new comedy, "S#&! My Dad Says," starring William Shatner. His character was inspired by a real life curmudgeon named Sam Halpern. Millions of Americans found their sides splitting while they read his crass and hilarious quips on his son Justin Halpern's Twitter feed. The feed became so popular, Halpern scored a book deal, which shot to the New York Times bestseller list.

This year marks the thirtieth year since the disease smallpox was eradicated. The disease has been around since roughly 10,000 BC, and killed approximately thirty percent of its victims. Over the course of history, it struck millions, including such famous survivors as George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

Now eradicated for three decades, what lessons can we take away from how we dealt with smallpox?

Sharing his insights is Dr. Walt Orenstein, Deputy Director for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The massive migration of black Americans from the South to the North in the early part of last century changed the social and cultural landscape of America forever.  Six million African Americans eventually left the South around 1920.  Before then, 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the south.  By 1970, nearly half lived elsewhere in the country. 

We're asking our African American listeners: Does your family have a story about the Great Migration? If so, we'd love to hear it: When did your family come north? Why did they leave the South? Tell us your story...

Media powerhouse Arianna Huffington thinks we're looking at the death of the American middle class.  She argues that point in her new book "Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream."

Consider the history of the civil rights movement, but set aside for a moment the well-known stories from men: those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and Andrew Goodman. If we examine the movement through the eyes of the women there at the time, what would the story sound like? 

All summer long we've been compiling a list of great summer reads. Now that Labor Day is behind us, we tack one more book onto the list: "Getting to Happy." It's the highly anticipated sequel to author Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale.

Everyone knows that beloved actor Leonard Nimoy will forever be associated with his most famous role: "Star Trek's" Mr. Spock. Of course, Nimoy went on to have a successful career in acting for decades after "Star Trek." Becoming known for just one iconic character can challenge any actor: Nimoy even wrote a pair of books balancing his own identity with Spock's. The first, "I Am Not Spock," was published in 1977, and the second, written nearly 20 years later, was called "I Am Spock."

Nimoy continues to work on another artistic passion that has a lot to do with the exploration of identity and self: portrait photography. His latest photo exhibition is called "Secret Selves." It's being shown at Mass MocA  (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and also at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Mass.

A new book about how to solve the looming issues of climate change will hit shelves here in the U.S. in October. It’s called “Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits.” It sounds unsurprising enough, but the author, Bjørn Lomborg, is a controversial figure in the debate on climate change. He’s long been known as a climate change skeptic and has been the subject of vehement criticism for his doubts as to whether global warming is a gravely serious issue.

Chilean hip-hop artist Ana Tijoux sees herself as a musician first, and a rapper, second. The combination of clear homage to the kings and queens of soul, hip-hop and funk come through in her music, and sets a backdrop to her smooth style. Tijoux was born in France, after her parents fled Chile during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

From Tiger and Elin's divorce to Lindsay Lohan's most recent arrest to Dr. Laura canceling her radio show over her excessive use of the N-word, we relish in celebrity scandal. Why does the public demise of beloved celebrities capture our imagination?

The 10th parallel is a latitudinal line situated 700 miles North of the equator. More than half of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live along it, as does 60 percent of the world's Christians. Journalist and poet Eliza Griswold has recently returned from a seven year journey, on which she traveled between the equator and the 10th parallel. She spent time in countries like Nigeria, the Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and documented her journey in "The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam."

It's been five years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast, ripping the footing out from under the residents of New Orleans. Many of those residents were musicians, who not only had to rebuild their homes but find their creative spirit after the devastation of the storm. Terence Blanchard, Grammy-winning jazz musician, says he's learned how to set his ego aside when composing music in the aftermath of the hurricane. 

All this week we’re talking with our friends from Scientific American about endings: in nature, culture and science. For most of human history the clearest, most black and white ending in our lives was death. However, in recent decades, life support technology has made death a gray area, leading to right-to-life debates, as in the case of Terri Schiavo. But the question of when someone is dead becomes especially important when dealing with the process of organ donation.

We asked you, our listeners: If you are are an organ donor, what made you agree to it? If not, what's your reason against it? Let us know in the comments or call 877-8-MY-TAKE and we'll play the responses on the air.

Many of us are talking about how to live with less these days. The answer to that question might be relative to your circumstances. Perhaps you stop going out to eat or make serious changes to your budget. Some people, though, are taking this notion of living with less to an extreme, including Kelly Sutton and Chris Yurista.

Is it the end of the world as we know it? This year, we’ve seen terrible flooding, glaciers melting, and deep oil wells breaking. In light of these catastrophic events, we're launching a series this week about whether our modern age is coming to an end along with our friends at Scientific American.

For the first installment of the series, we talk with Michael Moyer, staff editor for Scientific American, about the world's dwindling resources. He recently wrote about this in his article, "How Much is Left?"

We're continuing our summer reading series with a look at modern parenthood and childcare. Mona Simpson's new book, "My Hollywood," looks at the relationship between modern parents and the nannies they hire to take care of their kids. 

The recent debate over whether an Islamic cultural center should be allowed to be built near Ground Zero has only gotten hotter since President Obama weighed in last Friday. "As a citizen, and as president," Obama said, "I believe that Muslims have the right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." Stoked by arguments over this one building, the national discussion about Islam's role in American society has dramatically heated up. That got us thinking about Graham Fuller's new book, "A World Without Islam."