Crime

Writer Gerard Jones is the author of the new book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy Games, Superheroes, and Make Believe Violence (Basic Books). A former creator of comic books, he's written text for Batman, Superman, X-Men, and Pokemon. This is his fourth media studies book. He lives in San Francisco.

Father Donald Cozzens is the author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest's Crisis of Soul. He is president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. He is also the editor of The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest. Father Cozzens will talk about the church's current sexual abuse scandals, and other crises facing the priesthood.

Founder of the Federal Witness Protection Program, Gerald Shur, and journalist Pete Earley. They've collaborated on the new book, WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program (Bantam Books). Shur started the program in the 1960s after realizing that many witnesses would not testify because they were afraid of being killed as a result. WITSEC assigns a new identity and relocates witnesses and their dependents. Witnesses have included everyone from mobsters to drug traffickers to terrorists in the first world trade center bombing. Shur headed the program for 34 years.

We speak with Clinton Lacy, a longtime program director of Friends of the Island Academy. FOIA was founded in 1989 by the first principal of the high school on Riker's Island. The program is designed to break the cycle of return to Riker's by providing education and counseling. Each year, FOIA works with 350 young people.

We speak with two people involved with "Youth Portraits," a radio skills training program for ex-offenders released from Riker's Island prison in New York City. Riker's Island is the biggest jail in North America. "Youth Portraits" is a joint project of Friends of the Island Academy and Sound Portraits Productions. First, we hear from Andre Vaughn, a 21-year-old ex-offender who was released from Riker's and became involved with the "Youth Portraits" program. He was caught stealing at the age of 17 and subsequently served three sentences.

Actor and producer Bob Balaban has appeared in over 50 movie and television spots, directed for television and produced three full legnth films. His latest project is Gosford Park, a Robert Altman whodunnit set in an English manor. The film is up for several Golden Globe awards. Balaban produced and appears in it.

William Wechsler was Special Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001. He also served as Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council and as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton. Hel discuss what needs to be done to track the terrorist money trail.

A native of Mississippi, Barry Hannah has been writing for over thirty years - short stories, and novels set in the South. His writing is described as intensely personal, frenetic and comic. Truman Capote once called him the maddest writer in the USA His first book, the autobiographical novel Geronimo Rex (published in 1972) won the William Faulkner Prize for writing. He followed that with Airships, a collection of short stories now considered a classic.

His new film Memento, is about a man who is unable to make new memories since the violent murder of his wife. Now without a short term memory, he seeks to avenge her death. The movie stars Guy Pearce, with Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano. The script for Memento was based on a short story written by Johnathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan's brother. Memento is Christopher Nolan's second feature film; his first was the critically acclaimed 1998 film Following.

Joseph Hallinan been writing about the criminal-justice system for about a decade. For his new book, Going Up the River: Travels in Prison Nation he looks at the consequences of our country's prison boom. The prison-industrial complex is our nations biggest growth industry. Hallinan currently writes for The Wall Street Journal.

Former Chicago policewoman Gina Gallo. While she was part of the force, she also wrote about her work in columns for NYCop online magazine and Blue Murders online magazine. They were collected in the book Crime Scenes (Blue Murder Press). She has a new memoir, Armed & Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman

Film critic Henry Sheehan reviews the new film "Hannibal" starring Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore.

Humanitarian aid worker Kenneth Gluck. He was working with Doctors Without Borders in Chechnya when he was kidnapped and held for 26 days. He was released on February 3rd. Gluck still isn't sure who kidnapped him or who freed him. It could have been Chechen gangs, who have seized other humanitarian workers. Or it could have been Russian authorities who staged the abduction for propaganda purposes. The Russians claimed credit for freeing him.

Tom Fontana of HBO's, Oz, the realistic drama about life in an experimental unit of a maximum security prison. Fontana also created Homicide: Life on the Street and the 1980s drama set in a city hospital, St. Elsewhere.

Literary forensics expert Don Foster. Named the first literary detective of all time, he uncovered the identity of Joe Klein as the Anonymous writer of 1996’s “Primary Colors”. His new book is “Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous” (Henry Holt, Inc.) which details the techniques he uses to identify writers behind anonymous books and documents. He teaches English at Vassar College.

Working cop and writer Richard Rosenthal. For 20 years, Rosenthal was a detective for the New York Police Department where he dealt with homicide, narcotics, and armed robbery. Now he is the chief of Police in a small village on Cape Cod. He’ll talk about the differences between the two kinds of police work. Rosenthal is the author of two books about police work called Sky Cops and K-9 Cops. He also wrote a novel called The Murder of Old Comrades. His new book, Rookie Cop(Leapfrog Press), is a memoir about his time undercover in the Jewish Defense League.

Journalists Monica Yant Kinney and Tom Ginsberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The two covered the protests during the Republican National Convention two weeks ago. They’ll pick up the story since the convention, and discuss the lawsuits filed against the city on behalf of the protesters. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW)

Forensic entomologist M. Lee Goff is the author of the new book “A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solve Crimes” (Harvard University Press). Goff examines the insect life that inhabits a decomposing corpse, to understand when a person died and other circumstances of death. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES THRU THE END OF THE SHOW).

Contributing editor for Vanity Fair David Margolick. In his new book “Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights” (Running Press), Margolick traces the history and impact of the song “Strange Fruit,” a ballad about lynchings which became Billie Holiday’s signature song. It was written by a Jewish school teacher who was inspired to write the song after seeing a newspaper photograph of a lynching.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg discusses the word hacker.