Places & Travel

Mark Malloch Brown heads the United Nations Development Program. He'll discuss their efforts in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza to help with reconstruction. Brown is also the chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee of the heads of all U.N. development funds, programs and departments.

Ugandan Aids activist Noerine Kaleeba. She works with UNAids, a United Nations organization in Geneva. Shes also on the Ugandan committee on Aids, and founded The Aids Support Organization in Uganda. Kaleeba lost her husband to the disease; four of her siblings are HIV positive as are a number of their children. Kaleeba is also author of the book, We Miss You All: Noerine Kaleeba - Aids in the Family (Women & Aids Support Network).

Sociologist Cheryl Benard is the author of the book, Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance. Under the Taliban, the group known as RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), educated girls and women in underground schools, ran small businesses and secretly photographed Taliban beatings and executions. Benard has worked with the organization for ten years. She is also the wife of an Afghan refugee who is one of President Bush's key Afghanistan advisors.

Journalist Jeffrey Rosen's article in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine is about the CIA's effort to partner with Silicon Valley to develop new anti-terrorist technologies. The CIA has founded a venture-capital firm that funds the development of cutting-edge technologies that may be useful for national security, in particular new techniques for finding terrorists. Rosen will talk about some of these technologies — and what civil libertarians think of them.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Nanny Diaries (St. Martins Press) by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.

Writer Bharati Mukherjee's new novel is Desirable Daughters (Theia Press). Mukherjee is an Indian-born writer who emigrated to the U.S. as an adult. Her new novel is about a traditional Brahmin family transformed by contemporary culture. Mukherjee is the author of five novels, two nonfiction books and two collections of short stories, including The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article in the current New Yorker Magazine about Saddam Husseins 1988 chemical attacks on the Kurds . There is also new evidence of Husseins ties to al Qaeda. Goldberg has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000. His specialty is foreign reporting with an emphasis on Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Goldberg came to The New Yorker from The New York Times Magazine, where he reported from Africa and the Middle East.

Harry Shearer wears many hats — writer, actor, director, comedian and radio host. His new film, which he wrote and directed, is called Teddy Bears Picnic. Its a satire of the goings-on at the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive retreat in the Northern California woods. The richest and most powerful men gather in the Grove. Their activities are kept secret, but a lot of drinking is involved. Shearer visited the Grove in order to write the script. Teddy Bears Picnic opens March 29. Shearer hosts Le Show, now in its 19th year on public radio.

Film critic John Powers reviews Y Tu Mama Tambien. It translates as And Your Mother Too, and it's set in Mexico.

Writer and retired New York city firefighter Dennis Smith arrived at the site of the World Trade Center towers on the day of the attacks to volunteer with the rescue effort. His new book Report from Ground Zero (Viking) is composed of first-person testimony of rescuers who were there when the towers were attacked and fell, and who helped in the efforts afterwards. Smith spent 18 years with the fire department. He is the author of nine books, including the bestseller Report from Engine Co. 82 about his years in the city's most dangerous and active firehouse.

Srdja Popovic is one of the founders of the nonviolent student group which helped bring down Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The group known as Otpor (the Serbian word for "resistance") had a clenched fist as its symbol, but used humor and theater to ridicule Milosevic and other government officials. The new PBS documentary Bringing Down a Dictator tells their story. Popovic is now a member of Parliament.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new CD Wish You Were Here: Love Songs for New York, a new anthology of songs recorded in reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In honor of the six-month anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, Meyerowitz talks about his World Trade Center Archive Project, a traveling State Department-sponsored exhibition of Ground Zero photographs. Meyerowitz originally spoke about his World Trade Center photos when he was a guest on Fresh Air on October 23, 2001.

Writer Gary Paulsen is a prolific writer of children's books. He began writing over 30 years ago, when he was coming to terms with his alcoholism. For many years he and his wife lived in poverty in rural Minnesota. This changed when Paulsen won the Newbery Award for children's fiction in 1985 with Dogsong, about running the Iditarod. Paulsen's children's books often deal with adventurous youths who triumph over adversity in the wilderness. This interview first aired Oct. 6, 1992.

T.V. critic David Bianculli previews the CBS special 9/11,which airs Sunday at 9:00 ET/PT. Filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet captured footage of the collapse of the World Trade Center from the inside. Robert DeNiro narrates the special.

Filmmaker Jamsheed Akrami is a scholar of Iranian film. His two documentaries are Dreams Betrayed and Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the Revolution. Together, they explore Iranian filmmaking before and after the 1979 revolution. In Iranian films, male and female characters are not allowed to touch, ever, and women must be veiled at all times. Despite these and other limitations, Iranian cinema has garnered international critical acclaim. Akrimi is an associate professor at William Paterson University.

Journalist Christopher Dickey is the Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek magazine. He's co-author of the cover story for the Sept. 23 issue, "How We Helped Create Saddam: And Can We Fix Iraq After He's Gone?" Dickey is also a novelist, and author of Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son about his relationship with his father, poet and novelist James Dickey.

Chris Giannou, surgeon for the International Committee of the Red Cross. For about 20 years he has been a medic in war torn parts of the world including Burundi, Somalia, and in a Palestinian Refugee Camp. As such he has seen the devastation on human beings from landmines. Giannou is currently leading the Red Cross's campaign for a ban on anti-personnel landmines worldwide, which kill or injure hundreds of civilians each week. Giannou has just returned from six weeks in Afghanistan.

Journalist Andrew Meldrum is the Guardian Zimbabwe correspondent. Currently, he covers the upcoming presidential election in Zimbabwe and the crackdown that the media faces as election time nears. In the past few weeks, he written a series of articles focusing on the bill President Mugabe signed, requiring all journalists working in Zimbabwe to have a license from the Minister of Information.

Activist Greg Mortenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Central Asia Institute. Since 1993, the organization has opened schools and provided an education for over 4000 girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The schools promote literacy, women vocational skills, public health and environmental awareness. Mortenson splits his time between Central Asia and Montana.