Justice or vengeance?; Presidential hopefuls at the starting line; Women turning 39; Israel may not survive
Why does the Crown want to put a young quadriplegic in jail? - Michael's essay
A violent confrontation between a 32-year-old police officer and a 15-year-old joy-rider resulted in the officer's death. The young driver was severely injured and is now paralysed from the neck down. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 9 years supervision in his parents' home. Now the Crown is appealing, in an attempt to send the boy (now a young man) to jail for 6 years, in his wheelchair. Michael asks whether this is the pursuit of justice, or an act of vengeance for the death of the officer.
Will Iowa show Hillary Clinton some love second time around? As the curtain goes up on the U.S. presidential election, we check in with Iowa and New Hampshire, the small, atypical (mostly white and affluent) states that hold outsize influence over which presidential hopefuls get the nod from their party. It was in Iowa in 2008 that Senator Clinton lost her front-runner status to a young Senator from Illinois called Barack Obama. Michael's guests are Linda Fowler, who teaches government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Kathie Obradovich, political columnist with The Des Moines Register in Iowa.
LIstener Mail: Reaction to our "dictionary" game, Shut Up, I'm Thinking!
Thirty-nine - a Tara Henley documentary: The generation of women who were told they could "have it all", is approaching 40 years old. Many are childless and single, and their disappointments are painful and unique. Producer Tara Henley, who is childless and about to turn 40 herself, tries to untangle the threads
Listener Mail: Your suggestions for words and phrases you would like banned in 2016.
Ron Rosenbaum: "I believe the state of Israel may not survive; that its days are numbered".
The journalist and author of Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil argues that anti-Semitism has reached such a pitch throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, that the destruction of Israel is a real possibility.
Music this week by: Aaron Davis, Frederic Chopin, Janina Fialkowska, Gustav Mahler, the Gryphon Trio, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Pierre Boulez and Paul Bley.