FRESH AIR
Columnist Bob Sullivan covers Internet scams and consumer fraud for SNBC.com, where he writes a column
called The Red Tape Chronicles. Sullivan’s latest book is about the hidden fees found in many phone, cable, credit card and other bills. All told, he says, corporations are nickel-and-diming their customers to death — or at least to the tune of $1,000 or more a year. The title? Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day — And What You Can Do About It.
Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected. Cay Johnston covers tax policy for The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on that beat. His previous book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else, was a best seller. The new book, which expands the inquiry beyond tax policy into a whole range of regulatory machinery, is titled Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).
RADIO TIMES
Hour 1
(Rebroadcast tonight at 11)
Latest on Pakistan and Iraq. We’ll catch up with TRUDY RUBIN the Foreign Affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She just returned from a four-week trip to both countries. She was in Pakistan and scheduled to interviewer former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27th the day Bhutto was assassinated. Rubin is also author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
Hour 2
From 1951 to 1974, thousands of medical experiments were conducted by University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Albert Kligman on inmates at Philadelphia’s Holmesberg Prison. In his new book, Sentenced to Science: One Black Man’s Story of Imprisonment in America, writer ALLEN HORBLUM tells the story through the experiences of Edward Yusef Anthony who was incarcerated from 1964-1966. They both are in the studio with Marty. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
WORLD CAFE
Spoon has enjoyed a remarkable run of excellent albums in recent years: This year’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga finds the Austin indie-rock band again dispensing near-perfect three-minute pop songs with brutal efficiency. Hear an interview and performance from WXPN.
CAN: Spoon (Live)