Jen Poyant

Today we welcome Miami listeners to The Takeaway this week at WLRN, Miami's public radio station. To kick off our first week of broadcasting there, we're asking Miami-based, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry to welcome us.

President Obama's State of the Union Address didn't have much to say on foreign policy or the war effort, but John Hockenberry got to ask Gen. David Petraeus about it when he sat down the head of U.S. Central Command this week. In part two of our wide ranging interview, Gen. Patreaus lays out the strategies and challenges in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

The last few weeks have been busy for U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. Besides dealing with international and domestic security concerns following the foiled bomb plot on Christmas Day, Napolitano is also addressing the devastation in Haiti and how to best help those who made need to seek refuge in the United States.

At a conference in London today, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to address ways of reintegrating some Taliban members back into the Afghan political process. It's something we put to Gen.  David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ahead of President Obama's first State of the Union address, we talk with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose most recent book is "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." She weighs in on Obama’s job performance so far and helps us understand how history might remember this particular moment in his presidency.

In the spring of 2002, members of the Bush administration came to John Yoo, then a deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department, to help the administration decide where the legal limit was between interrogation and torture.

When you conjure up the image of the typical gonzo war correspondent, you don’t necessarily envision a graphic novelist. But author Joe Sacco has been telling of the wrenching stories of war in comic book form for a decade. We talk to him about his new book, the future of journalism and why he prefers to tell gruesome war stories with drawings.

 

We speak with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert about her latest book, "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage." To write the book, she had to wrestle with the fact that her first, wildly successful memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love," had been based on the premise of getting over a bad marriage and swearing off the institution forever, while her second memoir details her reluctant acceptance of marriage after all.

Click through for an excerpt of Gilbert's new memoir.

In honor of Martin Luther King we look at a new documentary about songs that helped drive the civil rights movement.

Bootlegging was written into the U.S. constitution 90 years ago today. On January 16, 1920, the prohibitionists finally got what they had been fighting for decades: the federal government had banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. The prohibition movement had be active since 1810 and its legacy is still visible today.

We touched a nerve yesterday when we looked into the significance of Nevada Senator Harry Reid's comment over President Obama's dialect and level of skin tone.

 

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s successful flight from Honolulu to Oakland, California.She was the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific.  To help update the...

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter recently announced he won't run for reelection in 2010, leaving wide speculation about who will succeed him. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper was in the mi...

Back in August of 2008, during the Democratic National Convention, we sent Takeaway contributor Patrik Henry Bass out to report from Denver.  He visited a hair salon called Hairworks ...

Colorado's population has just rate hit the five million mark.  It is in the top five fastest growing states in the nation and its rate of growth has remained steady, even during the ...

We’re looking at a story from our newest listening area, Denver, where school officials have just announced a new experiment in school choice, offering the choice for parents to send ...

It's the first day of a brand new decade; we're hoping to jump in and begin this one fresh-faced and optimistic.  All this week we've been taking a look back at the 2000s and how we'v...

First Lieutenant Russell Galeti is one of 30,000 U.S. troops that will deploy to Afghanistan as part of the troop surge ordered by President Obama. We speak to Russell and his wife, M...

It’s Thursday, that’s our day to talk technology here on The Takeaway. And it’s also December 31st, the last day of the year to give to a charity if you want to deduct your donation f...

It's Wednesday, the day we talk about food.  New Year's Eve is almost here and folks will be celebrating in all kinds of different ways; hopefully all of them will involve food and go...