Search results for

casino/hotel/entertainment center, the so-called "Stratosphere," which lays claim to being the highest building west of the Mississippi with the worlds highest roller coaster.

Commentator Frederica Matthews-Green reflects on the phenomenon of everyday people who demonstrate deep faith. She tells the story of Michael, a local plumber and fellow member of a small Eastern Orthodox congregation, who recently went off to become a monk. As the congregation tearfully sent him off, Matthews-Green noted the extraordinary number of people like Michael who live lives of faithful devotion. Negative images of religious people in the media are unfair stereotype, she says, because most deeply religious people are just like the rest of us, and Michael.

Susan speaks with medical economist Brad Kirkman-Liff about how medicare compares with other world programs.

Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN gives her summer reading round-up (part one): "Neanderthal," by John Darton (Random House); "Firestorm," by Nevada Barr (Putnam); "The World at Night," by Alan Furst (Random House); "Ruined By Reading," by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (Beacon).Movie critic JOHN POWERS reviews the new action thriller "The Rock," starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. In the film, Cage and Connery team up to retake Alcatraz from a crazed general.

A house built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1940 is re-opened today a year after it closed for renovations and on the birthday of Wright, who was born 129 years ago.

NPR's Joe Palca reports on a new genetic test for breast cancer. But medical ethicists, doctors and patients are struggling with its implications.

Susan talks with Princeton University Creative Writing Teacher and novelist Elizabeth Benedict about her book "The Joy of Writing Sex -- designed to help the serious author write better sex scenes.

Robert Siegel talks with Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, about his parody of practitioners of "science studies." He tells how he deliberately wrote an article questioning the validity of measuring physical "reality" using nonsensical phrases, and submitted it to a well-respected academic journal. The editors published it as a serious treatise, not realizing it was written as a joke. (Sokal's article, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," appeared in the May/June 1996 issue of Lingua Franca.

the GOP is arguing over their budget strategy and health insurance legislation, the Democrats in Congress have unified behind raising the minimum wage... a measure suggested by President Clinton last year.

NPR's Cheryl Corley reports on the end of "Social Promotions" in the Chicago school system. Under this policy, students were graduated to high school even if they did not meet eighth grade graduation standards. Now students will only be able to graduate to high school if they meet academic requirements.