He’s all over radio and TV this week, and I have to say: there’s something noirish about the way Seymour Hersh talks about the dirty little secrets of the American government. On the most recent New Yorker Out Loud, produced this week by CFP, Hersh explains the top secret covert operation against Iran recently funded by Congress (by Democrats!) to the tune of $400 million. This, he argues in a new article out in this week’s New Yorker, is a serious escalation of earlier attempts to undermine the Iranian regime and may be laying the groundwork for an American attack. (6.20.08)

Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker staff writer and author of the seminal book about global warming Field Notes from a Catastrophe, joins Ryan Lizza and Dorothy Wickenden on this week’s Campaign Trail to talk about how the McCain and Obama campaigns are maneuvering around the political landmines of high gas prices and climate change. Kolbert says neither candidate has a coherent policy, though Obama’s might be tactically smarter. (6.26.08)

She was better known for her short stories, but Grace Paley wrote poetry throughout her life. She didn’t start publishing it until the 1980s, and there seem to be few recordings of her reading her poetry. We got lucky with a recording from the Acton Memorial Library in Massachussetts. On this week’s Poetry Off the Shelf, Rachel Aviv, who wrote an article for PoetryFoundation.org on Grace Paley, listens to and comments on a few Paley poems. (6.19.08)

On this week’s Campaign Trail from the New Yorker, staff writer John Cassidy joins Ryan Lizza and Dorothy Wickenden to talk about the economic policies and politics of Obama and McCain. (6.12.08)

Vietnamese-born poet Linh Dinh says he’s not entirely comfortable in Vietnamese or in English; he mis-pronounces in both languages, he says.  A few weeks ago, for the Poetry Foundation’s blog Harriet, he published a list of all the subtle variations of ways to say laugh and smile in Vietnamese.  On this week’s Poetry Off the Shelf we hear him read from that list, and he also reads two shorter poems.

Jeffrey Toobin explains to host Dorothy Wickenden what he meant when on CNN he called Hillary Clinton’s refusal to concede last Tuesday “deranged narcissism.” Also appearing on this week’s Campaign Trail from the New Yorker: regulars Ryan Lizza and Hendrik Hertzberg.

This podcast is now carried by XM Satellite Radio’s political channel P.O.T.U.S.  (6.5.08)

Gary Snyder won the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which honors a poet’s lifetime achievement (and puts $100,000 in his pocket). This week’s Poetry Off the Shelf excerpts some of the poems Snyder read at the awards ceremony last week in Chicago, preceded by some introductory comments from Poetry Magazine editor (and Lilly judge) Christian Wiman. (6.3.08)

The June fiction podcast from the New Yorker features Mary Gaitskill reading the first story Vladimir Nabokov ever published in The New Yorker, from 1948. “Symbols and Signs” is, in my humble opinion, the best piece of fiction so far chosen for this podcast. (6.2.08)

In this week’s Campaign Trail from the New Yorker, John McCain tries to get out in front of the collapsing conservative movement, and Hillary Clinton tries to stay in the game. George Packer joins Hendrik Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza and host Dorothy Wickenden. Edited by Owen Agnew. (5.15.08)

“I don’t hold out a great deal of hope for the survival of the planet in any form that we know it, that we have known it to date,” said poet and publisher Chase Twichell when I interviewed a little over a year ago.  Given that kind of pessimism about our situation in the age of global warming, what kind of poetry does she write?  Listen to the most recent Poetry Off the Shelf from the Poetry Foundation, distributed by alt.NPR.  (5.13.08)

Not so fast, say Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza in this week’s Campaign Trail from the New Yorker. The pundits may be right: she can’t win, but this campaign has yet to play itself out. And her gambit to frame Obama solely as the Black candidate may doom her future standing in the Democratic party. Hosted by Dorothy Wickenden, edited by Owen Agnew. (5.8.08)

Jean Stafford was married for a time to Robert Lowell and hung out with New York intellectuals in the 40s and 50s. But maybe she didn’t exactly fit in, as her first New Yorker short story indicates. It’s called “Children are Bored on Sunday.” From the New Yorker’s abstract: Emma, the girl from the sticks, find herself lost in the world of intellectuals in New York. She has had some education, which prevents her from being considered a real rube, but not enough education to fit into the group. For several months she has withdrawn from the world in a state of despair. On a certain winter Sunday afternoon she is at the Metropolitan Museum. She sees Alfred Eisenburg, one of the intellectuals she had met at a party. At first she avoids him. Then she hopes to meet him so they can get maudlin drunk together in some seedy bar and temporarily forget their loneliness. As she leaves she meets him, and the proceed to a bar.

Hilton Als, one of the New Yorker’s theater critics, talks to host/fiction editor Deborah Treisman about the story, which is read by Eliza Foss. Edited by Rob Weisberg. (5.7.08)

This month host/editors Christian Wiman and Don Share present readings by Jane Hirshfield and Chris Dombrowski, plus they read and comment on a few of their favorites from the May issue. Recorded and edited by Ed Herrmann for CFP. Listen on-line or subscribe . (5/6/08)

The most recent Poetry Off the Shelf features Kay Ryan.  Her kind of poetry–playful, gnomish, compact–was out of fashion for years and years, but her popularity was bolstered when she won the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement a few years ago from The Poetry Foundation.  I speak with her about animals in poetry and untimely glaciers.  Written and edited by Posey Gruener.  (5/5/08)

Errol Morris’s new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, about the story behind the infamous Abu Ghraib photos, just opened, and for the ACLU CFP hosted and produced an interview with Morris and Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. Edited by Brendan Baker. (4.29.08)