It's the home stretch for the Presidential campaigns and the fact-checkers that follow on their heels. Recently, Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy, FactCheck.org and Flackcheck.org wrote an Op-Ed praising the TV fact-checkers in Denver for a job well-done fact-checking political ads in their crucial swing state. Brooke spoke with Jamieson who says that when it comes to fact-checking, execution matters.

Explosions in the Sky - First Breath After A Coma

If you read the local paper in Boston, Denver, or Sacramento, soon you’re likely to see endorsements for candidates cropping up on the editorial page. But if you get your news in Atlanta, Chicago, or Tuscaloosa, you probably won’t. In recent years, papers in these cities have gotten out of the endorsement business. Bob talks to Kevin Riley, editor of Georgia's largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about his paper's decision to end editorial endorsements.

Ahmad Jamal - Tranquility

The widespread media coverage of Taliban shooting victim Malala Yousafzai seems to have come as a surprise to the Taliban, who are claiming the media are biased against them.  Brooke speaks to Pakistani journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai, who says the Taliban are planning attacks on journalists because they feel the media are ruining their reputation.

Andrew Pekler - Here Comes the Night

This week, daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier—and world records—when he jumped in free fall from 24 miles above the earth’s surface. People around the world watched in awe, but some criticized the jump as a mere publicity stunt for its corporate sponsor, Red Bull Energy Drink. Bob talks with Esquire contributing editor Luke Dittrich about how Baumgartner's jump, publicity stunt or not, has valuable scientific implications beyond being a PR triumph.

Aphex Twin - Untitled (Four Tet Remix)

In 2010, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were brought in by BP to help advise. But after the US government sued BP, the company went after the Institution, subpoenaeing private correspondence and other documents on top of the 50,000 documents that the WHOI had supplied voluntarily. Brooke talks to Richard Camilli, an oceanographer at the WHOI, who says he believes this kind of request can compromise independent scientific inquiry.

Califone - Burned by the Christians

The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most politically tense moments of the Kennedy presidency, and one of the most memorable media moments of the Cold War. In an interview which originally aired in 2002, Fred Kaplan talks about how the media covered the crisis then, and how that coverage led to people drawing the wrong lessons from the crisis.

Bauhaus - Bela Legosi's Dead

We've inherited a myth from the Cuban Missile Crisis that compromise is for the weak, a myth that’s long been contradicted by the facts. And yet it still casts a long dark shadow over the policy-makers in Washington, according to recent issues of both Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazines. Brooke speaks with Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He says he had first-hand experience with the cherished notion that America's strength lies in rigidity.

Jenny Scheinman - A Ride with Polly Jean