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The New York Subway system is designed to move millions of people quickly and efficiently. But on any given Friday afternoon, trombonist Alex Lo Dico and his jazz band can bring commuters to a complete halt. The subways have been Lo Dico's stage for two decades now, and his philosophy is "swing 'til you drop." NPR's Robert Smith has the first in a summer series of street musician profiles.

He responds to concerns about conflict of interest in awarding military contracts to private companies. Pawlik explains how the Army Corps of Engineers gave contracts to put out oil fires in Iraq to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Secretary of Defense, was the CEO of Halliburton before he became vice president.

She was the founding executive director of the Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She's written for U.S. News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist and The New Yorker. Her book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, is winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

His debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, received critical acclaim and is now out in paperback. The main character of the book, like Shteyngart, is a Russian-American Jew who emigrated to the United States as a child. In a New York Times Magazine cover article, Daniel Zalewski wrote, "Gary Shteyngart has rewritten the classic immigrant narrative -- starring a sarcastic slacker instead of a grateful striver. And after all his parents have done for him!" This interview first aired July 2, 2002.

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Mike Watchmaker of the Daily Racing Form ahead of Saturday's Belmont Stakes. They discuss whether Funny Cide will win and clinch horse racing's Triple Crown.

Journalist Joyce Davis is deputy foreign editor at Knight Ridder newspapers and former Mideast editor at NPR. She's the author of Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East. Davis conducted interviews with Islamic scholars to try to understand the teachings about martyrdom and how those teachings had been twisted by extremists. She also conducted interviews in the Middle East with the families of both martyrs and victims.

Robert Siegel talks with Hugo Young, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper in London. Young talks about the debate in Britain over whether intelligence on Iraqi wepaons of mass destruction was manipulated by 10 Downing Street in order to bolster support for war.

Her latest book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, is about a little-known religious text that was rediscovered in Egypt in 1945. She will explain why the Gospel of Thomas was suppressed by the church and kept out of the canon. Elaine Pagels has been called one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history. She won the National Book Award for her book, The Gnostic Gospels. Pagels is a professor at Princeton University.

He's the founder and executive director of the Center for Public Integrity. It's a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C., similar to an investigative journalism outfit but without time and space constraints. Its mission is to expose corruption and power abuse by governments, corporations and individuals. For 11 years, Lewis was an investigative reporter at ABC News, and also worked at CBS on 60 Minutes. His work at the Center for Public Integrity has been widely praised.

The House and Senate intelligence committees launched hearings this week on the Bush administration's handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. But while Democrats call for a probe of whether the White House mishandled intelligence reports, Republicans insist the hearings do not amount to an investigation of wrongdoing. NPR's David Welna reports.

In the last of a three-part series on Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups, NPR's Ivan Watson reports the Kurdish controlled northern part of the country remains stable. The two ruling Kurdish factions seeking control of their region have combined forces and are seeking effective ways to assimilate with the rest of the country.

The New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Orchestra may sound anachronistic, that's what it's all about. This 18-piece New Orleans group is dedicated to playing and preserving the music of the early 20th century. Host Bob Edwards talks with one of the orchestra's founding members, George Schmidt, about its latest CD, Burning Sands. It's a tongue-in-cheek collection of Middle Eastern songs, including "Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" and "Lena the Queen of Palestina."