Now, from March Madness to the scandal called Bountygate. And can a virtuous young man find happiness in the big city that never sleeps, but sure swears a lot. Senior write for ESPN.com and ESPN the magazine, Howard Bryant, joins us.
Basil Twist has been called a genius. The art he's a genius at? Puppetry — which he knows can be a hard sell.
"It's not of this time," he says. "It's not of the world we live in now."
But Twist, a highly trained practitioner, brings this art of the past to the present with innovative creations beyond the likes of the Muppets or their foul-mouthed cousins on Avenue Q.
Americans have always been fascinated by con men. Why else would we have so many movies about legendary swindlers? Most real-life cons are probably less entertaining than the ones on the silver screen, but in her new book, Amy Reading unearths a historical swindle that rivals anything ever imagined by Hollywood.
As further details emerge about this week's shootings in Afghanistan, the situation on the ground there continues to develop. As we've heard, in recent years a lot of emphasis has been placed on the counterinsurgency effort, on winning hearts and minds as opposed to targeting terrorist cells. So what do these latest incidents mean for that already fragile effort? John Nagl is a military counterinsurgency expert. He is now teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
