Our guest is Dr. Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Professor at the University of Oklahoma's College of International Studies. He recently gave an address at the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations (or TCFR) titled "The U.S. and the Middle East: Making Sense of Oil, Regime Change, and Forever Wars." Dr. Landis also writes "Syria Comment," a daily newsletter on Syrian politics that attracts 100,000 readers per month -- and he often consults with U.S.

Our guest is Dan Weissmann, a public-radio reporter/editor/producer whose work has appeared on Marketplace, Planet Money, 99 Percent Invisible, and NPR’s Morning Edition. He once again joins us on ST Medical Monday to give an update on An Arm and a Leg, his widely acclaimed podcast about the various price tags that come with health care in the U.S.

Our guest is Daniel Hege, who will tomorrow night (Saturday the 11th) conduct the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in its next concert. The program, titled "Strauss and Schumann," will offer an evening of lush, ornate, wholly gorgeous music. The night opens with J.S. Bach's "Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor," as orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar. Next comes Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs," featuring the acclaimed soprano Sarah Coburn. And finally: "Symphony No. 2" by Robert Schumann. Details are posted here. 

Our guest is Dr. Grant Jenkins, Associate Professor of English here at the University of Tulsa. He teaches creative writing as well as modern and contemporary U.S. literature, with a specialty in experimental poetry and poetics. Dr. Jenkins has just published his first novel, which he tells us about. "Ivory Tower" is an engrossing, genre-hopping crime thriller, set mainly on an American university campus. It's about a film professor who sets out to uncover sexual corruption within her school's football program. Please note that Dr.

Our guest is our friend, Barry Friedman, the Tulsa-based writer and comic, who's also a longtime commentator for this public-radio program. His son, Paul, died a few years ago from a drug overdose -- at age 24. And while Barry was devastated by this tragedy, as any parent would be, he was not really surprised. Paul's death, as Barry notes in his new book about his son, had been foreshadowed for years. Barry joins us to discuss his moving, unsettling, and perceptive new book, which is meant not as eulogy but as an elegy. And as the writer Dave Barry has noted: "It's a wonderful book.