The Point

Live in The Point studio, our host Mindy Todd is joined by WCAI/WGBH Radio general manager Phil Redo and WCAI reporter Sean Corcoran for this program Ask the Manager . Listeners get their chance to let us know what they love (or not) about our programming, and make suggestions.

Usually, efforts to find a new treatment or cure for a disease go something like this: scientists spend years figuring out something about the basic biology of the disease, and then spend more years finding ways to target a part of that process. When they hit on something that works in the laboratory, they (or, often, a pharmaceutical company) spend even more years - and a lot more money - doing the tests necessary to prove a drug is safe and effective for use in human patients. When your two

Today on The Point we take a closer look at the dictionary . What insight can dictionaries give us about society and our history? What’s the process for words to be included in a dictionary? Are words ever removed? Steve Kleinedler is the executive editor for the American Heritage Dictionary and he joins us from the studios of WHYY in Philadelphia. Mindy Todd hosts.

Vissarion Shebalin was not a great composer. But his music could unlock an important truth about how the brain processes music and language . Tobin Low was the producer and part of the STEM Story Project -- distributed by PRX and made possible with funds from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

It’s been called the world’s most mysterious book. It was written between 1404 and 1438 in an unknown script by an unknown author. It’s illustrated with plants and star charts that look tantalizingly like real ones, only not quite. And then there are the women - dozens of naked women entering and emerging from tubes that one writer compared to midieval waterslides . But most perplexing of all is the lettering, which is beautifully formed but completely unintelligible. "It looks like a western

WCAI's Sean Corcoran hosts a roundup of local news stories with several area journalists. His guests this week include Patrick Cassidy of the Cape Cod Times; Sam Houghton of the Mashpee Enterprise and Enterprise Newspapers; Sara Brown of the Martha's Vineyard Gazette; Tim Wood of the Cape Cod Chronicle; Jim DeArruda of the New Bedford Standard Times; Ann Wood of the Provincetown Banner; and Bill Chaisson of the Martha's Vineyard Times. Among the stories they discuss this week: a memo mistakenly

Most people who aren’t professional gardeners can’t be sustainability purists. With limited time, energy, and budgets, it’s necessary to make compromises. In her new book The Sustainable-Enough Garden , author Rebecca Warner offers an honest account of her struggles to achieve her environmental gardening goals without giving up her day job or breaking the bank. In doing so, she offers a road forward that balances idealism with practicality in making choices that work for each individual’s own

Come along as we tour the battleship USS Massachusetts at Battleship Cove in Fall River. The Massachusetts was known as "Big Mamie" to her crewmembers during World War II. Initially assigned to duty in the Atlantic Fleet, and later transferred to the Pacific, the vessel was decommissioned in 1947. It was later towed to Fall River and opened as a museum in 1965.

Finding Phil: Lost in War and Silence traces author Paul Levy ’s search for his Uncle Phil, killed 70 years earlier in World War II. Phil was a young tank platoon commander who braved the frigid winter of 1944-45 as allied troops advanced against an increasingly desperate Hitler, and died in France only months before the war ended. At once a mystery, a love story, a soldier’s tale, and a reflection, Finding Phil ponders family silences, peace and the war, the nature of heroism, the complexity of

In the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbo r 20 Naval ships, including eight enormous battleships, and 300 airplanes were destroyed. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died, and another 1,000 were wounded. There were also numerous civilians killed and wounded. Craig Nelson has written a detailed account of the events leading up to the attack, the chaos and carnage that ensued, and how the US ultimately triumphed when the Japanese were defeated at the end of World War II. The book is titled