MP3 here. (34:35)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

MP3 here. (27:51)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

MP3 here. (19:55)

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of both TNI and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC where she directs IPS’s New Internationalism Project. Phyllis specializes in U.S. foreign policy issues, particularly involving the Middle East and United Nations. She worked as a journalist at the UN for ten years and currently serves as a special adviser to several top-level UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues. A frequent contributor to U.S. and global media, Phyllis is also the author of numerous articles and books, particularly on Palestine, Iraq, the UN, and U.S. foreign policy.

MP3 here. (24:38)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

MP3 here. (22:01)

Mark Sheffield runs the Policy on Point blog.

MP3 here. (30:07)

Oleg Novinkov was a Soviet Air Force flight surgeon who was stationed in Kabul, Ghazni, and Bagram while in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. After returning from the war, he became involved in supporting the Soviet space program as a flight surgeon and medical researcher at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems. He subsequently emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1995. Since then, he has worked in various capacities as an international space medicine consultant in support of NASA.

MP3 here. (19:30)

Jean MacKenzie is a senior correspondent for GlobalPost formerly based in Kabul, Afghanistan. After five years as program director for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Kabul, she is now working as a journalist trainer and consultant. Her work has taken her to the farthest corners of Afghanistan, where she has met hundreds of Afghans from all walks of life. She has created a network of Afghan reporters who can gather news and information from all over the country, lending an all-important local perspective to coverage of the conflict there.

MacKenzie has forged a reputation as an analyst and commentator, contributing frequently to broadcast and online projects, including National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., CNN, and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. She spent nearly two years in Helmand Province, where she covered the Taliban insurgency as well as the booming poppy industry. Prior to moving to Afghanistan, MacKenzie spent more than a decade in Moscow, where she worked for a variety of newspapers. She began her career as a journalist with the Moscow Times in 1992, branching out to write for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, Newsday and the Boston Globe.

MP3 here. (27:36)

Blogger Marcy Wheeler, a.k.a. emptywheel, grew up bi-coastally, starting with every town in New York with an IBM. Then she moved to Poway, California, home of several participants in the Duke Cunningham scandal. Since then, she has lived in Western Massachusetts, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor, and — just recently — Western Michigan.

She got a BA from Amherst College, where she spent much of her time on the rugby pitch. A PhD program in Comparative Literature brought her to Michigan; she got the PhD but decided academics was not her thing. Her research, though, was on a cool journalistic form called the “feuilleton” — a kind of conversational essay that was important to the expansion of modern newspapers in much of the rest of the world. It was pretty good preparation to become a blogger, if a PhD can ever be considered training for blogging.

After leaving academics, Marcy consulted for the auto industry, much of it in Asia. But her contract moved to Asia, along with most of Michigan’s jobs, so she did what anyone else would do. Write a book, and keep blogging. (Oh, and I hear Amazon still has the book for sale.)

Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She’s known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and generally for her weedy analysis of document dumps.

Marcy met her husband Mr. emptywheel playing Ultimate Frisbee, though she retired from the sport several years ago. Marcy, Mr. EW and their dog — McCaffrey the MilleniaLab — live in a loft in a lovely urban hellhole.

MP3 here. (17:59)

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos has spent over a decade as a political reporter in Washington DC. Currently, she is a contributing editor for The American Conservative magazine and its daily weblog, @TAC. She is also a Washington correspondent for the DC-based homeland security magazine, Homeland Security Today, a long-time political writer for FOXNews.com, a regular columnist for Antiwar.com and a contributor to CriminalJustice.Change.org

MP3 here. (20:04)

Peter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR’s magazine Extra, and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR’s syndicated radio show CounterSpin.

He is the author of “The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly” (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed.