Larry discusses the latest on the Iran elections, California home prices are going up, and the new book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.
Update on Iranian elections
Protests in Iran continued for a fourth day over the country's disputed election. Thousands gathered in Tehran Thursday as candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi called on his supporters to wear black to mourn those killed in the protests. Iran's Guardian Council has responded by offering to meet with the three major challengers from the race to discuss their grievances. Larry Mantle gets the latest on the situation in Iran.
Borzou Daragahi, staff writer for the L.A. Times and Middle East Correspondent.
Reza Aslan, columnist at thedailybeast.com and author of "How To Win A Cosmic War: God Globalization and The End of The War On Terror".
Siamak Kalhor, host, KIRN 670 am Radio Iran.
Southern CA home prices increase
The median sale price for a Southern California home rose last month for the first time since July 2007. In May of this year the median price was $249,000, up from $247,000 in April. This small increase suggests that there are more sales in the higher end of the housing market. In previous months, the median price was pulled down due to banks unloading a large number of foreclosed properties. Larry Mantle finds out if this means we've reached a turnaround in the market.
John Karevoll, Analyst, DataQuick Information Systems, a real estate information company in Southern California.
Peter Hong, Business Reporter for the L.A. Times who covers the housing market.
Chris Thornberg, Principal, Beacon Economics.
More Americans call themselves "conservative"
Democratic President Barack Obama may have high approval ratings, but despite that, more and more Americans are describing themselves as politically "conservative." According to a new poll, more Republicans, more Independents AND more Democrats are describing themselves as politically "conservative" compared to last year. How can this be accounted for?
Fingerprints of God
More than half of all Americans believe that they have had a life-altering experience of God. NPR religion writer Barbara Bradley Hagerty is one of them. After an intensely powerful spiritual experience in 1995 she wondered whether this event was proof of God or merely proof of the brain’s intricate physiology. In her new book Fingerprints of God, Barbara Hagerty asks if science can explain God and if the neuroscience of spirituality affirms God’s existence, refutes it or leads us to an entirely different conclusion.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty, author Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality (Riverhead Books, 2009) is the award-winning religion correspondent for National Public Radio. She’s the recipient of the Templeton Foundation-Cambridge University Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion, and a Knight Fellowship at Yale Law School. Before joining NPR, she was a reporter at The Christian Science Monitor for 11 years.