Nope, no Radiohead here, but we do have Tal Ben-Shahar, and he’s just about as popular…at Harvard, anyway. Ben-Shahar is a professor of positive psychology — a field he pioneered that bridges the gap between psychology and self-help — and teaches an intro class to 1,400 students per semester, or about one-fifth of the student body. Impressive, no?

For the rest of us, Ben-Shahar has recently published his lectures in the form of Happier, a book that promises to make you love the life you live. Or something. He sat down with with Diane Rehm last week and explained just how exactly he teaches happiness: “Look at happiness as both a combination of meaning and pleasure,” the good doctor says. “Many people ask me, ’so, are you happy?’ and it’s very difficult to answer because it’s a continuum. I’m certainly happier now than I am 5 years ago, I know that.” When asked why students take his class, he answered, “They truly want to be happier. They’re doing well academically, socially, but they aren’t happier…everything that society tells us is necessary to be happy, they’re doing.” Uh huh.

For more on exactly what positive psychology entails, and the history of the class at Harvard, listen to the full interview.

The war in Iraq is the first in our nation’s history in which a majority of the tasks traditionally undertaken by the army have been outsourced, primarily by former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to KGB, a subsidiary of Halliburton. When KGB was first contracted to do logistical work, the sum agreed on was $6 million. Over the past four years, that amount has ballooned to $26 billion. What are the repercussions of such a thorough privatization of the war? That is the question asked by Dina Rasor in her book, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War.

Rasor sat down with Diane Rehm, and discussed the fact that in Iraq right now, there are more than 100 private contractors and that cost will be more than $1 billion this year. “People gripe about the cost of Iraqi reconstruction,” says Rasor, “that’s nothing compared to the cost of outsourcing everything.” She points out that there is nearly a 1:1 ratio now of soldiers and private contractors, with each topping out at around 130,000. What does that mean on the ground? “Commanders have less control. They’re going into hostile areas now, and there are no regulations for that.” Perhaps more alarming though, is the fact that these contractors are responsible for the infamous gear shortages. “Logistically, they’ll supply to the main bases, but they won’t go any farther than that. It’s too dangerous for them to justify it, so soldiers get left without food, water and gear.”

Uhhh…

Listen to the full interview.

In 2004, NPR correspondent Rob Gifford traveled across China, following a single highway, Route 312, west from Shanghai for nearly 3,000 miles. He observed the booming economy behind China’s rise to power, but also discovered overwhelming poverty and numerous other things that could undermine the country’s new-found role on the world stage. Part On the Road, part brilliant social commentary, his observations, originally a seven-part series on NPR, have been collected here in China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.

Gifford spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep late last month: “I’d just get on a bus, and you just find the four people sitting around you all have amazing stories about their life in the countryside or their life in the city. You know, everywhere you go, you just ask the people, ‘What are you doing? What’s your life like?’ And they just want to talk about it, and that’s really what the book is.”

Gifford stopped by The Diane Rehm Show earlier today, during which time he presented a mixture of humorous travel stories with his larger theories on the social and economic progressions of one of the most important countries in the world. Listen to the interview here and read the NPR article and excerpt here.

Tony Lagouranis, former U.S. interrogator, makes an appearance on Talk of the Nation to discuss Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq, a memoir on the tactics he used at Abu Ghraib, including stress positions, environmental manipulation, military dogs, sleep deprivation and, in one case, a mock execution.

In the interview, Lagouranis talks about his training as an interrogator and the shock and confusion he endured when he realized that the U.S. military was deliberately going against certain aspects of the Geneva Convention laws. He admits that the techniques in question never actually worked. “People only tell you things when they want to tell you things, and causing somebody pain, duress, is only going to strengthen their resolve.” He also entertains callers’ questions, during which he discusses the gray areas and moral issues he had to endure throughout his tour in Iraq, and whether the military’s disregard for the Geneva Convention was the reason why the scandal at Abu Ghraib happened.

Listen to the interview here.

Lagouranis also appeared on Diane Rehm early last week. Listen to that interview here.

Adoption is a fairly modern concept, stemming not from Dickensian “boy for sale!” moments in Oliver Twist, but from 1920s Memphis, where a woman named Georgia Tann began quite literally stealing and selling babies. Before this point, potential parents believed in eugenics, and that the sins of the parents— sex out of wedlock say—would be visited upon the child. There were still people willing to adopt, but they were mostly mothers unable to convince their husbands to undergo the process. Tann saw this as a business opportunity and went to great lengths to facilitate the adoption process, most notably falsifying documents to make the child appear of a higher pedigree, and also refuting the popular eugenics theory with her own “blank slate” idea, which stated that a child was a product of its environment.

Barbara Bisantz Raymond’s new book on the topic is Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption, and she recently appeared on Diane Rehm to discuss, orphanages, baby farms and a terrifying story in which Tann appears at a poor woman’s door, offers to take her ill child to the hospital, and then fakes the child’s death so that she might later sell it.

Listen to the interview here.

Jill Jonnes, author and New York historian, tackles her biggest project yet: the New York train system. Her newest book, Conquering Gotham, details the efforts of the Pennsylvania Railroad to bring a train system to New York some 100 years ago. The company had to overcome insane financial, logistical and engineering challenges; spar with Tammany Hall, the de facto political power of the city; and perhaps the greatest problem of all: how to tunnel beneath the Hudson and East Rivers?

Listen as Jonnes sits down with Diane Rehm and discusses the finer points of railroad building.

Tony Lagouranis joined the army just prior to 9/11 and was tapped to be an interrogator at among other places Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison where the United States’ current unorthodox interrogation methods were first uncovered.

While at first he was enthusiastic about his duties, he soon came to realize that when it came to the extraction of potentially important information pushing the legal envelope was accepted, even encouraged. His recount of the experience is Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq. (The title, by the way, is the name of an official tactic designed to terrify prisoners into divulging information.)

Lagouranis talks to Diane Rehm about why he feels the moral and strategic aspects of U.S. interrogation methods have failed and what the ramifications of that might be. Listen to the interview.

John Hemingway, grandson of the famous Ernest, recently published a memoir of sorts, Strange Tribe, in which he details the struggles of growing up beneath the mental illness of both his grandfather and parents. More specifically, though, the book deals with Ernest’s relationship with his son, John’s father, Gregory, who at first played into the Hemingway machismo, but later became a cross-dresser, and later still, a transsexual.

The narrative follows Gregory up until his death in 2001 at the Women’s Correctional Facility of the Miami Dade County Jail, and includes a series of unpublished correspondence between father and son.

Hemingway the Youngest sits down with Diane Rehm and discusses one hell of a family life. Listen in.