Tonight on Extension 720: The 77th Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, but before the Oscars are given out, the second most important award in the film business will be given out tonight—the Miltie. Will our experts agree with the Academy and choose Ray, Finding Neverland, Sideways, Million Dollar Baby or The Aviator as the best film? Or will they choose one of the many great films—such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Hotel Rwanda—that were unjustly ignored. Tune in to hear what GENE PHILLIPS and PENELOPE MESIC have to say about the best films of 2004.

Information on future programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

Milt's File will return on Monday.

Tonight on Extension 720: Dwight Eisenhower once remarked: “If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking . . .is freedom.” Though in theory this may be true, modern prisons are filled with violence and even murder. Tonight we will go inside the prison walls to discover what life is like for prisoners and their keepers. Our guests will be JAMES BRUTON, former warden at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park and author of the new book The Big House: Life inside a Supermax Security Prison, and JW FAIRMAN, former executive director of the Cook County Department of Corrections.

Information on future programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

THE U.S. WILL REMAIN "IN CHARGE" FOR MANY YEARS TO COME...say the authors of this important article in the new issue of Foreign Affairs. Or, if we do go into decline it won't be because of economic depletion due to the incurred costs of maintaining our supremacy.

A SHARP AND BITTER VIEW OF THE ATLANTIC POWERS RESPONSE TO THE BUSH VISIT...is provided, with predictable skepticism and sarcasm, by the master of disillusion, Mark Steyn writing for the U.K. Telegraph.

A "NEW YORK LIBERAL" STRUGGLES WITH "COGNITIVE DISSONANCE"...as he faces the disturbing truth (post-Iraq election) that Bush may have been right from the beginning. How, we wonder, will the kindred spirits who regularly read New York Magazine take this gross defection from their orthodoxy?

SCIENCE, RELIGION, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE JEWS...all figure in this striking review/essay in reaction to a new book about the Jewish pre-eminence in the human nature business.

ANNE APPLEBAUM GETS INTO THE HAHHVAHD DEBATE...and adds on a serious--and actually rather instructive--examination of the women-in-science question.

THE COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR'S BOOBY PRIZE...this week goes to the titled boobs at Rhode Island College. Here's the story from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on whose advisory board the present proprietor proudly serves.

DERBYSHIRE AMONG THE DIVERSITOIDS: This one, from the National Review, is going to offend some of our readers--but it does shed some honest reportorial light on the ritualized extremity of what Derbyshire (a grumpy, Waugh-style Brit, to be sure) considers to be a modern cult.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON...are memorialized here by another writer who also jazzed up the style of journalism, namely: Tom Wolfe writing the day after in the Wall Street Journal.

MIDDLE HITCHENS ON LATE BELLOW: We happened upon the former's review (of a few years ago) of the latter's last novel--which was, of course, a novelized memoir of his friendship with Alan Bloom. As usual, Hitchens provokes and thus delights.

THE CLARINET TRIO OF BRAHMS...is a late and deeply elegaic work. Here are two seperate performances and, in our judgment, both beautifully performed.

Tonight on the show: After the 7:00 Northwestern basketball game, join Extension 720 as we celebrate one of Chicago's great cultural institutions: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Our guests include DEBORAH CARD, president of the CSO, principal bass JOE GUASTAFESTE, assistant principal bassoon BILL BUCHMAN, and principal oboe MICHAEL HENOCH, who will discuss the orchestral life as well as play highlights from the current and upcoming seasons.

Information on upcoming programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

Milt's File wil return tomorrow.

Tonight on Extension 720: American culture stresses accumulation over actualization, and thus it is no surprise that our constant pursuit of wealth and material goods leaves us emotionally unfulfilled. Our need for better clothes, bigger cars, larger homes and perfect bodies does not merely damage ourselves, but America as a whole. But why is America uniquely fixated on consumer culture? And what can we do to change this destructive pattern? Tonight, PETER WHYBROW, professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral science at UCLA, will address these questions and more. His latest book—American Mania: When More Is Not Enough—tackles the problem of consumerism head on and prescribes nothing short of a complete reevaluation of the American Dream as the cure for our unique mania.

Information on future programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

SOME ENCOURAGING WORDS FROM BRITAIN'S LEADING PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL: Paul Johnson surely deserves that title and the U.S. probably deserves this encomium from him, as does its embattled president.

IS IT STILL A MYSTERY WRAPPED IN A RIDDLE INSIDE AN ENIGMA? Russia, that is. No, says the Brookings fellow who authored this report--but to explain the forced drift away from democracy is not, by any means, to find it acceptable or inevitable.

WHEN FORMER COMRADES COME TOGETHER...to discuss their days in the British Communist Party and their present political views, the observers from the BBC are there...and here is what they did--in point of fact--observe.

FROM STALIN TO CATHERINE THE GREAT: Simon Montefiore did a fascinating book on Stalin last year--and discussed it with us on Extension 720. Here is his review/essay on a lesser but still memorable Russian tyrant.

A CONTESTED ELECTION AT DARTMOUTH...suggests that it is not impossible that its 30-year-long struggle over the advocacy rights of student conservatives may be coming to an end. The proprietor of this place takes some special interest having served some of his early years as a member of that faculty.

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRAGICOMEDY AT HAHVAHHD: This commentary by David Frum at National Review properly relates the faculty assault upon Larry Summers to the more general problem of political intolerance (not mere "correctness") in American university life.

IS NOAM CHOMSKY AN ESTABLISHED PRESENCE...in American academic life? He surely has a cult following in the U.S. and in many other countries that specialize in hating America. Four close readers of his work are gathered together by Front Page magazine to examine his "thought" and his following.

NEWSWEEK SHOULD BE COMMENDED...for telling it like it apparently is, namely: suicidal renewal of "unprotected," horde-sex that is generating a renewed HIV-AIDS epidemic among male homosexuals.

THE GREAT MOZART TWENTIETH...is given a rousing performance here by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra conducted by David Atherton...yet the second movement Romance is as moving as any we have ever heard.