Doug Fabrizio

Humans spend nearly a third of their lives sleeping. Most of us love sleep, and yet we have little idea how it affects us. Indeed, sleep is largely a mystery. Even scientistsdon’t know why, exactly, we need to sleep. The reporter David Randall tours the Land of Nod in a new book, exploring the odd, sometimes disturbing and often fascinating things that happen when we’re in dreamland. That’s actually the name of the book—Dreamland—and Randall joins Doug on Tuesday to talk about it.

When Charlie Schroeder was faced with a long march and cold nights at the Battle of Stalingrad, he went AWOL. Only it wasn’t 1942 and Schroeder was able to hitch a ride to a nearby Colorado hotel. It was his first foray into historical reenactment, and over the next 15 months, he tried his hand at everything from the Roman legion to the Union Army. He’s written a book about his adventures, and Monday, he joins Doug to tell stories of the people who immerse themselves in the events that shaped our world.

Millions of years ago, geological forces ripped the world to pieces. Christopher Columbus changed all that though. When he sailed across the Atlantic, he began a process that knit the world back together ecologically and economically. It meant there would be tomatoes in Italy and coffee in Brazil. The journalist Charles Mann says while the costs and benefits are inseparable, 1493 marked the birth of the world we live in today. We spoke with Mann earlier this year about his book called "1493."

On Thursday, Doug chats with “LandSpeed” Louise Noeth about the lure and thrill of land speed racing. Noeth is an authority on both the world’s fastest land vehicles and the track they set their records on, Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. In the second half of the show, Doug is joined by Laura Beitler, Vice President of Compliance with Mary Kay Cosmetics and Joseph Mariano, President of the Direct Selling Association. We've invited them to respond to Tuesday's conversation on multi-level marketing companies.

The late baseball Hall-of-Famer Willie Stargell once described the knuckleball as being like "throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor's mailbox." It's a pitch so slow and so unpredictable that no one wants anything to do with it. Wednesday, we continue our Through the Lens documentary series with the directors of the film Knuckleball! Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern join us to talk about the craft, tradition, and beauty of baseball as expressed through this one pitch.

Looking for financial independence? Part-time work from home? In the August issue of Harper’s, Virginia Sole-Smith puts Mary Kay cosmetics under the microscope, and she says it’s a business that preys on desperate housewives with the promise of glamour and extra income. The reality of network marketing though is often sub-minimum wage, escalating debt and the pressure to recruit more people. Tuesday, Sole-Smith joins us, along with Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones, for a look at the high price of “easy” income.

In America, the single life is seen as a sad, anti-social and temporary state, lasting only long enough for us to find the right partner with whom to strike up a loving relationship. In a new book, Michael Cobb rallies to the defense of single people and goes on the attack against the dominion of coupledom. He detects a "wound" at the base of romantic relationship and writes that our negative attitude towards singles is toxic to both our culture and our relationships. Cobb joins Doug on Monday to make his case for the single life.

A few years ago, David Finch’s marriage was on the skids. Moments of joy and affection between he and his wife, Kristen, had become rare. One day, Kristen sprung a 150-question quiz on David. It was an informal test for Asperger syndrome, and David aced it. The diagnosis explained David’s long list of quirks and compulsions, and set him on a quest to better understand himself and to become a better husband. His book is called The Journal of Best Practices and he’ll talk with Doug about it.

Who hasn’t watched a bird soaring on high, swooping through the sky, and wondered what it would feel like to fly on feathered wings? In his book Bird Sense, the behavioral ecologist Tim Birkhead takes an inside look at the life of birds. He details the extraordinary senses, emotions and abilities of robins, finches, ducks, chickens and other avian friends. Birkhead joins Doug on Thursday to examine what it’s like to be a bird and what it's like to share a planet with such utterly different and yet recognizably similar creatures.

Wednesday on RadioWest, we're talking about the value of online comments. Some see listener or reader comments as the great democratizer of journalism. Others feel more like Bob Garfield of NPR's "On the Media" who calls them "frustrating, maddening and extremely discouraging." Appropriately enough, we're hoping to hear from you: do you read online comments? Do you throw your opinion in the mix? Do you learn something when you read the comment section or are you spoiling for a fight?