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Our 25 in 25 series continues with longtime Commissioner of Agriculture and homegrown New Hampshirite Steve Taylor. For the last quarter century, Taylor has overseen the state’s farms, farmlands and all that’s produced from them. He retires this week. We’ll talk with Taylor about his extensive career as a farmer, newspaperman and public official, and how agriculture has changed in the Granite State over the past quarter century.

Guest

• Steve Taylor, New Hampshire Commissioner of Agriculture

As the Vice President of News for NPR, Ellen Weiss oversees 18 domestic bureaus, 18 foreign bureaus, over 400 staff members and more than 50 hours of news programming each week. Before being named to the post in April, she headed the NPR News National Desk and worked as Executive Producer for All Things Considered. Today she joins us to talk about the NPR news process and answer your calls and emails.

Guest

• Ellen Weiss, Vice President for News for National Public Radio

A Pulitzer Prize winning writer and poet, and a New Hampshire resident for over 31 years, Maxine Kumin has long been a poetic voice of and for the Granite State, writing about her Warner home and horse farm, the beautiful sights, smells and sounds of New Hampshire’s seasons and our Yankee philosophies. For the next installment of our 25 in 25 series, we talk to Maxine Kumin about how her writing, her career and her home state have changed over the last quarter century.

Guest

• Maxine Kumin, author, writer and poet. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Kumin has served as Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress (now known as US Poet Laureate) as well as a Poet Laureate for the State of New Hampshire.

Richard Louv is worried that this new “wired generation” is spending too many hours in front of the TV, playing video games and hooked into their cell phones, while their connection with nature has become almost extinct. Louv says this lack of a connection with woods, streams and trails has created an increase in obesity, attention-deficit disorder and depression. Richard Louv joins us to talk about what he calls “Nature Deficit Disorder” - how it's happened, who’s to blame, and its consequences.

Guest

• Richard Louv, columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune and author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”

The second in a two-part special this week on the Iraq war and the presidential race! We look now at the Republican candidates…who have been mostly supportive of going to Iraq in the first place, but critical of how the war has been handled since. Their positions run the gamut from immediate troop withdrawal to staying the course to a three state, one country solution to a gradual draw down of troops in favor of more Iraqi responsibility and involvement. Our guests will flesh out the differences and similarities of the candidates in the Republican field.

Guests

• Dean Spiliotes, New Hampshire-based political analyst, formerly with the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, and author of NHPoliticalCapital.com
• Bill Martel, Associate Professor of International Security Studies at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Diplomacy