Two years ago Concord attorney Paul Hodes defeated a popular Republican incumbent to represent New Hampshire’s 2nd District. In his first term Hodes has been elected president of his freshmen congressional class and served on the National Security and Foreign Affairs committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Now he faces Republican challenger Jennifer Horn for his seat. We’ll talk with Paul Hodes about his two years in Congress and why he wants another two.

Guest

• Paul Hodes, Democratic congressman from New Hampshire's 2nd District

He’s a veteran of 14 years in the New Hampshire legislature as well as the Iraq war. Senator Joseph Kenney was born and bred in New Hampshire to a small business family. He was a member of the State House for four terms and in 2002 was elected to the State Senate. As a lieutenant colonel in the Marine reserves, Kenney was called to serve in Iraq during his term last year. Now Joseph Kenney wants to be New Hampshire's next Governor. We’ll talk with him about the campaign, as well as where he stands on issues from the economy to energy to health care.

Guest

• Joe Kenney, Republican candidate for governor and state senator from Wakefield

Candidates criticize each other on the national economic rescue plan, taxes, social security and energy.

Today on Word of Mouth, we look at a web application that’s growing in popularity, even if it’s hard to explain why. Twitter is a social networking site with a minimalist approach. Users are asked to participate simply by writing what they’re doing at any given moment. If you’re baking a loaf of bread, twitter it. Getting ready for work? Twitter it. Thinking about buying a new sofa? Let the world know.

You have a small amount of space to type exactly what you’re doing at any given moment. Non-Twitter users usually scratch their head when they first hear about it. But once you try it out, it’s easy to find yourself hooked.

It started as a way for friends to follow the minutiae of each other’s lives. But now it’s become a window on public opinion – you can search for terms like “Wall Street” or “football” and see what thousands of people are saying about those topics. And now with campaign season heating up, Twitter is becoming the hot place to tap into the national political dialogue. Even some journalists were twittering during the first Presidential debate, including public radio hosts like Brooke Gladstone and John Hockenberry, sharing their thoughts with the world in real time.

New York Times editor Saul Hansell recently wrote about Twitter and the elections, and joins us with more.

Word of Mouth launched its Twitter page today! You can follow us at twitter.com/wordofmouth. Tell us how you use Twitter. For example, a listener named Christopher wrote to tell us that Twitter has evolved for him from a glorified text messaging service to a constant conversation with a growing number of friends. He also says it keeps him much more aware during this political season.

If the digital chatter flying around global computer servers and networks at this moment were visible, it would be difficult to move without bumping into it.

With every Google search we type, every email we send, every pass through a toll booth, and with every loaf of bread we pick up at the supermarket, we add more weight to our bloated digital dossiers - the numerical profile that help predict what we’ll buy, how we’ll vote, our potential for productivity or criminal behavior, and who we’re likely to date. Companies like Yahoo and Google are harvesting an average of 2,500 details about us every month. So who is looking at all this information?

Writer Stephen Baker calls them the Numerati. They are the numbercrunchers who read the minds of the people based on the ones and zeros we send flying around the Earth. His new book combs through what the Numerati look for - not just to target us, but to change our behavior. Stephen Baker has been writing for BusinessWeek for 20 years, and he joins us now to talk about his new book, The Numerati.

Watch Stephen Baker introduce The Numerati:

(Photo by Frédéric Solenthaler)