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There's a big Hollywood party tonight to mark the upcoming birthday of George Burns. He will be 100 years old this Saturday. We play excerpts from a 1940s Burns & Allen radio show - which foreshadows George Burns longevity in a comic way. (3:30) (

Noah talks with the Irish musician known as Enya (

On this observance of the birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., we hear an excerpt of a letter written by King while he was imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He is responding to a letter written by several white clergymen who criticized King's acts of civil disobedience and suggested his civil rights agenda could best be achieved in the courts. The exceprt is read by actor Wilson Cain III.

Robert talks with Dr. Robert Williams, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, about newly discovered information about galaxies. Based on preliminary data captured by the Hubble telescope, there are believed to be 5 times as many galaxies as we thought until now. Instead of 10 billion galaxies, the sample of the universe studied suggests there are more like 50 billion. Also, the galaxies closer to us are more distinct in shape. The older galaxies, 8 to 10 billion light years from earth, are amorphous in shape.

Danny speaks with NPR's Mara Liasson about a speech President Clinton made today to troops at the U.S. Army base in Baumholder, Germany. Those troops will be the first Americans to go to Bosnia as part of the NATO peacekeeping force. The President told them: "If you are threatened with attack, you may respond immediately and with decisive force." Mara says that among the troops and their families, there is some concern about having to go to Bosnia during the Christmas season.

NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that often, serious debate on Capitol Hill doesn't get a whole lot of news coverage, for it is the partisan stuff that really attracts the journalists. But that doesn't mean that members of Congress don't put aside politics and really dig into an issue in a serious manner. Kenyon found one such example this week in the House Judiciary Committee, which debates issues of refugees and political asylum.

Jacki talks with Colonel Piers Wood of the Center for Defense Information about the sucess or failure of U.S. troop deployments since the early 1980's. Col. Wood says military mission where their is a clearly defined objective have met with sucess. It's the mission such as peacekeeping where goals are not clearly stated, where U.S. Troops have had problems.

Daniel talks to NPR's Joe Palca about flu season. There are more cases of the flu in the winter than in the summer, but researchers are not sure why. Research also suggests that flu shots are beneficial for all people, not just the elderly.

Daniel talks to Margaret Wertheim, author of the book, "Pythagoras' Trousers." In it, she argues that because math and physics, more than any other sciences, are linked to religion, women have been systematically excluded from their studies in a more profound way than form other sciences.

Daniel talks with Adam Raphael, author of 'Ultimate Risk', about the financial crisis the British insurance company Lloyd's of London is currently facing. Raphael says Lloyds, known for 300 years as a reliable and respected feature of British establishment, is now caught in a scandal of corruption and fraud that will cost investors millions. And will have ramifications for insurance companies in the United States as well. The book's publisher is Four Walls, Eight Windows in New York.