When this year’s Presidential Scholars gathered at the White House last month for an awards ceremony with President Bush, they gave him something he hadn’t anticipated—a handwritten letter calling on the United States to reject torture and treat detainees humanely. We’ll speak with Mari Oye, a new high school graduate from Wellesley, Mass. who organized the protest among her fellow Presidential Scholars, about Bush’s reaction, where she got the idea, and how her grandparents’ experience in a Japanese internment camp during World War II has influenced her activism.

In June of this year, a lawsuit on behalf of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange was argued in front of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, and a delegation of Vietnamese victims came to the U.S. to support their case. A few days ago, one of the delegation members, Nguyen Van Quy, passed away due to illnesses stemming from his exposure to the chemical. We talk to one of the organizers of the delegation about the passing of Mr. Quy and about the lawsuit, which charges the chemical companies that profited from the manufacture of Agent Orange, including Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and 35 others, with knowingly providing the government with a poisonous agent to be sprayed indiscriminately on civilians.

Set in suburb of San Francisco, Colma: The Musical follows three best friends, just out of high school, as they make the awkward transition into adulthood in small, dead-end town. One is an aspiring actor, another has just been kicked out of his house for being gay, and a third struggles with adolescent pangs while running a side business making fake IDs. The film features thirteen original musical numbers by H.P. Mendoza and marks the directorial debut of Richard Wong, who will join us in the studio.