Ian Pickus

Musician Richie Havens died at 72 on Monday. The soft-spoken singer and guitarist stayed on the road for 45 years until ill health finally forced him to give up touring in 2012.

It's all about 33 on this week's show, featuring resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel and WAMC's Ian Pickus.

Usually when we hear from Paula Poundstone on WAMC, she’s making us laugh on a Saturday morning on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, where she is a regular panelist, or stopping by Lake Wobegon on A Prairie Home Companion. But she also spends plenty of time on the road performing her unique brand of stand-up. Poundstone has been honing her live act for more than three decades, between writing essays and books, and occasional acting.

A short time ago, WAMC’s Ian Pickus spoke with Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal, a longtime Democrat from the first district, who says he has been in contact with the rest of the delegation and the White House as the commonwealth considers its next steps following yesterday’s deadly attacks on the Boston Marathon.

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel focus on shots this week.

Last week's challenge
Start with the last name of a famous American military man. Rearrange the letters into three words than could have been newspaper headlines about this person four years apart. Who is the person and what is the headline?

Surrounded by male voices day in and day out on his hugely popular morning ESPN radio show “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” longtime sports anchor Mike Greenberg is perhaps the last person you would expect to write a 21st century epistolary novel centering on three women in various states of crisis — and that’s before things get really serious.

Unveiling a new ethics reform package in New York City today, a week after a pair of corruption scandals rocked Albany, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he doesn’t support term limits as part of a push to cut down on fraud by public officials. Analysis by good-government groups shows incumbents in the New York state legislature are overwhelmingly reelected.

In his first major address since last week’s corruption scandals in Albany involving the arrests of state Senator Malcolm Smith, Assemblyman Eric Stevenson and several other political leaders on both sides of the aisle, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a new ethics reform package in New York City Tuesday afternoon.

Cuomo’s proposal will empower district attorneys across the state to pursue public corruption cases.

One of the most contentious areas of debate over the expansion of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas concerns a spike in seismic activity in unlikely areas that have begun fracking nearby. Some alarmed scientists say containment wells are putting undue pressure on faults deep underground. But industry interests disagree – that is, when they say anything at all.

Few, if any, people have more influence of the sound of popular music today as Ryan Tedder, a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. And as the frontman for OneRepublic, Tedder has helmed the genre-bending, Colorado-based band for more than a decade, enjoying platinum sales and a 2009 Grammy nomination as the band rose from MySpace to MTV and beyond.