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A hedge-fund manager says a giant company is a fraud. The company fights back. On today's show, we talk to everybody. And we consider what it means when an investor bets that a company will fail.

The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plays a game called "But I meant well, your Majesty." Three questions about gifts given to Queen Elizabeth II.

The Ireland native is best known as a filmmaker — he directed The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire and the Showtime series The Borgias — but he began his career as a writer. His 1980 novel, The Past, has been reissued in the United States.

Terry Francona led the Boston Red Sox to victory in the 2004 and 2007 World Series, but was let go after the team's late-season tailspin in 2011. Francona talks about the book he co-wrote with Dan Shaughnessy, Francona: The Red Sox Years.

MI6 may be the world's most legendary secret service, but fiction and film can't uncover its actual history. For that, you need BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera and his new book, The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6.

With candy bars or a pack of gum costing a dollar or more these days, perhaps it's time to get rid of pennies and nickels altogether. The problem, NPR's Scott Simon says, is picking which historic profiles should get the boot.

Poetry By Heart is a new program in which students memorize two of 130 poems and recite them in a contest. Poet Jean Sprackland, who helped compile the list, says memorizing a poem makes it "something that lives with you forever."

Commentator Jimi Izrael shares his thoughts on why the Big Easy is returning to its old self, in terms of crime. Izrael says some of the blame lies with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's failure to help the city's poor. Izrael is a columnist for the Web site AOL Black Voices.

Michele Norris talks with Lolis Eric Elie, a columnist for the New Orleans Times Picayune. Elie has been covering this week's elections in New Orleans, which include a mayoral run-off between incumbent Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

When New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the Big Easy should be a "chocolate city" because God wanted it that way, many reacted with dismay. Commentator John McCann wasn't bothered so much by the idea of a majority black New Orleans -- he was more disturbed by Nagin's attempt to read God's mind.