Today on Kresta - February 26, 2010

Talking about the Things That Matter Most on Feb. 26

4:00 – Chasing Miracles: The Crowley Family Journey of Strength, Hope, and Joy
We talk to John Crowley, the man who inspired the film Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, and Keri Russell—a father’s story of his determination to save the lives of his two youngest children born with a rare genetic disorder and finding hope, strength, and joy despite extraordinary challenges. When John and Aileen Crowley learned that their two youngest children had a rare and little understood genetic disorder, they didn't hope for miracles: they made them happen. In 1998, 15-month old Megan and 4-month old Patrick were diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare and fatal neuromuscular disorder that affects only a few thousand children worldwide, usually leaving them with little to no muscle function, enlarged hearts, and severe difficulty breathing. John Crowley was absolutely determined to find a treatment to save his children's lives. At the age of 31, he walked away from the corporate world to help co-found a start-up biotech company, focused exclusively on developing a treatment for Pompe.

4:30 – Kabul 24: The Story of a Taliban Kidnapping and Unwavering Faith in the Face of True Terror
We hear the amazing story of the capture and imprisonment of eight Western aid workers in Afghanistan by the Taliban. For three months in 2001, the desperate plight of aid workers kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan captured the attention of the world. With the growing specter of U.S. retaliation for 9/11, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden attempted to use their Western hostages as bargaining tools. What the captors did not count on was coming face-to-face with the enduring faith of people who know their only hope was in Christ. Kabul 24 revisits their grueling interrogations, their sham trials before the Taliban Supreme Court, their peril during the bombing of Kabul, and the crushing sense that the world had abandoned them. It reveals not only the eight Westerners' 105 days in captivity but also the gauntlet endured by their 16 Muslim coworkers who, after being taken to the notorious Pulicharki Prison, were beaten and tortured, having been accused by the Taliban of converting to Christianity. Author and filmmaker Henry Arnold joins us.

5:00 – How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
The world owes a debt to the Catholic Church that it doesn't even realize. The Church built, and sustains, Western Civilization. She has had a pivotal role in shaping Western civilization for the last two thousand years. Tom Woods joins us in studio to discuss how the father of atomic theory, the father of aviation, and the father of Egyptology were all Catholic priests; how Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith; how the Church was the great defender of the sanctity of human life and the individual against the state; and how the Church bestowed the most unique gift to the World what we now know as the university.