It's down to the wire in the Massachusetts Senate race to fill the seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Democrat Martha Coakley has seen her double-digit lead over Republican Scott Brown evaporate in the past two weeks. Here and Now's Fred Thys joins us to discuss the election which could determine the fate of President Obama's plans for health care reform.

We'll speak with Gail Chaddock, Capitol Hill correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor on the behind-the-scenes scramble by the White House and congressional Democrats to salvage the President's health care reform package in case Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts.

Spin the radio dial in Boston and you'll hear a lot of time being spent on some stations encouraging listeners to vote for Scott Brown. We'll speak to T. Barton Carter, an expert in broadcast law, at Boston University's College of Communication, about the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that the broadcast networks give time to contrasting points of view on issues of importance to the public. It was abolished in 1987.

Black Americans are more upbeat about their lives now than they've been in more than a quarter century, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. The rise in optimism has been most evident over the past two years. We talk with the Pew's director of survey research, Scott Keeter, about what the findings say about racial attitudes in the U.S.

The 2009 film about a fictional bomb disposal squad in Iraq is generating considerable Oscar buzz. It's already won Critics' Choice, New York, and Los Angeles Film critics awards for Best Picture and Best Director. We revisit a conversation that producer Emiko Tamagawa had with filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow when the movie first came out last summer.