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Scott talks with T Bone Burnett, soundtrack producer for the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? This week Mr. Burnett released a new CD called Down From The Mountain on Lost Highway Records (www.losthighway.com). It's a collection of songs from the O Brother sound track recorded last year at the Ryman Auditorium in Nasvhille.

Small-town American life has been idealized for generations, but since the 1920s, the populations of most rural area have actually been in decline. And with fewer residents, small towns have seen their economies shrink as well. NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports from Broken Bow, Nebraska, where a new program is trying to counter that trend by training rural entrepreneurs.

Polls show that Americans are worrying more about their personal privacy. With easy access to personal information via the Internet and computer databases, are threats to privacy worse than ever? NPR's Bob Garfield ponders privacy issues.

An industry trade group reported that manufacturing activity in the U.S. fell in July for the 12th straight month. In California's Silicon Valley, big companies that helped create the high-tech boom are shedding thousands of jobs.

In the first of a two-part series on the FBI's past directors, NPR's Barbara Bradley profiles J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's best-know director. Hoover reformed the FBI's reputation for scandal and corruption and pushed it to a new position of prominence. But his accomplishments have been largely overshadowed by his later abuses of power.

This week, we take a look at the city of Buffalo, New York, both past and present. The tour begins with the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, which heralded Buffalo as the city of the future, a place where hydropower made the widespread use of electricity possible. Mark Goldman, author of City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York, serves as Liane Hansen's tour guide of present-day Buffalo. Their first view of the city is from Canada, where Goldman says you can see Buffalo's long history layed out before you. Next, they venture down Main Street, where we meet singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, who has based her company, Righteous Babe Records, in her hometown of Buffalo.

Scott talks with Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Roman Catholic nun who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989. She is the founder of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition.

In the fourth installment of her series on favorite summers, NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg talks with Andrew X. Pham about the summer he first returned to his homeland of Vietnam. Pham says that visiting the country 20 years after his family fled the Vietcong was painful and deeply cathartic. (7:37) {Book Information: Pham, Anderew X. Catfish and Mandala : A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999}.

NPR's Alex Chadwick continues the National Geographic-NPR Radio Expedition about the Tortugas Ecological Reserve near the Florida Keys. Chadwick talks with the scientists studying coral reef life in the underwater wilderness area, and tries not to get seasick.

One part hip-hop, two parts jazz and a whole lotta Philly — that's what happens when you mix three master musicians, unrehearsed jamming and a risk-taking producer. Scott Simon talks to bassist Christian McBride and producer Aaron Levinson of The Philadelphia Experiment about their experimental new album.