Matthew Shepard's Mother, and Enviro-Futurist Stewart Brand

With President Obama set to sign a hate crimes law on Wednesday, the mother of one of the two men whose names are on that legislation came in to talk about the law, and her son's life and death.

The bill bears two names: one is James Byrd, the black man who, in 1998, was chained to the back of a pickup truck in Texas and dragged to his death by being driven for three miles. The other is Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student who was beaten and left to die three months after James Byrd was murdered. He was found near death, his hands lashed to a fencepost, outside of Laramie. His mother's book puts real life to her son's name -- not an easy life, but one that's always been important to his family long before it became a watchword for the toll of homophobia. If you missed the interview with his mother, Judy, I would really suggest that you take a chance to listen to it here on the website.

Stewart Brand, is a ''founding green,'' and one of the minds behind the seminal Whole Earth Catalog. His new support for nuclear energy as a cleaner alternative to coal, and his endorsement of genetically modified foods, has put him at odds with some environmentalists, but he's okay with that. At 70, he's trying to think in terms of centuries, not decades.

My interview with him followed a slightly puzzling segment about how Americans' belief in global warming has slipped dramatically even in the course of 18 months. The Pew Center pollster made the point that people's political priorities often shift -- the economy versus the war in Iraq or Afghanistan versus the environment -- but what that doesn't explain in why fewer people should put credence in global warming, period. There's been a lot of playing around with numbers and dates by those wanting to undercut the campaign to slow global warming, and maybe that's having an impact. And if people are merely judging by the weather outside their front doors, they may dispute the findings of scientists whose business it is to track the temperature of the entire planet.

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Next time, President Obama's senior adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett, and the decline of the deli.

-- Patt Morrison