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Linda Wertheimer and Robert Siegel read letters from All Things Considered listeners. (3:00) To contact All Things Considered , write to All Things Considered Letters, 635 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20001. The e-mail address is atc@npr.org.

No one would think to charge Starbucks Coffee with selling drugs for the caffeine it distributes every day. But David Courtwright, author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, says psychoactives found in alcohol, coffee and tobacco are just as much drugs as psychoactives found in opiates, marijuana and cocaine. Robert Siegel talks to David Courtwright about the book. (9:30) Forces of Habit is published by Harvard University Press, March 2001.

NPR's Richard Gonzales reports on state and federal reaction to a plan to provide California with power during the summer months. The proposal was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) earlier this week. But California Gov. Gray Davis, and President Bush, are far from happy.

Commentator Stephen Lynch is the pop culture critic at the Orange County Register. He says after actor Robert Downey Jr.'s latest arrest, attempts to portray him as a tragic Shakespearean hero don't make sense. He's not that great an actor.

A New Jersey state supreme court justice will not face impeachment proceedings. Justice Peter Verniero is accused of misleading the public about the use of racial profiling by state police, but a top lawmaker has said he will block any attempt at impeachment. Eugene Sonn reports from member station WHYY in Philadelphia.

NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on the city of Caral, Peru, which some archeologists are claiming is the oldest city in the Americas. The buildings of the first city are said to 4,600 years old. That dates it to around the time of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.

NPR's Madeline Brand reports on the House debate over the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act." The bill passed in the House by a vote of 252-to-172. President Bush has said he'll sign it if it crosses his desk.

In the final installment of our Changing Face of America series on the changing face of sports and society, NPR's Uri Berliner travels to Orange County, California, to see how girls fast-pitch softball has changed. The game has become big business, with highly paid pitching and hitting instructors, and super elite travel teams that all but assure scholarships to major universities. But gone too are the days when softball was just a game, and many girls are feeling the pressure to succeed in the sport on and off the field.

NPR's Rick Karr reports on the new encryption system for online music and the group of Princeton professors who cracked the code and now have the record industry up in arms.

In most states, if you are poor and disabled, you can get Medicaid -- the state-run medical care program for the poor that is partly financed by the federal government. But in Indiana, it's not necessarily so. In Indiana, if there is a treatment that would fix your disability, such as a hip replacement or open heart surgery, you are not considered disabled. That's true even if you can't afford the treatment. NPR's Barbara Bradley reports on this catch-22, and how the Indiana Supreme Court may finally decide a case on the issue that has been in the courts since 1992.