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As part of NPR's Changing Face of America series, a report on how the practice of adoption is changing. Traditionally, adoptions have kept the identities of both biological and adoptive parents secret from each other. But increasingly families are entering into so-called "open adoptions" where they remain in some degree of contact with the birthmother as the child grows up. NPR's Neva Grant profiles a family in Portland, Oregon, that has two openly adopted children.

Many music fans perceive electronica as cold and impersonal. Washington, DC's Thievery Corporation is out to change all that. Producers Eric Hilton and Rob Garza borrow from such disparate styles as jazz, reggae, exotica and bossa nova; and merge them with dance-club beats. Liane joins the men behind Thievery Corporation at the swanky Eighteenth Street Lounge. (16:30) {NOTE: The new Thievery Corporation CD is titled The Mirror Conspiracy ESL Music catalog # 33}

O. Winston Link, whose thousands of photographs of American railroads and rural culture documented an era, has died at the age of 86. Noah talks to Katherine Dodson, a church organist in Rural Retreat, Va., who was once photographed by Link, playing her organ as the Birmingham Special blew its whistle.

Commentator Bob Sloan talks about his strong ties to both his family and his Appalachian home.

Mark Pachter, director of the National Portrait Gallery, finds a donor to help the Smithsonian Insitution purchase Gilbert Stuart's 1796 portrait of George Washington. His ability to raise more than $20 million for the effort is a tribute to the lasting appeal of an iconic image.

Writer William Loiseaux faints -- frequently. He has done quite a bit of scientific, linguistic, cultural and historical research on the act of fainting, and has come to feel proud of his "gift." He's written a treatise of sorts on the topic. It's called In Defense of Fainting. William Loizeaux's essay was originally published, in a much longer version, in The American Scholar.

The former President gives us a walking tour of his family's farm near Plains, Georgia, now a national historic site, and talks to Lisa about what it was like to grow up there in the 1930s. Mr. Carter's latest book is called An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.

Xena: Warrior Princess, the popular action-adventure show starring Lucy Lawless as the fierce -- but repentent -- warrior princess is ending after six years. The show was enormously popular because of its strong, sympathetic female characters, its humor, its fight scenes, and its creative risk-taking. Scott Simon talks with Lucy Lawless; Rob Tapert, the creator and executive producer of the series; and Sharon Delaney, editor of the official Xena fan club about the popularity and controversies surrounding the show.

Singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant has a new CD out called Motherland. She and her band stop to chat with Scott Simon, and to play some music.

December is the last chance for Medicare's 39 million members to decide how they want to receive their health care for 2002. Unless Congress acts in the coming days, Medicare beneficiaries will be able to change their health plans only once until 2003. But advocates for seniors say this sweeping new "lock-in" could catch millions by surprise.