Talk of the Nation on WLRN

March Madness is officially here. Starting Tuesday, 68 college teams will compete for a spot at the NCAA men's championship on April 8. As millions across the country fill out brackets and enter office pools, this season has left longtime sports columnist Dave Kindred yearning for the good old days.

In a piece in The Washington Post, he argues that college basketball has lost its way.

Kathy Reichs, the writer and scientist behind the TV show Bones, is back with a new novel for young adults. Code: A Virals Novel stars Tory Brennan, great-niece of Reich's famed crime-solving heroine Tempe Brennan. Reichs discusses the book, co-written with Brendan Reichs.

Microbes may once have happily existed on the surface of Mars, according to chemical analysis of a sedimentary rock in the Red Planet's Gale crater. NASA geologist and exobiologist David Blake discusses evidence for an ancient freshwater lake in the crater, and describes the mineral-chomping microbes that may have thrived there.

By combing through 100 million search queries on Bing, Yahoo and Google, Microsoft Research Lab co-director Eric Horvitz and his colleagues were able to discover a previously unknown interaction between two commonly prescribed drugs. Horvitz says the method might detect dangerous drug interactions earlier than the FDA's warning system.

After Vice President Joe Biden used the term "malarkey" in a 2012 debate, searches for the word in online dictionaries surged. Now that dictionaries are readily available with a mouse click or finger tap, dictionary publishers can track the correlation between word searches and current events.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics, including social mobility, romantic comedies, and Japan's recovery from the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

North Korea scrapped the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, escalating fears of a preemptive nuclear attack on the U.S. Tuft University Korean studies professor Sung-Yoon Lee discusses this precarious moment for North Korea, its neighbors and the international community.

Jurors in a New York federal court found a former New York City police officer guilty of plotting to kidnap and cook his wife and other women. The defense argued that Gilberto Valle never acted on his fantasies, and described the verdict as a case of thought prosecution.

Cardinals at the Vatican chose Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pope. He will take the papal name Francis and is the first pope from South America. NPR's Neal Conan talks with guests about the significance of the event around the world.

From the ongoing budget battle to Sen. Carl Levin's retirement announcement, NPR's Political Junkie Ken Rudin recaps the week in politics. NPR's Phillip Reeves provides an update from Rome as cardinals elected a new pope.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. In many parts of the country, coal has been king for many years, but that's changing. Ten years ago, coal fired half the U.S. electrical power plants. Now that's about a third and dropping. As coal companies switch to cheaper and cleaner natural gas, some coal companies in the east are closing mines and laying off workers.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. In 18 states and the District of Columbia, marijuana is medicine by popular vote. A lot of doctors don't see it that way. They say pot presents problems that include potency, efficacy, corruption, and of course it's still illegal under federal law.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.

And now the Opinion Page. The release of millions of academic papers by Internet activist Aaron Swartz raised many questions about how much access the public should have to scholarship, questions that took on new dimensions after his suicide. At the time of his death, Swartz faced federal charges of wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

At its best, the Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But Web-savvy news junkies have known for a long time that reader feedback can often turn nasty. Now a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that rude comments on articles can even change the way we interpret the news.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Here's some news to raise a glass to: the idea that red wine may help us live longer and healthier lives. Well, it got a new boost this week. According to a team of researchers, a compound found in the skin of grapes could be an antidote to aging by slowing down the process and even fending off disease and inflammation associated with getting old. It's the topic of a new study published this week in the journal Science.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. By now I'm sure you've heard about the real-life nightmare of a Florida man named Jeff Bush. As he lay sleeping last week, a gaping hole opened beneath his home, swallowing him alive. His body was never found. The search has now been called off, and the sinkhole that devoured him is now his grave.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Now for nightmare bacteria. They defy all our antibiotics, even our latest drugs. This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that strains of these completely drug-resistant bacteria have quadrupled in the last decade or so, and the bugs have been lurking around in hospitals, hundreds of hospitals around the nation.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary, in Washington. Neal Conan is away. It's an American story as old as Horatio Alger: Hard work, determination and presto, you can change your station in life. But increasingly many Americans find themselves stuck where they are on the economic ladder, that American dream just out of reach.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

Yesterday, Republican Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, filibustered the Senate floor for nearly 13 hours in protest of the administration's use of drones.

SENATOR RAND PAUL: This is not about partisanship. I have allowed the president to pick his political appointees, but I will not sit quietly and let him shred the Constitution. I cannot sit at my desk quietly and let the president say that he will kill Americans on American soil who are not actively attacking a country.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington. The Centers for Disease Control is warning of another deadly superbug. This one, known as CRE, ultimately left seven patients dead after an outbreak in 2011 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. CDC director Tom Frieden has called the bug a nightmare bacteria. It can resist even the strongest antibiotics.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington. Jeb Bush switches his views, Romney remarks on his regrets, and the president says he can't call on the force. It's Wednesday and time for...

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: A Jedi mind meld...

NEARY: Edition of the political junkie.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDINGS)

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary.

And as I've just mentioned, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died Tuesday. He led his country for 14 years. A passionate defender of the poor, Chavez had closed ties with Cuba's Fidel Castro, but alienated the United States with his socialist agenda. His politics reverberated throughout the region.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Now this week, doctors announced a breakthrough in HIV research. A Mississippi toddler who was born with the virus appears to have been cured. Doctors credit an aggressive regimen of anti-retroviral drugs administered just after the girl was born. This is the second well-documented case of someone being cured. The other involved a middle-aged San Francisco man who received a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was genetically resistant to HIV.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Ari Shapiro, in Washington. Neal Conan is away. Last week, two pro football players asked the Supreme Court to support same-sex marriage. It was an unusual moment for the NFL. Not long ago, nobody in pro sports talked publicly about sexual orientation, and now the issue seems to be everywhere.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Ari Shapiro in Washington, filling in for Neal Conan. It's a bird! It's a plane! Nope, it's an unmanned aircraft, also called a drone. Some can be as small as a microwave. Others can recognize a tennis shoe from 60,000 feet above the ground. And now, law enforcement agencies across the country are getting approval from the federal government to use these mechanical eyeballs here in the U.S.

Ed. Note: This article was originally published Nov. 2, 2011.

Photographer Jon Crispin has a fascination with things that are left behind. Those are his exact words. "Even as a kid I was trying to get into places I shouldn't go," he says on the phone.

In the '80s he was basically given free rein to document abandoned asylums in New York state. He has also worked closely and often with the New York State Museum, including on some Sept. 11 preservation projects.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Ari Shapiro in Washington; Neal Conan is away. Year by year, cities are raising fees and cutting public services to stay out of financial trouble. For some cities, that's just not enough. Detroit projects a $200 million deficit this year, and the city owes $14 billion in long-term obligations. The state's Republican Governor Rick Snyder says there's probably no city more financially challenged in the entire United States.