Talk of the Nation on Xtra HD

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CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Celeste Headlee, in Washington. Neal Conan is away. At the urging of local groups, President Obama went home to Chicago last week to talk about urban violence in a city that recorded more than 40 murders just last month, among them the high-profile killing of Hadiya Pendleton.

This interview was originally broadcast on Dec. 13, 2010.

The HeLa cell line — one of the most revolutionary tools of biomedical research — has played a part in some of the world's most important medical advances, from the polio vaccine to in vitro fertilization.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Flora Lichtman's here, switched hats again.

FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Switching gears.

FLATOW: Switching gears, and our gear is our Video Pick of the Week, and it's a real - as always, a real cool one.

LICHTMAN: This one, yeah, very cool. We're to the earthly pleasures now - part - segment of the show. It's about art. We went and visited the studio of artist Toni Dove, and she makes the art - the kind of art that's just my style. It satisfies my craving for fantasy, and also my real nerdy, geeky side.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Early this morning...

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FLATOW: You heard it, a meteor exploded over Central Russia. It rattled buildings, shattered glass over a wide area, causing hundreds of injuries estimated at 900 or more at this hour. And at this very moment another asteroid, half the size of a football field, is speeding towards our planet. But there's no need to panic. This one is not raining space rocks, say scientists.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Anyone who's taken a high school science class knows the name Isaac Newton. You remember this tale: He's sitting under a tree, an apple falls on his head, he figures out gravity, or so the story goes. Not really true.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

As a journalist, I've known Katherine Bouton for over 30 years. I first met her on a trip to Antarctica in 1979. A famous picture of me interviewing penguins was taken by Ms. Bouton. But I was never fully aware of the extent of the private battle she has been fighting, an invisible condition that affects 50 million Americans, I'm talking about hearing loss.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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

This morning, hundreds of Somali men and women gathered in a community center in Mogadishu after a flash mob. Campaigners in Parliament Square in London held up one finger while MPs debated violence against women inside Westminster. And hundreds of Egyptian sang and danced after 10 a.m., Cairo time, all that from live coverage provided by The Guardian. Events all marked V-Day and its One Billion Rising campaign, designed to boost awareness of violence against women all over the world.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. You can soon add US Airways to a long list that includes TWA, Pan Am, Eastern, Western, Braniff and so many others. US Airways will merge with American. The new American Airlines will be the world's largest, and after decades of consolidation, one of just four major airlines in the U.S.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The president speaks, Marco Rubio gulps, and Lindsey Graham slaps a hold on Hagel. It's Wednesday and time for a...

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: No confirmation without information...

CONAN: Edition of the political junkie.

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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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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Today is World Radio Day, so designated by UNESCO to celebrate the key role this medium plays in organizing and informing communities. For much of their lives, your parents or maybe your grandparents looked at the world through the radio.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Bloodhounds, high-tech helicopters, a million-dollar reward and a thousand telephone tips, one of the largest searches in history to track down one man: Christopher Dorner. What's believed to be the body of the fugitive ex-L.A. police officer has been found amid the ruins of a cabin in Big Bear, California, where police finally chased him down.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Last week, archeologists positively identified the remains of a skeleton found under a parking lot in Leicester as the earthly remains of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet kings. Richard is best remembered as the hunchback, Shakespearean villain whose two-year reign ends when he's left stranded to face the enemy at the battle of Bosworth Field.

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LAWRENCE OLIVIER: (as King Richard III) A horse. A horse. My kingdom for a horse.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. If you walk into any clubhouse in organized baseball, from Yankee Stadium to a rookie-league park, you'll see a large poster that specifies the prohibitions against gambling, and they'll specify the penalty. There is only one: a lifetime ban.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. If no budget deal is reached by March 1st, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester kick in. And that includes the defense budget, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of federal spending.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Last week, we asked you tell us what happened after you drew a firearm. One caller, Alexander, said he shot a karate expert trying break into his house after wrestling over an assault rifle.

For the last in our series of conversations with Oscar-nominated filmmakers in the best documentary feature category, we turn to How to Survive A Plague. The film documents the efforts of HIV/AIDS activists to improve availability of and access to AIDS drugs in the 1980s and '90s.

Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, unexpectedly announced Monday that he will resign at the end of the month. With his resignation comes speculation about his tenure, potential successors and the future of the Catholic Church. Rocco Palmo, who runs the blog Whispers in the Loggia, explores the pope's legacy and what's ahead for the Catholic Church.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The numbers from Syria can leave you numb: nearly 700,000 refugees now in neighboring countries, and the U.N. says their numbers grow by 5,000 every day, maybe two million internally displaced, 60,000 dead again according to the U.N., and that estimate came before the most recent intensification of combat in and around Damascus.

The discovery of oil and natural gas in Wyoming, Colorado and North Dakota has created a new generation of boomtowns. The explosive growth generated by the oil and gas drilling is often accompanied by an influx of new labor. The small towns near the fields wrestle to balance the economic advantages of the boom with the dramatic changes it brings to these tight-knit communities.

Next up in an ongoing series of Talk of the Nation conversations with filmmakers nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Oscars: NPR's Neal Conan talks to the filmmakers behind The Invisible War, which investigates the extent of sexual assault in the military.

Through a series of in-depth interviews with victims, the film documents the repercussions of reporting sexual assault and makes an argument for changes in the military adjudication system.

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JOE PALCA, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY; I'm Joe Palca. Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? These days if you're not careful, your phone knows where you are, and there's a good chance somebody else does, too. Or you've noticed that the ads on sites you visit are starting to look a little too personalized, like how did they know I was planning a vacation to New Orleans.

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JOE PALCA, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca.

You know the theory that a big collision, a comet or an asteroid, something like that, helped kill off the dinosaurs? The idea has been around for a while. But this week, new research published in journal Science provides more accurate dates for the giant impact and the dino demise.

We spend a lot of time sleeping (roughly one-third of our lives, according to the National Institutes of Health). But how much downtime do our brains really need? Experts discuss the links between sleep, memory and cognition, and why our sleep patterns change as we age.

When electorates in Colorado and Washington State voted to legalize recreational marijuana, they thrust their states into uncharted territories. While it's one thing to say pot is legal, it's another to set up regulatory, law enforcement and business practices that work for the industry.

John Brennan, the CIA director nominee, faces questions about the use of drone strikes and torture during his confirmation hearings. In particular, questions will focus on how the U.S. justifies targeted killings in countries where we're not engaged in warfare.

NPR's Political Junkie Ken Rudin discuss the week in politics from Ed Koch's passing to Ashley Judd's political future. John Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads, discusses the group's new campaign to beat far right candidates in Republican primaries.