Talk of the Nation

NPR's Neal Conan reads listener comments about African-American men, stigma and mental illness, the pressures students feel to succeed in college, and what hospitals are doing to help transplant patients navigate the bureaucracy and fears they often face.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Hard rain from Isaac, hard truths from Chris Christie and hard knocks from Reince Priebus. It's Wednesday and time for a...

(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)

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?

SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Despite some interference as what is now Hurricane Isaac brush past, Republicans meet this week in Tampa for their national convention, Democrats will follow next week in Charlotte. Some advice to expect little more than carefully scripted political ads. But Political Junkie Ken Rudin argues the conventions have provided some of the great moments of American political history in the past and hopes to see a little bit more over the next couple of weeks.

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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. Isaac rose to hurricane strength this afternoon and should make landfall on the Gulf Coast sometime this evening. It's nowhere near as powerful as Katrina, but the storm will test systems erected since Katrina, both physical barriers like flood gates and seawalls, and administrative and political changes.

Integration efforts, from busing children out of district to opening charter schools, have proven controversial. David Karp, author of Kids First and Sheryll Cashin, author of The Failures of Integration discuss why some schools are segregated and what, if anything, should be done about it.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, died Saturday. He was 82. Armstrong solidified his place in history on July 20, 1969 when he left the first human footprint on the surface of the moon. NPR's Neal Conan remembers the man his family called a "reluctant hero."

Paul Katz bought two tickets — one for himself and one for his cello — in the cabin of a flight from Calgary to Los Angeles. But the captain told him his centuries-old cello had to fly as checked baggage. After an agonizing flight, Katz cried when the captain returned his cello, unharmed.

Things that most people take for granted in surgery — the use of anesthesia, for example, or the way surgical tools are cleaned — were once cutting-edge discoveries in the profession. Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Sherwin Nuland discuss the changes they've seen over their long careers as surgeons.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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

When former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens returned to civilian life, he heard his fellow veterans asked the same question over and over: What do I do now? Part of the problem is the economy. Veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq face unemployment rates even higher than that in the general population. Part of it's mutual incomprehension. Vets say employers don't understand how the skills they learned in the military can translate.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. How much do you personally worry about global warming? The people at the Gallup Poll have been asking that question every year since 1989, and according to their latest polling figures, there's been a bit of an uptick in the numbers: 55 percent said they worry about climate change - that's up about four points from last year.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

When you hear somebody speaking Polish, another person speaking Persian, they sound like totally different languages, don't they? But listen more closely and you'll hear similarities, like how one of the Persian words for mother is mada, and in Polish, it's matka. That's because both languages belong to a large family known as the Indo-European languages. A group that contains over 400 languages and dialects: Polish, Persian, English, French, German, Russian, Icelandic. The list goes on.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY; I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, I was in southern Idaho, and it was snowing in August, or at least it looked like it. Actually, it was raining ash, closing down airports, forcing people to remain inside, many miles away from the forest fire flames.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Up next, discovering the universe inside your skull, and it is a universe. According to my next guest, a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue contains as many nerve connections as there are stars in the Milky Way - billions and billions just in a tiny bit of your brain.