Talk of the Nation

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

In 1999, Debra Gwartney's 14-year-old daughter saw a man taking photos outside her window. Police found evidence that someone had climbed on a bucket to peer into that window numerous times. This was just the beginning of a long series of disturbing details that Gwartney and her daughters would learn about the Peeping Tom in their neighborhood.

While the act is reviled, some dismiss it as a relatively harmless, victimless crime. But there are victims, and the experience can have a lasting impact on them, haunting them long after the violation is over.

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:

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:

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.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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.

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.

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.

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."