Talk of the Nation

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on several past programs, including the difficulties of living with the stigma of HIV and AIDS, and the lessons communities learn after traumatic events transpire

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. The battle for Aleppo, Syria's largest city, continues into a second week. Rebels control more and more smaller towns, the defection of senior military officers and diplomats continues, all signs that the government's grip on power is slipping, and many analysts suspect that President Bashar al-Assad's fall is inevitable.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The history of journalism is replete with sometimes celebrated figures who made stuff up: Janet Cooke, a rising star at the Washington Post, Stephen Glass at The New Republic and now Jonah Lehrer, who resigned his job yesterday as a staff writer at the New Yorker. And you may have heard Jonah Lehrer as a guest on several NPR programs.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Equestrian sports are getting more attention than usual at this year's Olympic Games. The queen's granddaughter, Zara Phillips, brought royalty to the stands for her Olympic debut. Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate Middleton watched Phillips help Britain's equestrian team win a silver medal in the jumping competition. Ann Romney, the wife of the Republican presidential candidate, is also at the games to watch her horse, Rafalca, compete in dressage, an event also known as horse ballet.

In college, study of American history is often broken down into two chunks. Professors pick a date to divide time in two: 1865, after the Civil War, say, or 1900, because it looks good. So for those who teach courses on the first half, their purview is fairly well defined.

James Holmes, the former neuroscience student accused of killing 12 people and injuring 58 others in the Colorado movie theater massacre, has been formally charged with 24 counts of murder. The case will likely involve questions about Holmes' psychiatric condition and competency to stand trial.

Boomers, New York Times columnist Bill Keller has a message for you: It's time to bite the bullet and cut spending on Social Security and Medicare. In an op-ed, Keller writes, "It's not our fault that there are a lot of us, but we have resisted any move to fix the system."

Calls continue for boycotts of Chick-fil-A, while supporters are organizing a national "buycott." But Chick-fil-A is far from the only business to incorporate political or religious values into their business — or to stumble or jump into the culture wars in the process.

In their new book, Resilience, Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy examine how institutions and people respond to disruptions. By studying how systems--from coral reefs to Lehman Brothers--respond to change, Zolli argues that we can be better prepared for unexpected events.

Bioengineers are developing microchips, about the size of a thumb, that can behave like human organs. Donald Ingber, director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, discusses how the "organ-on-a-chip" works and why the technology could replace the animal model for drug testing.