Talk of the Nation on KUER 1

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Violence in Syria continues to spiral with no end in sight. A U.N.-sponsored ceasefire plan lays in tatters with no clear alternative. The government shows no signs of giving in, and while the Syrian National Council elected a new leader over the weekend, opposition exiles remain weak and divided, and any number of groups operate inside the country, organizing everything from protests to attacks on government forces.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, the SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific, wrapping up a glitch-free journey to the International Space Station. It was an historic first. The Dragon is really the only private spacecraft to have made the trip. This time there was only cargo aboard. But it will be - not be long before astronauts are hitching rides on the Dragon? That's what SpaceX is planning for next, and they hope to have seats ready for travelers by 2015. So you can mark that in your calendar.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Our next story is about one person's garbage being another person's treasure. You know how that works. Well, this one is a very interesting story. Last year, the National Reconnaissance Office, they operate America's spy satellites, well, the National Reconnaissance Office called up NASA with an offer: Would NASA like a couple of old spy telescopes? We don't need them. Could you do anything useful with them? We'll give them to you.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you look up in the sky at night, especially later this year, you can spot the Andromeda Galaxy, it's a small cloudy smudge in space. It's our galaxy, the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbor, about two and a half million light years away.

Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab has discovered a piece of malware infecting computers mostly in the Middle East. Flame eavesdrops on conversations, takes screenshots and steals data from infected computers without being detected. Wired's Kim Zetter discusses how the malicious code works.

Reporting in the journal Nature Communications,researchers write that they were able to track down the cells causing clogged arteries. Dr. Jill Helms, co-author on the study, discusses why stem cells are to blame and how the study could lead to more effective treatments.

Alan Alda challenged scientists to explain what a flame is to an 11-year-old. Three months and more than 800 entries later he is back with the winner of the contest. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the winning entry and why the contest was an effective exercise in science communication.

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Union shops in the private sector have dwindled in recent decades. Now, public union leaders across the country worry that they're losing political clout, bargaining power and members. That raises questions about whether unions fallen victim to their own success, and who needs unions.

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Eleven times over the past 34 years, a three-year-old thoroughbred arrived at Belmont Park with a chance to win the Triple Crown, and 11 times, he failed. A sport in sore need of a superstar hopes that I'll Have Another breaks that jinx on Saturday. The winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness is listed as the odds-on favorite to win the Belmont Stakes. But racing writer Andy Beyer argues that the crowded schedule, the unusual distance and history all suggest you should put your money on another colt.

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This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren continues to face criticism over undocumented claims she made that for several years she was Native American. Warren acknowledged that she told officials at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania that she was of Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage, but she insists that played no role in her hiring.

For a new book, Kill or Capture, investigative reporter Dan Klaidman examined how President Obama came to embrace the drone program, and the closed-door process that determines under what circumstances drones are deployed. He talks about the administration's growing reliance on covert attacks.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived his recall election, a victory that may signal trouble for Democrats at the national level come November. NPR's Political Junkie columnist Ken Rudin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation talk about what Walker's victory means for progressives.

Richard Grenell recently explained that Mitt Romney chose him to serve as his foreign policy adviser based on his record and abilities. The Romney campaign, he says, also knew he was openly gay. Grenell explains why he resigned, and where Romney and President Obama differ on foreign policy.

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Immigration remains an intense political issue in this country and a point of contention between Mexico and the United States. In an op-ed published on Saturday in The New York Times, Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's former foreign minister, and Douglas S. Massey, founder and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, argue that in the shadow of that gargantuan debate, time and commonsense decisions by Mexican migrants have brought us nearly everything immigration reform was supposed to achieve.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. We're still weeks away from the hottest and driest part of the year, and fire season is already well underway: Colorado, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, New Mexico. In a few minutes, we'll talk with a meteorologist who tries to forecast fire conditions, and we'll focus on the pilots who swoop through smoke and turbulence to drop retardant on wildfires. Two of them died in the crash of an elderly plane in Utah on Sunday.

Guitar legend Buddy Guy has been called the bridge between the blues and rock 'n' roll, as well as one of the most influential blues musicians in the world. Guitar icons like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and countless others use words like "legend," "master" and "greatest of all time" to describe him.

In his new memoir, When I Left Home, Guy describes what he calls his second birthday: the day he left his home of Louisiana for Chicago, the blues capital of the world.

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A report by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies finds that less than 30 percent of U.S. teens had jobs in the summers of 2010 and 2011. Though the employment outlook is bleak, there are some strategies for navigating the summer job market.

Syrian President Bashar Assad denied responsibility for the massacre that left more than 100 people dead in Houla in May. Pressure mounts on the Obama administration to consider a more aggressive response to the violence that has plagued Syria for more than a year.

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After nine days of deliberations, a jury in North Carolina found John Edwards not guilty on one count of campaign finance fraud, and a federal judge declared a mistrial after they failed to reach a verdict on five more. Afterwards, the former presidential candidate said he'd committed no crimes but admitted to what he called awful wrongs for which he could only blame himself. Observers think it's highly unlikely the Justice Department will seek a retrial.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

And now for our Video Pick of the Week. Flora's still here and positioned perfectly to take us on a safari.

FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: We're still on safari.

FLATOW: We're still on safari.

LICHTMAN: The safari continues, this time to slightly larger organisms. See if you can see with your naked eye, and maybe in your own backyard. These guys are glow-in-the-dark - I have you already, don't I?

FLATOW: Yeah.

LICHTMAN: Millipedes - which, I didn't know - let me - can I tell you the story of how this came about?

Scientists at the University of Leeds are exploring ways to use magnetic bacteria to build biocomputers of the future. Meanwhile, another group of researchers, reporting in Science, write that they have unearthed deep-sea microbe that live off nutrients from the dinosaur age.

In Ignorance: How It Drives Science, neuroscientist Stuart Firestein writes that science is often like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room. Firestein discusses why the hit-or-miss process, the "not knowing" is the true engine of science.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you have trouble sleeping, your doctor might send you to a sleep lab and spend $3,000 a night to chart your sleep cycle, or you could do the same thing at home with a commercially available headband, which wirelessly transmits your sleep data to your smartphone for under 100 bucks.

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This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. For the rest of the hour, a look at an extraordinary life and a heartbreaking loss. In his new memoir "Immortal Bird," Doron Weber takes us to the inner circle of his family, where we meet his son Damon, a smart, likeable, aspiring actor born with a congenital heart defect. At 16, Damon undergoes a heart transplant, and his short life ends not long after in the ICU of a hospital that, according to Doron, seemed to botch his care in multiple and unimaginable ways.