Talk of the Nation on WKNO HD-2

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Up next, we'll be focusing on you and your true love - your smartphone. Think about it. Are you lost without it? Inconsolable if the two of you are separated? Willing to walk into a lamppost rather than look up while texting? Is it the object of your desire? Isn't it?

Saul Perlmutter shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate. Perlmutter explains how supernovae and other astronomical artifacts are used to measure the expansion rate, and explains what physicists are learning about "dark energy" — the mysterious entity thought to be driving the acceleration.

Sixty-six years after the Wright Brothers made history at Kitty Hawk, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the surface of the moon. From that pivotal moment on, Aldrin has advocated for continued and expanded space exploration. Now, he argues that 66 years after the Eagle landed at Tranquility Base, Americans should establish a presence on Mars.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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

This week, the country celebrated the story of three women liberated 10 years after they were kidnapped and held all that time in a house in Cleveland. But there's another person in this story who made headlines: Charles Ramsey. He's the animated neighbor who helped rescue Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. At the beginning of this week, as we absorb news of Israeli air strikes outside Damascus and questions about nerve gas and red lines, there was a report that a Shiite shrine near the Syrian capital had been ransacked by Sunni extremists and the body of a Shia holy man exhumed and hidden away.