Talk of the Nation

Two professional football players asked the Supreme Court to support same-sex marriage in February. This was an unusual moment for the NFL. No professional athlete in the four major leagues has come out of the closet during their career. Many say that's likely to change soon.

Across the country, law enforcement and first responders are flying unmanned aircrafts to take aerial photographs of traffic accidents and crime scenes. As the technology improves and more police departments acquire permits to fly them, concerns about privacy and regulation increase.

NPR's Ari Shapiro reads listener comments from previous show topics, including raising the minimum wage, the pros and cons of telecommuting and favorite pieces of short poetry.

A photographer peers into the past — and into old suitcases from an abandoned asylum.

With at least $14 billion in long-term liabilities and $327 million in debt, Detroit has declared a financial emergency. Several cities have tried this approach before, and the results have been mixed.

Technology companies are constantly developing new apps and tools to make our lives easier. In an op-ed for The New York Times Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here, argues that Silicon Valley's quest for perfectionism is problematic.

More than 100 Cardinals from around the world started meeting Monday at the Vatican to begin the process of choosing a new pope. This comes after the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinals are tasked with choosing the man who could reshape the future of the Catholic Church.

There have been quite a number of death notices for romantic comedies issued recently. Can anything save the date movie?

In 1958, James Van Allen described two belts of radiation that surround Earth. Daniel Baker says that when a satellite was launched to study the belts in 2012, it saw a third belt form, which lasted for about a month before being blasted away by an interplanetary shock wave.

Biotech pioneer Robert Langer has over 800 patents to his name and has launched two dozen companies, which develop everything from tumor-fighting nanoparticles to anti-frizz hair products. Yet Langer says his proudest accomplishment is teaching some 500 students and post-docs, now professors and start-up leaders themselves.

On Friday March 1, automatic cuts known as the 'sequester' go into effect across the federal budget. Michael Lubell of the American Physical Society discusses what scientific programs will likely be affected, in fields from medical research to renewable energy development.

Whole wheat, stone-ground, multi-grain. Have food labels got you confused? Joanne Slavin, a nutrition professor at the University of Minnesota, and David Ludwig, a pediatrician and obesity doctor at Boston Children's Hospital, discuss the meaning of "whole grain," and whether intact grains like wheat berries pack more nutritional punch than their ground-up counterparts, such as whole wheat flour.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, discusses the nation's top science priorities, including the importance of research on how to protect Earth from dangerous asteroids. But in a tight budgetary climate, who will pay?

MC Frontalot, aka Damian Hess, makes a living rapping about data encryption, rare diseases, video games and the nerd life. He describes Nerdcore, his name for the genre, as "the inversion of the shame of geekery... into pride." Frontalot joins Ira Flatow and Flora Lichtman to chat about the intersection of nerdiness and hip-hop and shares some of his songs.

Is it possible to get a message across in under ten words? Some of the best poets have done it in just three. In a piece for The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, poet and novelist Brad Leithauser makes the case for brevity. He explains why short poems can make such big impressions.