Talk of the Nation on WAMC HD2

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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

It may be months before we know the details of exactly what happened inside the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, a week ago. But with the benefit of time, GQ correspondent Sean Flynn has given us new perspectives on the massacre in Norway, where Anders Breivik murdered 77 people and wounded many more almost exactly a year ago. After he set off a bomb outside government offices in downtown Oslo, Breivik shot dozens, mostly teenagers at a summer camp on an isolated island named Utoya.

Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie is a lifelong Seattle Mariners fan, and such an Ichiro Suzuki devotee he wrote a song about the outfielder. Though he wrote it years ago, he decided this week — when Suzuki was traded to the New York Yankees — was the right time to release "Ichiro's Theme."

The Boy Scouts of America recently reaffirmed its longtime policy of excluding openly gay members. While some praised the group, a growing number of adult Eagle Scouts are returning their badges in protest of the policy, including Kelsey Timmerman, who worries about the moral integrity of the BSA.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. W will skip the GOP convention, the presidential rivals vie for the vet vote, and Romney lambasts White House leaks. It's Wednesday and time for a...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Contemptible...

CONAN: ...edition of the Political Junkie.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?

SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Like many high school students, Thomas Martinez and Tamara Hardy dreamed of leaving for college and finding their futures away from home. But both grew up on a Navajo reservation and were torn, between those aspirations and their strong ties to their poverty-stricken community.

Martinez struggles to balance the needs of his family with plans to run track in college. Hardy wants to earn an engineering degree away from home, yet like many Native parents, her mother and father are reluctant to see her leave.

As drought and high temperatures continue to devastate much of the country's corn and soybean crops, the USDA reports that food prices will continue to rise at least into 2013. NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax and The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown discuss the rising cost of food.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Last week, we spoke with Sally Koslow about the difficulties many young people experience as try to leave home and why the lack of jobs and enormous student loan debt can soon send them back to live with mom and dad. Chris Mall(ph) in Bradford, New Hampshire, responded: I don't know a single boomerang child who doesn't want to be self-sufficient. Ms. Koslow fails to recognize that young people are not letting opportunities pass by, he wrote. Those opportunities are no longer available.

Spain's recession has deepened and Spanish borrowing rates are at the highest level since the euro was introduced in 1999. Walter Russell Mead of The American Interest and Steven Erlanger of the New York Times talk about the long-term political effects of the euro crisis.

Now is not the time to pull back on military and foreign engagement, according to former Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy. In Foreign Affairs, she argues that strategic military deployments abroad, a policy of "forward engagement," help preserve the United States' standing in the world.