Talk of The Nation on WRVO-1: NPR News

Rock music on FM radio faces more competition than ever. With iPods, satellite radio and online streaming, many companies have given up on rock music to boost ratings and revenue.

But former Q101 Chicago DJ Christine Pawlak argues that there will always be an important role for rock on the radio, played by DJs rooted in their communities, not voice-tracked elsewhere and piped in.

Since Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984, it has grown from a troupe of street performers in Montreal to a billion-dollar entertainment industry with over 5,000 employees from over 40 countries. Quidam is one of the company's 22 shows. It's the story of a girl searching for the meaning of life.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Tonight, the American literary establishment gathers here in New York for the National Book Awards. It's not quite the Oscars, but the honor can change the career of a novelist, historian or poet and vault a book to the top of the best-seller lists. Last year, the fiction award went to a little known author for her novel "Lord of Misrule," which had an initial press run of 2,000 copies. They've had to reprint. Jaimy Gordon joins us in just a moment. We'd like to hear from you too.

"The rich are not only getting richer, they are becoming more dangerous," Robert Frank writes in his new book The High-Beta Rich: How the Manic Wealthy Will Take Us to the Next Boom, Bubble and Bust.

The spending binges of the top 1%, he says, are "the most unstable force in the economy."

There's nearly a year to go till the 2012 Presidential election and already the Republican field has faced off for at least ten debates since May. That intense schedule has helped boost the campaigns of more polished candidates, while sinking the public perception of those who stumble.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Yesterday, New York City Police evicted hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters from privately owned Zuccotti Park in New York, on the orders of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A judge in New York ruled that the removal was legal and protesters could use the park, but their free speech rights did not extend to putting up tents or staying overnight. Similar evictions in other cities have raised serious questions about the future of the Occupy movement.

After weeks of game postponements, the NBA league made a final offer to players — and the players rejected it. Cancelling games affects the players and the fans, but it can also be devastating for the many businesses that revolve around the industry.

The trail of tears — The forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homeland in the south West to Oklahoma — is taught in many classrooms as one of the darkest moments in American history.

In the wake of high-profile child sex abuse scandals, the public often focuses on the accused. Victims and their needs often draw far less attention. Experts who work with young victims explain how children respond to abuse, and what treatment options can help them cope with the aftermath.

Occupy Wall Street and reports on the nation's growing income gap have helped rally the political left, argues Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard. It is not the government's responsibility to redress wealth disparities, he says, and the GOP must do a better job of communicating that message.

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BRIAN NAYLOR, host: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. When we talked to author P.J. O'Rourke about his new book "Holidays in Heck," many of you offered suggestions of where P.J. should go next. Wu Nyen Proul(ph) in Franklin, Kentucky, wrote: Visit Easter Island. It's such a humbling experience to stand before the Moai, sleep to the sound of waves, pure unpolluted air and great fish. Even a 4G iPhone can't get a connection. You and your family will enjoy what it's like to live without the Worldwide Web - these days, something one can only imagine.

There's a word for light blue and a word for dark or navy blue in the Russian language, but no word for a general shade of blue. When a translator is tasked with translating English "blue" into Russian, he or she must choose which shade to use.

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JOHN DONVAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm John Donvan in Washington. Neal Conan is away. Huntsville, Alabama, to some, is better known as Rocket City, where NASA engineers build rockets and kids come every year for space camp. With nearly half of the city's jobs linked to space and defense spending, the city is deeply connected to the nation's space exploration programs.

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JOHN DONVAN, host: And now the Opinion Page. The Obama administration is expected to spend up to $1 billion to fund training and job placement for health care workers, a decision under the White House's We Can't Wait agenda. With unemployment at 9 percent, government officials have a single focus, and that is to create jobs. But inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen argues that the talk of job creation is actually setting a low standard. He says: We need more people who are passionate about finding new solutions and new industries.

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JOHN DONVAN, host: The new CBS crime drama "Person of Interest" tells the story of two men who prevent crimes before they can be committed. Excuse me. They find out about the crimes by looking at data gathered by intelligence surveillance designed to catch terrorists. The series was picked up by CBS after the network says it tested better than any other series in recent memory.

How important are museums, TV shows and after school clubs to teaching kids science? Ira Flatow and guests look at "informal science education" and what researchers are learning about learning science. Plus, what's the best way to keep undergraduate science majors in science?

Discovery Channel's MythBusters have taken on more than 700 myths, from how hard it is to find a needle in a haystack (it's hard) to whether toothbrushes have fecal matter on them (they do). Series hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage talk about the show with host Ira Flatow.

Or The Beach — Seasonal depression, or seasonal affective disorder, affects some five percent of Americans in the winter as daily sunlight hours dwindle. Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman discusses the evolutionary origins of the winter blues, and treatments ranging from light therapy to a trip to the beach.

For years, Steve Jobs courted biographer Walter Isaacson to write the definitive story of his life. When Isaacson learned how sick Jobs really was, he accepted. Here he discusses profiling the tech visionary, a task that often involved reconciling Jobs' recollections with those of his friends, family and colleagues.

In 1956, dentist and amateur ornithologist William Rhein captured the rare Imperial woodpecker on 16 mm color film. Although this 85 second clip is the only known photographic record of the bird, Rhein kept the film to himself until after he died. Writer and bird fanatic Tim Gallagher tells the story of Rhein's expedition to look for the bird, and his own trip to the same mountains over 50 years later.

When the Herman Cain harassment story broke, the accusers' names and their stories were blocked by confidentiality agreements. But one of those women has gone public, which raises questions about the purpose of confidentiality agreements, and how well they work.

Dominic Fredianelli and his buddies signed up for the National Guard in exchange for a signing bonus and help with college tuition. A new documentary, Where Soldiers Come From by Heather Courtney, follows their path from carefree teens in Michigan to combat veterans facing battle in Afghanistan.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has offered its strongest evidence yet that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran condemned the report, and maintains that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

A storm one National Weather Service meteorologist described as of "epic proportions" hammered the coast of Alaska Wednesday, knocking out power and forcing residents out of flooded areas. Carven Scott of the NWS talks about the storm and how residents are coping.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, many fear the rates of homeless vets could grow much worse. They tend to remain homeless longer than non-veterans and they're more likely to suffer from health conditions linked to early death, according to a recent survey by the 100,000 Homes Campaign.

While DVD sales plummet in the U.S. and book publishers fear for their futures, pre-orders for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 totaled some nine million copies. Jamin Warrren of Kill Screen Magazine talks about how Modern Warfare 3 is extending an invitation to non-gamers to belly up to the console.

In Ohio, voters overturned a controversial bill limiting union rights. With one race still too close to call in Virginia, Republicans in that state can still seize the senate. Mississippians elected a new governor and voted down an amendment on "personhood."

Allegations of sexual abuse have shaken institutions from the Catholic Church to public schools to Penn State's football program. In many cases, victims and their families say they reported the abuse to the people in charge, and for any number of reasons, those people didn't do enough to stop it.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz is famous for her portraits of celebrities. From John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono to a pregnant Demi Moore, she's made a career out of capturing people. But for her latest collection, Pilgrimage, she instead turns the camera on places that have special meaning for her.

Many of those meaningful sites are the homes and landscapes that prominent people once inhabited, such as Georgia O'Keefe's homes in Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico and Ansel Adams' darkroom in Carmel, California.

United States vs. Jones raises questions about the limits of police searches, personal privacy and the use of new technology in law enforcement. At issue is whether police need warrants to attach GPS tracking devices to a cars to monitor suspects' movements for indefinite periods of time.