Talk of The Nation on WRVO-1: NPR News

President Obama is under fire from many in the Democratic base, from environmentalists to big labor. Jonathan Chait, senior editor of The New Republic, argues that many of the president's concessions to Republicans were paired with programs actually supported by the left.

Protests against Syrian President Bashir al-Assad have rocked Syria for months. The United Nations reports that more than 2,000 people have died, many in the city of Homs. Imad Moustapha, the Syrian Ambassador to the United States, continues to show support for the Assad regime.

Children who were bullied — or bullied others — often carry those memories for years. In Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories, writers who once endured taunts share their own experiences, with the benefit of hindsight. Co-editor Carrie Jones and contributors Eric Luper and Carolyn Mackler talk about what they've taken away from those difficult years.

In the 1950s, Keith Tantlinger built a better box and forever changed the way global business operates. His take on the shipping container made it easier to send and store all kinds of products all around the word. Tantlinger died on August 27th, 2011, at the age of 92.

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NEAL CONAN, host: We'll be hearing ground zero a lot in specific reference to the spot where disaster struck New York 10 years ago. In the weeks and months after 9/11, it seems like the phrase might become permanently affixed to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. But in a piece to be published this weekend in the Boston Globe, Ben Zimmer notes that it's reentered popular usage. Ben Zimmer is executive producer of Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, and he joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you back the program.

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NEAL CONAN, host: It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments.

Our conversation with presidential hopeful Ron Paul brought this comment from Michael Cullen(ph) in Berlin, Germany. Too bad nobody had the gumption to ask Ron Paul about how to get America back to work and reduce the unemployment rate. He wrote, that is the biggest problem in the U.S. Whoever solves it saves America and also reduces the deficit.

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NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Winds are calmer today, but wildfires continue to sweep across central Texas. Over 1,000 homes destroyed so far, 5,000 people evacuated. The governor says 100,000 acres burned, and the forecast doesn't offer much in the way of relief anytime soon.

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NEAL CONAN, host: Once a staple of public education, home economics was pretty much laughed out of many schools' curricula. In Helen Zoe Veit's words from The New York Times today, home ec became stereotyped as bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness. In her op-ed piece, Veit argues that a return to the roots of home economics could go someway to address the growing obesity problem. More on that in a moment. But we'd like to hear from you. What did you learn in home economics? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org.

As a child, Philip Schultz didn't understand why he couldn't learn. He was held back twice and both his classmates and teachers ignored him. When he revealed that he wanted to be a writer, he was ridiculed.

Schultz went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. But it wasn't until his young son was diagnosed with dyslexia that Schultz, then 58, had a name for the disorder that had plagued him his entire life.