Talk of the Nation

Two years after Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, she is cancer free. A month before her 25th birthday, she is starting to travel and think about her career again. As part of TOTN's "Looking Ahead" series, Jaouad reflects on regaining a bit of normalcy.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive lung disease that slowly robs sufferers of the ability to breathe. COPD is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., surpassed only by cancer and heart disease. There are treatments, but no cure for the disease.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary.

Fans of "Game of Thrones" are well-aware by now that George R. R. Martin, author of the popular book series, is not afraid to kill off his characters. Those who read the books are way ahead of those who discovered the series through HBO. TV viewers were stunned when the first season ended with the graphic beheading of the man everyone thought was the hero of the saga. Season three, which just ended, offered more violent and unexpected deaths.

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

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LYNN NEARY, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington; Neal Conan is away. For the second day in a row, lawyers questioned potential jurors in the George Zimmerman trial. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, last year.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. And we focus today on what we now know about U.S. government information sweeps of telephone and Internet data and on the man who now admits he disclosed the top secret documents to The Guardian and the Washington Post.

As a child, Jeannie Peeper was diagnosed with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, an extremely rare disease that causes a second skeleton to grow inside the body. Peeper and science writer Carl Zimmer discuss the efforts of a small group to fund research to battle the disease.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. In the disease multiple sclerosis, the body's own immune cells stage a mutiny. Those cells, white cells, normally go after foreigners in the body like bacteria or other invaders that make us sick. But in MS, the immune cells go after the body itself, attacking the myelin covering that wraps around nerve cells. As that myelin gets degraded, nerve signals don't get transferred properly, and that's what leads to the symptoms of MS.