Talk of the Nation

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Last week, we spoke with Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor for The Atlantic, about moments of wonder: those times when you don't have all the answers, and you can't use a smartphone or Google to get them.

As Robert Mueller's tenure at the director FBI comes to a close, the Obama administration narrows the global war on terror. The White House is expected to nominate former deputy attorney general James Comey. The new leader will face a host of new challenges.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The U.S. economy started showing signs of recovery in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Four years later, the economy is slow to recover in some areas. The stock market and housing are showing signs of growth, while unemployment still lags behind.

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

At Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan, midnight dinner service will end this month. It's part of the drawdown of the Afghan war. That may not sound like a big deal, but former U.S. Army paratrooper David Brown says the Marines at Leatherneck will be losing more than food. He says they'll be losing a venue for camaraderie and support. Across the military, leaders are looking for places they can save money by cutting programs and services.

Teachers endure bored, misbehaving, or totally tuned out students, often with little recognition. In a commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education, professor Charles Rinehimer pays tribute to the completely engaged students who gave him the strength to deal with tough cases.

When writer Stacy Horn was 26 years old, she was divorced and miserable. So she decided to audition for the Choral Society of Grace Church in New York. Horn made the cut and joined the community choir as a soprano.

She chronicles her 30 years with the group in a new memoir, Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness in Singing With Others. She talks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about how singing made her life more bearable.

With the right chemistry, cement can take on some of the properties of a metal, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Chris Benmore, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, explains why a semiconducting cement might be useful.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

There's ADHD, OCD, DMDD, PTSD, along with hoarding disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and dissociative identity disorder. You will find all of them in the DSM, that's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the so-called Bible of psychiatry. The fifth edition of the manual just came out after 14 years in the making, but instead of a round of applause, psychiatrists, psychologists, ethicists, even columnist are panning the book, saying it has outlived its usefulness.

"Office hours are some of my favorite hours of the week," says professor Tom Carlson, a medical doctor, ethnobotanist and instructor of 1700 students annually at the University of California, Berkeley. One of Carlson's former students, SciFri associate senior producer Christopher Intagliata, says Carlson's class got him on the path toward science. In this "Teacher Feature," Intagliata tells his former teacher what the class meant to him.