State and National News

We're a few weeks into our search for the albums everyone can agree on, and some of the results of our surveys so far have been surprising. Most of you haven't even heard the Once soundtrack or The Band's Music From Big Pink? How is that possible?

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Immigration remains an intense political issue in this country and a point of contention between Mexico and the United States. In an op-ed published on Saturday in The New York Times, Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's former foreign minister, and Douglas S. Massey, founder and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, argue that in the shadow of that gargantuan debate, time and commonsense decisions by Mexican migrants have brought us nearly everything immigration reform was supposed to achieve.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. We're still weeks away from the hottest and driest part of the year, and fire season is already well underway: Colorado, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, New Mexico. In a few minutes, we'll talk with a meteorologist who tries to forecast fire conditions, and we'll focus on the pilots who swoop through smoke and turbulence to drop retardant on wildfires. Two of them died in the crash of an elderly plane in Utah on Sunday.

Over the next couple of weeks, NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep is taking a Revolutionary Road trip across North Africa to see how the countries of the Arab Spring are remaking themselves after revolutions last year.

Steve and his team are traveling some 2,000 miles from Tunisia's ancient city of Carthage, across the deserts of Libya and on to Egypt's megacity of Cairo.

NPR coverage of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. News, author interviews, critics' picks and more.

"Herb Reed, the last surviving original member of 1950s vocal group the Platters who sang on hits like 'Only You' and 'The Great Pretender,' " has died at a Boston area hospice, The Associated Press reports. He was 84 and had been in declining health, according to his manager, Fred Balboni.

Join us today at 3:30 p.m. EDT for a chat on Twitter with pediatrician Robert Block, the current president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Search for the hashtag #nprkids. We'll be tweeting from @NPRHealth with @DrBobBlock for about a half-hour.