State and National News

Royal Thunder is at a crucial point in its young career. The Atlanta hard-rock band's 2009 EP was like the hard-hitting rookie batter who causes serious chatter; a heavy, '70s-style riff machine with pipes that could tear through walls. But fast-burning flames burn the fastest, setting up crazy expectations and jinxing long-term prospects.

As if further proof were needed that the Republican primaries are essentially dead and buried, here's another piece of firm evidence: Mitt Romney praised former President Bill Clinton in a speech in Michigan Tuesday, and not once but twice.

Monday 2:29pm: Peter's out of the office so we turn the Man United vs. Man City game on the big newsroom TV that hangs over our cubicles and wish we were European.

Monday 2:31pm: An intern who shall remain nameless extracts a People Magazine pull-out poster of celebrity women entitled "Beauty at Every Age" and hangs it in Peter's cubicle.

Tuesday 11:53am: All the potentially funny news stories I've found so far today have either been retracted or discredited by now.

Tuesday 3:20pm:

Chicha is a corn-derived liquor native to the South American Andes since ancient times. It's also a quirky style of pop music that developed in the Peruvian Amazon in the 1960s and '70s. All of that provides inspiration for the Brooklyn band Chicha Libre, which has just released its second album, Canibalismo.

Founder Olivier Conan developed a passion for chicha music while crate-digging through old vinyl in Peru. He says all pop-music innovators are really sonic predators.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Over the past few weeks, our colleagues at MORNING EDITION have been telling a series of stories called "Family Matters," about the challenges that over 50 million of we Americans now face: multigenerational households, homes where two or more generations of adults live under one roof.

For more than 30 years, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been an influential public intellectual with a distinct style, who makes complex academic concepts accessible to a wider audience.

Gates — known widely as "Skip" — may be best known for his research tracing the family and genetic history of famous African-Americans. "There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees," Gates tells host Neal Conan. "My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree."

FBI bomb experts continue to study the device involved in the latest al-Qaida plot to bring down a U.S.-bound airliner. U.S. officials say the explosive is a more advanced version of the underwear bomb that malfunctioned aboard a jet in 2009.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments about previous shows including living with cancer, mainstreaming special education kids, and advice for new graduates. And "Zuul the Terrordog" sings along to the Talk of the Nation theme.