State and National News

In Deadlocked, Sookie Stackhouse uses her telepathy to investigate a murder. It debuts at No. 1.

(This post has been revised.)

If anything could predictably induce torrents of Internet reaction, it would be a U.S. president making the surprise disclosure that he supports same-sex marriage. And so it has been following President Obama's Wednesday ABC News interview in which he said he personally backs gay marriage.

As Congress struggles to rein in the federal deficit, a new survey finds Americans preferred to cut defense spending more than any other program.

In a new survey that not only asked for opinion, but also briefed the respondents on the federal budget, Americans came to a bipartisan conclusion: 67 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats supported cutting the defense budget.

And by quite a bit.

Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Former New Jersey senator and basketball hall-of-famer Bill Bradley sees an America in the midst of a "slow-motion crisis." The problems, he argues, are driven by the expansive role of money in politics, ineffective approaches to job creation and underwhelming efforts to stimulate the economy.

In his book We Can All Do Better, Bradley — who stepped away from politics largely after he failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000 — confesses that he misses public policy. He sets out a series of arguments about how to get the nation back on track.

The California sunshine can't hurt. It may help keep teens outdoors where they're less likely to snack, and more likely to move around.

But this isn't the explanation for why teens in the Golden State eat 158 fewer calories a day than kids in other states.

California teens, it turns out, are eating less at school, according to a new study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. And that little bit less per kid can add up to big calorie savings over time, nutrition experts say.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. To all appearances, Chris and Lisa Faris seemed to have it all together. He rose through the ranks of the U.S. Special Operations Command to become its top enlisted man, command sergeant major, and his wife tended to their family and many others on his long deployments.

Aid work is often seen as tough, but rewarding. In a recent blog post, Quinn Zimmerman offered a more nuanced take on his work in Haiti. He wrote about his frustrations with locals, fellow aid workers, and himself, for expecting something more than the reality on the ground could deliver.

Three days after Vice President Joe Biden voiced his own support, President Barack Obama described his "evolution" on the issue and became the first sitting president in U.S. history to declare himself in favor of same-sex marriage. Listeners react to the news.