Talk of the Nation

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics, including the moment that changed your life, differences between identical twins, and a proposal for a new calendar.

Sites like PolitiFact and Factcheck.org are designed to verify political claims and hold politicians accountable. But critics say fact-checking entities are themselves biased. The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway and Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post discuss fact-checking in American politics.

Every year, film fans and studio executives travel to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, a showcase for independent films from around the world.

While feature films are always a draw at the festival, documentary fans closely follow the nonfiction films that premiere at Sundance each year.

The demonstrations that spread across the Middle East in 2011 unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Yemen's president has agreed to step down and violence continues in Syria. NPR foreign correspondents discuss developments since the Arab Spring and what they mean for the region and the U.S.

The Obama administration has laid out billions in cuts to the U.S. military over the next decade. Some say the cuts will weaken the armed forces, while others argue it's time to reconsider the type of military presence the U.S. should maintain. NPR's Tom Bowman describes the proposed cuts and their potential implications for future military operations.

Politicians often reveal personal stories on the campaign trail. But those revelations often draw criticism from opponents. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says politicians can and should contest the critiques, but that many have lost the right to complain about them.

Approximately 40 percent of U.S. voters identify as independents, giving them considerable clout with political candidates. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page and George W. Bush campaign strategist Daron Shaw discuss who makes up the independent electorate, and if its influence is sometimes overstated.

Operation Migration uses ultralight planes to guide whooping cranes in migration from Wisconsin to their winter home in Florida. But a Federal Aviation Administration investigation has grounded a flock of whooping cranes and an ultralight guiding plane.

The winter solstice has come and gone, making it officially winter in the U.S., with cooler temperatures, less sunlight, and, in some places, snow, ice, and frost. A panel of experts discusses the different phenomena that combine to make up the season we call winter, and give tips for how best to appreciate the natural world in wintertime.

Physicist Richard Hill and colleagues at the University of Nottingham have a powerful magnet that they have used to levitate fruits, beer and most recently, fruit flies. It's a low-cost way to study the effects of zero gravity on biological systems, Hill says.