Talk of the Nation

Brad Leithauser likes to look for poetry in graveyards. A novelist and poet himself, there's something he values greatly in tombstone epitaphs: brevity.

"You really don't want to go on at great length," he tells NPR's Neal Conan. "There's something very touching ... in seeing how they are meant to be commemorated, often in little bits of verse here and there."

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. This week the federal government and Gulf Coast states took BP and its contractors to court seeking billions in civil damages for the disaster that began almost three years ago now, with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Some call it the trial of the century.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. The buzz has been building since the leak of an internal Yahoo memo last week on telecommuting. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer decided to end the company's work-from-home program. The memo, made public on the website AllThingsD, declares that communication and collaboration will be important, and that starts with physically being together.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

And now it's a supersize edition of the Political Junkie. Ken Rudin, of course, is staying with us. John Kasich, Rick Scott, now, Chris Christie - three high-profile Republican governors and outspoken critics of Obamacare - have all decided to accept federal money to expand Medicaid coverage. The governor of New Jersey explained his reasoning yesterday.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Tomorrow in this hour, we'll talk with Ron Elving about the looming automatic budget cuts. What questions do you have about the sequester? We'd especially like to hear from those of you who maybe affected. You can email questions to us now: talk@npr.org.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

It's Tuesday and time to read from your comments. Last week, we talked about violence in Chicago after the death of Hadiya Pendleton, the teenager shot and killed just a week after she visited Washington for the inauguration. Gun laws in Chicago are more restrictive than it its suburbs and in surrounding states like Indiana.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan.

Transcript

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Jennifer Ludden.

Now, the Opinion Page. It's a no-brainer, that's how secretary - former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich described President Obama's recent proposal to raise the federal minimum wage. The plan would boost minimum pay from 7.25 an hour to $9. In a syndicated column, Reich wrote, a mere $9 an hour translates into about $18,000 a year, still under the poverty line.

Transcript

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Jennifer Ludden in Washington. Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the Voting Rights Act. At issue: whether to uphold Section Five, which requires nine states and parts of seven others, to get federal approval to change their voting laws. Congress just reauthorized the mandate in 2006.