Talk of the Nation

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, died Saturday. He was 82. Armstrong solidified his place in history on July 20, 1969 when he left the first human footprint on the surface of the moon. NPR's Neal Conan remembers the man his family called a "reluctant hero."

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

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

When former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens returned to civilian life, he heard his fellow veterans asked the same question over and over: What do I do now? Part of the problem is the economy. Veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq face unemployment rates even higher than that in the general population. Part of it's mutual incomprehension. Vets say employers don't understand how the skills they learned in the military can translate.

Things that most people take for granted in surgery — the use of anesthesia, for example, or the way surgical tools are cleaned — were once cutting-edge discoveries in the profession. Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Sherwin Nuland discuss the changes they've seen over their long careers as surgeons.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. How much do you personally worry about global warming? The people at the Gallup Poll have been asking that question every year since 1989, and according to their latest polling figures, there's been a bit of an uptick in the numbers: 55 percent said they worry about climate change - that's up about four points from last year.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

When you hear somebody speaking Polish, another person speaking Persian, they sound like totally different languages, don't they? But listen more closely and you'll hear similarities, like how one of the Persian words for mother is mada, and in Polish, it's matka. That's because both languages belong to a large family known as the Indo-European languages. A group that contains over 400 languages and dialects: Polish, Persian, English, French, German, Russian, Icelandic. The list goes on.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY; I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, I was in southern Idaho, and it was snowing in August, or at least it looked like it. Actually, it was raining ash, closing down airports, forcing people to remain inside, many miles away from the forest fire flames.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Up next, discovering the universe inside your skull, and it is a universe. According to my next guest, a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue contains as many nerve connections as there are stars in the Milky Way - billions and billions just in a tiny bit of your brain.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow.

(APPLAUSE)

FLATOW: Yup, they were cheering again this week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Mars Rover Curiosity made its first moves on the Red Planet. It wiggled its wheels, and it's rolling away from the landing site, toward a spot called Glenelg, actually you can spell it backwards and forwards the same way because it's going to return there.

The Paralympic Games are the second largest sporting event in the world, after the Olympics, and begin August 29th. 4,000 elite disabled athletes will compete in 20 sports. Many of the sports are familiar, but others — like boccia and goalball — are unique to the Paralympics.

The Avengers and Expendables 2 are two of the summer's biggest movies, and they share a common theme: a band of heroes trying to save the day.

Film buff Murray Horwitz — with some help from Talk of the Nation listeners — suggests alternative movies to watch at home if you like that theme, but don't want to stand in long lines at the box office.

The Magnificent Seven