Robert Balint

Friday on The Takeaway means a chance to look back at this week’s big stories. Talking about the new employment numbers, Anderson Cooper, the Higgs Boson particle and more are Jeff Ya...

In our lifetime, we’re exposed to thousands of images of women in the media. More often than not, these images are tweaked, trimmed, smoothed over, and made to look, well, not quite l...

This week President Obama is visiting Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states that are already pegged as crucial swing states in the 2012 presidential election. But although these two state...

Last year the women's soccer team from Iran was prevented from playing a qualifying match for the 2012 Olympics because they refused to remove their hijabs before kickoff. Female Musl...

Kurt Andersen is a man of many talents. In addition to hosting Studio 360, Andersen just published a new novel, "True Believers." What does the new novel, based mostly in the 1960s, s...

Summer time has arrived and Americans are itching, not only from the mosquito bites but for a vacation. But when it comes to a few days off from the daily grind, not everyone agrees a...

For journalist, author, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, one of the biggest mysteries about Iran was how the regime not only stayed in power, but remained relative...

The 2012 Wolfson Economic prize has been won by Roger Bootle, who came up with a plan for how to cope with the demise of the euro. Bootle led a team from Capital Economics that submitted a plan called "Leaving the Euro: A Practical Guide" (PDF). It was deemed ...

The Libor scandal is a complex and messy situation involving interest rates in the United Kingdom, and some critics of the banks say it cuts at the jugular vein of capitalism. But wha...

Oscar Pistorius had both of his legs amputated when he was 11 months old but he has never allowed his disability to limit his achievements. Now, for the first time ever, a Paralympic ...

Can the city become a symphony? After learning that electric cars have engine noise added for safety reasons, Mark McKeague, a sound designer, gave them a different tune.

We asked our listeners: "Do you think we've become too busy as a society?" and quite a few people responded — pretty much all saying yes. Tim Kreider is an author and cartoonist whose...

Yesterday, CNN's Anderson Cooper came out in an interview to Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast. He says he still wants some semblance of personal space, but that he is happy and unashamed of being gay.

Barclays CEO Bob Diamond resigned this morning, the highest-profile casualty of an interest rate-rigging scandal that involves more than a dozen major banks around the world. The Brit...

  If the unemployment rate dips by a decimal or two in the upcoming employment report, it’ll be seen as an indicator that the economy is improving. But millions of Americans will rem...

Three million without power, and with thermometers rising into the 90s and 100s, a lack of air conditioning has been a real problem. The cause: Friday's thunderstorms that devastated ...

A recent spat of severe storms and a daunting heat wave have rolled through the mid-Atlantic region, leaving roughly two million people without power and no hope of getting restored u...

How would you react, if during a regular doctor’s checkup, your physician told you that you were obese? That’s what the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has suggested in a new set ...

The American government has been trying to shut down Iran’s nuclear program for three and a half years. They’ve used diplomacy, sanctions, cyber warfare, and, yesterday, the Obama adm...

The GOP has shifted their hopes for ending Obamacare from the Supreme Court’s ruling to the November election.  And over the weekend, Republicans sought to turn the Supreme Court’s...