All Things Considered

Writer Adam Gopnik describes the idea of his latest piece in the New Yorker: that the prime source of nostalgia in popular culture is usually the period 40 years beforehand.

This week, music is bringing Americans and Russians together in a way that policy discussions never can. And don't call that a cliche in front of the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

If U.S. relations with Russia have hit a sticky patch over Syria and other issues lately, that didn't stop the Chicago Symphony from thrilling a Russian audience this past Wednesday night, just as it did on its last visit — to the then-Soviet Union in 1990.

If the rule of threes holds, it's a strange time to be a U.S. governor. From bears in bird feeders to snoozing to Springsteen, Melissa Block recounts a trio of oddball things governors from Vermont, North Dakota and New Jersey have had to deal with in the last week or so.

Investigators in New York City are ripping up the basement of an apartment building in hopes of solving a decades-old mystery: What happened to 6-year-old Etan Patz? The first-grader was walking alone to his school bus stop when he disappeared. Melissa Block talks to journalist Lisa Cohen, author of After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive.

Six dead cows, likely part of a herd of 29 cattle that went missing last fall, were recently found frozen solid in a cabin high in the Rocky Mountains. Melissa Block talks to Scott Snelson, district ranger for the Aspen-Sopris District for the White River National Forest, about how the forest service plans to dislodge the cows.

Melissa Block speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times.

Our story begins last month inside a busy Washington, D.C. subway station plastered with posters of giant dollar bills. One of them says: "Tell Congress to stop wasting time trying to eliminate the dollar bill." Another asks: "Do you heart the dollar?"

Political fights in the nation's capital normally involve billions or even trillions, not single dollars. What's going on here?