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Liane Hansen and Puzzlemaster Will Shortz have a special puzzle for Neal Conan, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation as contestant. Our regular puzzle will return next week.

The bluegrass legends played in NPR's studios, and spoke to host Melissa Block.

The new president of the United States will be forced to govern without a clear mandate or a sympathetic Congress. Whoever he is, that person will have to call on his power of persuasion and courage of conviction - two of the qualities that define what Dr. Robert Coles calls Moral Leadership. Liane speaks with Dr. Coles, Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at the Harvard University Medical School and author of the new book, Lives of Moral Leadership. (6:30) { NOTE: Lives of Moral Leadership is published by Random House, ISBN # 0-375-50108-8}

Robert talks with Robert Reischauer, President of the Urban Institute in Washington D.C., about the way the government makes its surplus projections. He says it's tricky to agree on a certain number assumption to be used in making calculations. One assumption is based on changing demographics, and the other is based on projections for the economy.

From his childhood in Carthage, Tennessee and Washington D.C., Al Gore was raised not just to be a politician but to be a Democratic presidential candidate. Next week in Los Angeles, Al Gore will take the penultimate step toward fulfilling his lifelong goal when he becomes the Democratic Party's nominee for the White House. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.

The largest Sudanese immigrant population in the United States is now in Portland, Maine. About 2,000 people have arrived in the past 12 years, fleeing civil war and genocide in Sudan.

With a U.S. invasion of Iraq looming, archaeologists and art historians are growing increasingly concerned over what will become of ancient monuments and artifacts in the "cradle of civilization" when bombs begin falling. They're also worried about looting of ancient artifacts after a war ends, NPR's Jason DeRose reports.

Commentator David Shenk says a major study released today from the University of California in Berkeley aims for the impossible: to quantify how much information the world produces each year. That includes everything in a year's worth of e-mails, phone calls, radio and television broadcasts, Websites, office documents, newspapers, memos, etc. The number is so big that U.C. is coming close to the extreme end of terms that have been invented to measure such volume. (3:00) See the study at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/

Robert talks to David Macaulay, host of the five-part PBS Television Series "Building Big," and author of the book of the same name, about the secrets of constructing huge structures. Macaulay describes some of the equipment, and techniques used to erect dams, skyscrapers, tunnels and giant domes. (8:00) On the Web, see /www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig. The book, "Building Big," by David Macaulay, is published by Houghton Mifflin, ISBN # 0-395-96331-1, publication date October 2000.

NPR's John Nielsen reports on the controversy over a type of genetically altered corn that's fed to livestock. The corn has not been approved for human use, but may have found its way into the food supply. It's one of eight varieties of genetically modified corn seed currently on the market and contains a substance called krinine c (KRIGH-nine.see), which can trigger allergic reactions in humans.