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University of Minnesota students who served in Iraq are setting up a veterans' assistance center at the school to help other vets make the transition from the military to academia. The school hopes the volunteer effort will help reverse a post-Sept. 11 decline in veteran-student retention. Minnesota Public Radio's Mark Zdechlik reports.

On the Tuesday Morning Show John and Heidi welcome back Pam Perry, a retired non-game wildlife biologist for the Minnesota DNR, who joins them to talk…

See John's list in our Season Watch group on Facebook!You can also email us to get the Phenology curriculum used in schools across Minnesota and the list!

In a Saturday Night Live sketch, Sen. Ted Cruz, played by Aidy Bryant, hosts a right-wing alternative to the children's television program Sesame Street.

The new film called "Microcosms" explores the facinating love life of bugs. A pair of French filmmakers spent 15 years researching and another two years just designing the equipment so that they could capture the bugs' amorous way. Critic Bob Mondello says the film adds an entirely new dimension to talk about the birds and the bees.

When the election is finally settled, what will happen to the butterfly ballots, polling stations and chads at the center of attention? Some of them may end up at the Smithsonian Institution. Host Lisa Simeone talks with Larry Bird, curator of the Political History Collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, who's heading to Florida on a collection mission.

India has lost one of its most important birds, and no one knows why. Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of healthy-looking vultures have literally dropped dead there. Scientists say they've never seen anything like it. NPR's John Nielsen reports for All Things Considered.

The snow is melting, flocks of birds are returning to their summer homes, and folks are drinking green beer... Spring is in the air! That calls for another blast of annoying music, courtesy of Jim Nayder, exclusive consultant on music of mass destruction for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. Listen to four truly awful recordings, and hear more seasonally bad music.

The gun control debate continued to dominate the news this week with President Obama coming out strongly in support of reforming the current gun control laws alongside the Newtown families. Host Jacki Lyden speaks with James Fallows, national correspondent with The Atlantic, about that story along with the bird flu in China, North Korea and the Postal Service.

Pop quiz: what do you get when you combine a talking penguin, a man with a bird beak for a face and an interrupting dragon? The answer, surprisingly, is a writing guide: Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook. VanderMeer tells NPR intern Colin Dwyer about his collaboration with illustrators and his imaginative, character-driven approach to teaching writing.

NPR's Jim Zarroli reports the nation's unemployment rate fell a tenth of a point in March to 5.2%. Analysts said today's report reinforced the picture of a strong economy that has all the necessary preconditions for inflation. The financial markets reacted negatively for the most part... as the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined for yet another day.

Conservative author David Horowitz sought to place ads in college newspapers across the country denouncing calls for reparations to African-Americans for slavery. Most papers declined to run the ads. Many of those that did sparked protests on their campuses. Av Harris reports from Providence -- Brown University was one of the schools whose paper ran the ad.

NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports the I.R.S. is auditing fewer and fewer tax returns these days and that has some observers concerned that some taxpayers will be tempted to cheat. I.R.S. Chairman Charles Rossotti blamed the decline on staff shortages, antiquated computers and I.R.S. reform legislation passed in 1998.

E. Digby Baltzell died Saturday night at age eighty. In the 1960s, E. Digby Baltzell - a sociologist - was writing about the decline of the Protestant Establishment, the class from which he himself had sprung, and he coined the term "white anglo saxon protestant" or W.A.S.P. to descibe its members.

In the 1990s, the militia movement attracted thousands of followers, spurred on by federal law enforcement blunders at Ruby Ridge and Waco. But after Timothy McVeigh -- who identified with the militia movement -- bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, the movement began to decline. Robert Siegel travels to Montana to take the pulse of the militia movement after Sept. 11.

On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index experienced its largest single-day drop in almost two years. The decline comes on the heels of decreasing consumer spending and slowing job growth. Host Liane Hansen speaks to David Wyss, chief economist for Standard and Poor's, about the cooling off of the U.S. economy.

President Bush, battling declining polls numbers and criticism from Democrats, goes on NBC's Meet The Press for an hour-long interview. He defends his decision to go to war in Iraq and says CIA director George Tenet's job is safe despite complaints about pre-war intelligence. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

Baghdad looters continue to comb through official buildings and empty a museum of priceless antiquities. U.S. forces decline to adopt much of a security role, but may begin to patrol with Iraqis who are demanding order be restored. In some neighborhoods, people take the law into their own hands. Hear NPR's John Ydstie and NPR's Anne Garrels.

In 1999, Tom DeBaggio was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He was 57. Soon after the diagnosis, he began talking with NPR about his illness. He wanted to document his decline, to break through what he called the "shame and silence" of the disease. Now he can't talk, walk or feed himself.

A new survey shows a significant decline in the incomes of primary care doctors between 1995 and 2003. During that same period, the U.S. was trying to get more medical students to go into primary care. The drop was largely the result of reduced payments by insurance companies. One Washington, D.C., family doctor is trying to reverse the trend.