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Democrats are using the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas and the Boston Marathon bombings to argue that the government has an important role to play in keeping Americans safe. People who want smaller government say liberals are reaching the wrong conclusions.

How hard can it be to measure the health of a population? Oregon is finding out it's difficult to decide even what to track. But the state received almost $2 billion in federal funds to improve the health of its residents and to cut costs. The state faces substantial fines if it can't prove it has done the job.

On April 26, 1983, a panel appointed by President Ronald Reagan released an ominous report that painted a dire picture of the U.S. education system. Thirty years later, many educators point to the report as the catalyst for divides that still split education reformers.

Historians tell us that caffeine in coffee helped Western civilization "sober up" and get down to business. Now scientific research shows that at low doses, caffeine improves performance on mental tasks, especially in people who are already tired.

Scientists have deployed hundreds of tiny, experimental robots to help with biopsies. They're as small as a speck of dust. They look like tiny ninja throwing stars. And researchers use magnets to retrieve them.

The justices began two days of high-profile oral arguments with many questions about whether they should even consider ruling on the merits of California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in that state.

America's minorities are quickly becoming the majority, and the population shift is happening sooner than expected. That's coming as a surprise to older Americans according to demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. Host Michel Martin talks with Frey about what challenges might come from this 'cultural generation gap.'

Millions of Americans are officially jobless, but that doesn't mean they're not earning money. To help make ends meet, many unemployed and underemployed people are working in what economists call the 'shadow economy.' Host Michel Martin speaks with Bloomberg economics reporter Joshua Zumbrun about this trend.

Henrietta Lacks' family was never consulted before her genetic information was made public. Author Rebecca Skloot, who chronicled the story of her cells, says current regulations aren't covering the privacy questions that come up for people like the Lacks family.

Are sites like Facebook monetizing the purest things about us as humans? Writer Douglas Rushkoff believes that so fervently, he relinquished that outlet…