Talk of The Nation

Americans are abandoning their long-trusted news outlets in high numbers. According to a Pew Research Center report, 31 percent of Americans say they have deserted a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the information they want.

March Madness is officially here. Starting Tuesday, 68 college teams will compete for a spot at the NCAA men's championship on April 8. As millions across the country fill out brackets and enter office pools, this season has left longtime sports columnist Dave Kindred yearning for the good old days.

In a piece in The Washington Post, he argues that college basketball has lost its way.

In March 2003, U.S. troops crossed from Kuwait into Iraq with the goal of toppling dictator Saddam Hussein. Within weeks, the Hussein regime had fallen. The occupation that followed left U.S. combat forces in the country until December 2011. The legacy of the war is still widely debated.

Microbes may once have happily existed on the surface of Mars, according to chemical analysis of a sedimentary rock in the Red Planet's Gale crater. NASA geologist and exobiologist David Blake discusses evidence for an ancient freshwater lake in the crater, and describes the mineral-chomping microbes that may have thrived there.

By combing through 100 million search queries on Bing, Yahoo and Google, Microsoft Research Lab co-director Eric Horvitz and his colleagues were able to discover a previously unknown interaction between two commonly prescribed drugs. Horvitz says the method might detect dangerous drug interactions earlier than the FDA's warning system.