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Barbara Mantel reports from an Early Head Start Program in New York City where toddlers in "Baby School" get close attention to their development and diets. Their parents, often poor teens or immigrants, are welcomed into the classroom to learn parenting skills and good nutrition.

President Biden's meeting with the pope is a fairly recent tradition for U.S. presidents. His meeting will mark the 31st time a U.S. president has met with the leader of the Catholic Church.

Host Bob Edwards chats with sports commentator John Feinstein. They talk about which teams made it through the first weekend of college basketball's March Madness -- and which ones didn't.

Renee Montagne talks with bluesman R.L. Burnside about his new album Wish I Were in Heaven Sitting Down. She also speaks with Matthew Johnson, head of Fat Possum Records.

As the debate over campaign finance reform begins, we spend some time examining some of the key provisions of the debate. NPR's Peter Overby reports that the McCain-Feingold bill takes aim at two categories of political money -- soft money and issue ads. Soft money is the unregulated money that citizens and groups can raise for their party. Issue ads are communications with votes that do everything but tell people who to vote for or against. Reformers say banning soft money is essential because of the amount of money has gone from zero to $250 million for each party in the past 20 years. Reformers oppose any restrictions on soft money saying it would be an infringement on free speech.

Noah Adams speaks with Don Simon, outside counsel to Common Cause, which supports reform, and James Bopp, general counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech, about campaign finance reform legislation and how best to balance the need to protect the government from corruption and the individual's right to free speech. Each side sees this debate as protecting fundamental constitutional rights and needs.

Linda Wertheimer talks to Mike Fudge, senior scientist in Orbital Kinetics and Reentry Simulation for ITT Industries. He says that it is very unlikely that pieces of the Mir space station will hit any people when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere later this week. Fudge says that the Russians have a lot of experience with bringing spacecraft back to Earth and their previous re-entries have been safe.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports on the 15-year journey of the world's first true space station. Russian cosmonauts as well as politicians recall Mir with fondness: it provided truly new scientific information about long-duration space flight's effects on humans, as well a politically valuable comeback for the Soviet Union after the U.S. pulled ahead in the space race. Mir outlived its expected life span, and recently the aging orbiter has experienced a series of mishaps and accidents. Russia will "de-orbit" the craft this week and bring it back to a fiery grave somewhere, hopefully, in the Pacific Ocean.

Harriet Jones reports nursing homes in Connecticut are bracing for a one day strike. Workers say they're being forced to care for too many patients. They're asking for increased staffing as well as higher wages. They plan to hit the picket lines Tuesday morning.

Marion Winik talks about the woes of adult children dealing with dating parents. The role reversal includes questioning whether mom's date measures-up, and is she practicing safe sex? In the end, though, what we really want for our dating parents is true love -- and we want to be able to go for it.