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With brake issues, fuel leaks and a battery fire in three separate incidents, it has not been a good week for the Boeing Dreamliner. Host Scott Simon talks with New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera about troubles that have beset the new Boeing 787 this past week.

Host Scott Simon talks to NPR's Tom Goldman about the NFL playoffs and how this exciting time of year for football fans has been somewhat overshadowed by talk of concussions.

Brazil now rivals the United States in food production. Environmentalists in Brazil complain that this surge in production has come at the expense of forests, including the Amazon. But they're facing one tough farming advocate: a senator, landowner and head of the country's most powerful Big Agro association. (This piece initially aired Jan. 7, 2013 on Morning Edition.)

A number of cities have launched gun buyback programs to reduce the number of firearms in circulation, but it may not be very effective in reducing street crime. Host Scott Simon speaks with Santa Fe Sheriff Raymond Rael about his city's program. Simon also speaks with Johns Hopkins associate professor Jon Vernick about the efficacy of such schemes.

For the next month, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission is asking residents to tangle with the Burmese python. They say it's a "harvest," but really they're asking people to hunt as many pythons as possible.

In Sonia Sotomayor's new memoir, My Beloved World, the associate Supreme Court justice opens up about her childhood in the Bronx. NPR's Nina Totenberg calls it a moving and unexpectedly personal look at the court's first Hispanic justice.

NPR's Scott Simon muses on momentous news this week — the Baseball Writers Association elected no one to the Hall of Fame. The shutout might be a classic reminder that cheating sometimes brings quick riches, but it can't buy respect.

Actress Ann Dowd received huge acclaim for her role in the indie film Compliance. But the studio told her it didn't have money to lobby the Academy for a best supporting actress award for her. So Dowd did something exceedingly rare in Hollywood: She spent $13,000 on her own campaign.

David Goldhill lost his father to infections acquired at a hospital in 2007. Since then, the business executive has been spurred to action. In his new book, Catastrophic Care, he talks about problems in the insurance-based American health care system and how we can fix it.

Jeanne Manford broke ground by speaking up for her son's rights as a gay man in the 1970s. She would go on to found the national support group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, better known as PFLAG. She died this week at the age of 92.