The members of Chicago's Smith Westerns were barely out of high school when they released this year's Dye It Blonde, which has already staked its place as one of 2011's best records. It almost goes without saying that a young, sensitive indie-rock band is going to exude charming naivete, and "All Die Young" is awash in it. In fact, the first two-thirds of the song read like the diary of a lovelorn teenager: "Definitely maybe I will live to love," Cullen Omori sings, adding, "Heart and soul / Never know."

For the first time, a new report uses U.S. Census data to show links between specific college majors and long term wages. For example, it says that over a lifetime, Engineering majors can earn over $1,000,000 while Education majors earn over $240,000. The report also addresses racial breakdowns and gender divides in wages. To learn what people can draw from the data, host Michel Martin speaks with Anthony P. Carnevale, Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, which released the report.

Life after graduation is frightening for many individuals, so how does one offer sincere and credible advice? Host Michel Martin speaks with someone who has done the job: Beverly Daniel Tatum, President of Spelman College, a historically-black college for women.

In her weekly "Can I Just Tell You Commentary?," host Michel Martin notes that the big reality TV shows are aimed at women, and they feature women who have luxurious lives. And yet, in real life, the luxuries are earned through working �" something not often seen on those shows. Martin explains that the problem is these shows are teaching people how not to behave in life and relationships.

Teens Run DC is an after-school program in the nation's capital that pairs economically disadvantaged teens with adult long-distance runners. The program aims to motivate youth to run great distances, and to give them a new way of looking at themselves. This week's Washington Post Magazine profiles the program's founder Benson Forman. To learn more about the program, host Michel Martin speaks with Forman and Washington Post staff writer DeNeen Brown.

Several states have passed a new law requiring individuals to show government-issued photo IDs to vote. The law's supporters say it will help deter voter fraud, while opponents argue it will make it difficult for minorities, students and the elderly to cast their ballots. Host Michel Martin discusses both arguments with long-time civil rights activist and former Presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson, as well as Republican political strategist Ron Christie.

Over the past few years, we've heard plenty of horror stories about bungled foreclosures. The one of Warren and Maureen Nyerges, from the Naples, Florida area, is just as bad. In 2009, they bought a home cash, yet in 2010 Bank of America tried to foreclose on them. It took two months of phone calls and eventually court intervention to clear up the misunderstanding.

Clashes between Yemeni forces and anti-government protesters have left at least six people dead amid a political power vacuum after President Ali Abdullah Saleh left the country for treatment of wounds suffered in a rocket attack.

Saleh's advisers said he expects to return to Yemen, though others see his departure as a de facto resignation.

The latest violence threatened a cease-fire brokered by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Saturday as Saleh flew to the Saudi capital of Riyadh for surgery

After my last post, the one about giant Pacific octopus moms and their 50,000-plus babies, Laurynn Evans, a reader in Seattle, sent me a video. Laurynn, it turns out, often spends her winter evenings diving into the ocean, not too far from Harbor Avenue in downtown West Seattle.

A few times a year, various representatives of NPR Music head off to music festivals, sometimes to webcast or broadcast the events and sometimes to scout for tomorrow's obsessions. The loftiest goal we set for our scouting jaunts — whether at South by Southwest in March or at CMJ in New York each fall — is to come home smitten with a new band or singer we'd never heard of a week earlier.