All Things Considered

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN")

GUY RAZ, HOST:

A day of, what else, pomp and circumstance in London today.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT HORNS)

RAZ: Boats of all sizes blew their horns in celebration traveling past the queen on her own vessel on the River Thames. It's the queen's diamond jubilee, a celebration of her 60th year on the throne.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Three cheers for the queen. Hip, hip...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Hooray.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hip, hip...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Hooray.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

This Tuesday, a congressional race in California's rural Central Valley will come down to a fight for second place. As Sasha Khokha of member station KQED reports now, the race pits a farm worker-turned-astronaut against the son of a disgraced congressman.

Marina Keegan had just graduated from Yale University with a degree in English and was headed off to a job at The New Yorker. On May 26, she died in a car crash near her family's summer home in Massachusetts.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison Saturday for his role in killing protesters during the revolution that ousted him from power.

A hushed courtroom listened as the head judge read the verdict: guilty of accessory to murder and attempted murder. Mubarak lay motionless on a hospital gurney inside a courtroom cage, his only noticeable emotion being the slight quivering of his lips.

The Beach Boys are in harmony again. The group is recording and performing together, after years of disputes and estrangement.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love tell Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that they're not surprised at the reunion.

"We've had 50 years' practice," Wilson says, "not just in music but in being guys."

Love says once they got back in the studio and started writing again, it felt like they had never left.

"It was nuts," Wilson says. "It was a nutbuster."

When the economy entered its downward spiral in 2008, most everything related to housing hit the skids, including the lawn and garden industry. But one sector escaped the pinch — food gardening. In fact, sales spiked 20 percent and stayed there. While many households started growing food to be more budget-conscious, some are deciding vegetables and fruits can be beautiful, too. Blake Farmer

John S. Allen, a research scientist at the University of Southern California, explores our draw to crispy foods in a new book called The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship With Food. He speaks to host Guy Raz.

The Houla massacre left more than 100 Syrians dead. Some of them were women. Most of them were children.

The Syrian President Bashar Assad has denied responsibility. But the United Nations has pinned the blame mostly on his government.

Among the biggest advertisers in the presidential campaign is a group that says it doesn't do political advertising: Crossroads GPS.

Crossroads GPS — which stands for Grassroots Policy Strategies — was co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove. It and others like it enable wealthy donors to finance attack ads while avoiding the public identification they would face if they gave to more overtly political committees.

Change has been the story of the season for the Miami Marlins, formerly the Florida Marlins. With a new coach, a new name, new team colors and a new stadium the baseball team set a franchise record for winning games in May.

But one tradition isn't changing anytime soon: beer. Ordering a beer at a baseball game is as American as apple pie. So is forking over a small fortune for that beer.

According to an analysis by TheStreet.com, the most expensive beer of any baseball stadium is sold at the new Marlins Park, where baseball fans pay $8 for a Bud Light draft.