Iran continued its recent run of provocative acts by testing its longest-range missiles on Monday. That came only one day after it tested short-range missiles, and a few days after it came clean about a second uranium enrichment facility it has been secretly building. We look at what America’s priorities should be in light of these events with The New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger and three Iranian-Americans: Iraj Mirshahi, Sunshine Royanian Ludder and Rudi Bakhtiar.

Our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, joins us to do some fact checking on health care reform and Medicare-cost claims from both sides of the Congressional aisle.

When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) meets later today, it will have to address a key question raised by the tide of bank failures: Will the the government agency run out of money? And what can they do about it? We speak with Louise Story, finance reporter for The New York Times.

The Dallas Cowboys earned a sloppy but much needed victory in prime time last night. And after a slow starting season, the win came at a critical time for quarterback Tony Romo. We get the latest from our sports contributor, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin.

The floodwaters in the Philippines are starting to recede now that Typhoon Ketsana (locally known as Typhoon Ondoy) has passed through, but the situation in Manila and the surrounding areas is still dire. The city is still recovering as 20 feet of floodwater begins to drain away and the government struggles to cope with 450,000 displaced citizens.

We talk with Stephen Anderson, head of the World Food Program in the Philippines, who talks to us from Manila; and Bing Branigan, Filipina American community liaison for the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, who is leaving for Manila on Wednesday to assist in the relief effort.

As more news stories get reported and updated multiple times a day online, they've made once-daily newspaper deadlines seem quaint. Book publishing, however, is still back in the Dark Ages when it comes to turning around publications quickly. Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and current editor of The Daily Beast, wants to change that by publishing books in electronic and print form in a fraction of the current time it currently takes. We speak to New York Times reporter Motoko Rich, who wrote about this in today's New York Times: "Daily Beast Seeks to Publish Faster."

American culture has always valued high worker productivity; it’s hard to encourage people in the U.S. to take time off from work. But one company thinks it can make more money by forcing employees to get out of the office and work fewer hours. For our weekly work segment, we talk with our contributor Beth Kobliner, Boston Consulting Group's Grant Freeland and Harvard Business School's Leslie Perlow about time off's benefits for employers and employees alike.

In the Senate Finance Committee today, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are introducing an amendment to add the hotly-contested public option to the Finance Committee's health care bill. We talk with Douglas Schoen, Democratic pollster and former Clinton consultant, and our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, explains the ramifications of the amendment.

This week, possibly even as early as today, the U.S. Treasury Department will unveil a new $35 billion mortgage relief plan to stabilize the housing market. The money will go to state agencies, not directly to banks and homeowners. New York Times reporter Louise Story looks at who the funds will go to and who could reap the benefits.

It's a big week for baseball. The Yankees have clinched their spot in the American League East, but it's a tight race between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers in the A.L. Central. The two teams are in a four game head-to-head series right now. We get the latest on the Midwestern drama with our sports correspondent, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin.

This Takeout comes from our listeners: We spoke yesterday about daughters overcoming difficult relationships with their mothers, and vice-versa. After we got off the air, 75-year-old Dolores from Oklahoma called us to talk about her relationship with her mother. We also got many responses here on the website, one from a woman describing taking care of her mother with Alzheimer's.

The U.S. and its allies are united in their public concerns about Iran's secret nuclear ambitions. But The New York Times reports that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies disagree on one big point: how far Iran's attempts to design or acquire a nuclear warhead have come. U.S. officials say that Iran halted work on weapons design in 2003, but Germany, France and Israel think differently. We get the story from New York Times defense correspondent Mark Mazzetti.

The WNBA finals begin tonight in Arizona as the fast-paced Phoenix Mercury tries to wear down the tough defense of the Indiana Fever. ESPN.com reporter Mechelle Voepel joins us from Phoenix, the site of the finals' first game.

Bonus: Takeaway listener and women's hoops superfan Helen Wheelock complained we haven't covered the WNBA enough — so we invited her on the program to make her case.

A few decades before doctors understood basic germ theory, a curious process played out in 19th-century Austria. At the time, doctors were trying to find the cause of a deadly fever striking many mothers and newborn infants in the delivery room. Among the possible causes they considered were tight corsets and women upset by the presence of men in the room. The actual cause was eventually uncovered by the relentless and data-driven work of Ignaz Semmelweis, a doctor whose work ulimately saved uncountable lives.

Dr. Semmelweis' line of reasoning is now highlighted by Stephen Dubner, co-author of the "Freakonomics" book and blog. The new book, "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance," comes out next month.

Last Friday, when we talked about young people coming out at younger ages, we got phone calls, emails and comments on our website, including one from Susan in Oklahoma who told her 14-year-old daughter she would love her no matter what her sexual orientation turned out to be. We also heard from an anonymous listener who said that her husband of 19 years just came out after years of knowing he was gay.

Two of the Senate Finance Committee's more liberal Democrats have submitted amendments to add a public option to the committee's health care reform plan; it comes on the heels of a Congressional Budget Office report showing that a public option would save the U.S. over $100 billion. Todd Zwillich, our Washington correspondent, joins us with the details.