We're talking about the costs of caring for Grandma, and whether they're going to get any cheaper with health care reform. The CLASS ACT – short for 'Community Living Assistance Services and Support' – is a section of the Senate's health care bill. It was introduced by the late Senator Edward Kennedy to lower the cost of long term care for sick or aging family members, and would allow people to collect daily cash benefits of about $50 to $70 a day to pay for home care, adult day programs or nursing homes after paying premiums for five years. The goal is offer a voluntary long term care alternative to Medicaid and private nursing home insurance.

Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich tells us how likely it is the CLASS ACT will remain in any final bill. Then Paula Span, author of "When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions," tells us how important this care is; along with Ilze Earner, who cares for her mom at home and her father in a nursing home.

Your colleague may think it’s okay to tell you about their hemorrhoids, but at what point do you say that’s too much information? We get tips on what to share and not to share in the workplace from Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner and Ronda Tate, a labor lawyer based in Detroit.

We're also asking you: Have you ever shared too much with your colleagues and gotten burned? Or have you been on the receiving end of too much information? Share it with us at 877-8-MY-TAKE or leave a comment.

The hottest ticket in Washington D.C. tonight will be the White House state dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It's the first such event for President and Mrs. Obama, who are putting their own stamp on the event. The guest list includes Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg and M. Night Shyamalan, and the menu will reportedly incorporate honey from the White House beehive. For more details on tonight's fête, we speak with Nia-Malika Henderson, White House reporter for Politico.

Have former governors Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee chosen to forgo politics in order to cultivate their celebrity status? That's the view of our guest, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who writes in an op-ed this week that both candidates chose to cash in on their celebrity following the 2008 elections, instead of working towards wider policy and governing experience. We also speak with Cindy Gallop, an advertising consultant and former chair of the advertising agency BBH.

• Washington Takeout: Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich debriefs us on President Obama's finishing touches on a new Afghanistan war policy.
• Business Takeout: Louise Story of The New York Times brings us fair warning of the dangers of the rising national debt ahead of today's GDP numbers. 
• Political Takeout:  Mark Quinn, host of SCETV's "The Big Picture," explains that embattled South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford may have to pay for his allegedly use of state funds for private gains.

One of the most frequent arguments against allowing the trials of self-professed 9/11 'mastermind' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his accused associates to proceed in civilian court is that the trial will give the men a platform from which to spew anti-American propaganda. Ron Kuby, a criminal defense attorney with experience in terrorism cases, says Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will probably toe the al-Qaida party line – speaking out from the stand on whatever is the "issue du jour," be it Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan.

We also spoke with Ed MacMahon, the court-appointed attorney for Zacarias Moussaoui. MacMahon says no federal judge will allow Mohammed, or any of the accused, to act out of turn in court. But that's not the only terror-related news today. A federal judge unsealed charges against eight men who are accused of recruiting young Somali-Americans to join an Islamic insurgency in Somalia. It's a complicated story and to break it down we speak to Abdi Aynte, an editor with Voice of America. Aynte used to cover the Somali community in Minnesota.

The Leonid meteor shower peaked early Tuesday morning – before most of our listeners were awake. At around 4 a.m. EST the meteor shower sent sparks flying through the skies in the Americas and Asia. Our friend, space and aviation reporter Miles O'Brien, said it was something of "a dud" from where he was standing, on the beach in Florida. O'Brien also tells us about NASA's launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. It's the fifth successful shuttle launch this year; and with only five shuttle missions left before the program ends, every piece of cargo counts.

Scientists from the European Space Agency have just discovered 32 "exo-planets" — planets in other solar systems, most of them much larger than Earth. For an explanation of what we know about these planets and what this discovery means to the scientific community, we talk with Miles O'Brien, a freelance science and aviation reporter.

 

NASA has long been the government agency meant to lead the charge to the future, at least in the public's imagination. A report to Congress from an independent body of experts has put NASA's future into question. In a hearing before the U.S. House of Representative's commmittee on science and technology, the panel said the Constellation program, meant to replace the aging space shuttle fleet and drive human space exploration, was "fatally flawed." To explain the issues that the experts found, where the problems come from, and where NASA might go from here is The Takeaway's go-to space expert, Miles O'Brien.

NASA is set to blast off probes on Thursday in a lunar exploration mission to scout water sources and landing sites in anticipation of humans' return to the moon. NASA was hoping to send astronauts to the moon by 2020 for the first visit since 1972. But these lunar visions are delayed by the most terrestrial of concerns: money. We are joined by Miles O'Brien, a science and aviation reporter, and The Takeaway's go-to spaceman for more on the future of space travel.

To see what space exploration is all about, watch the video below.

By 2050, there will be 130 million more people in the country, relying on an increasingly aging and inadequate transportation system. The stimulus money is supposed to help— tens of billions of dollars are slated to revitalize states' infrastructure. But how should that money be spent in order to actually reduce congestion? Joining The Takeaway is Miles O’Brien. He's a correspondent for Blueprint America and has just finished a documentary called Road to the Future, which looks at how Denver, Portland, Ore., and New York City are rethinking transit.

It gets in your shoes, in your eyes, and your mouth and your hair and don’t get me started on when it gets in your space capsule. We're talking about lunar dust and any astronaut who has been to the moon will tell you: it sticks to everything. This incredibly stickiness is a hindrance to equipment and space armor and until now no one knew why. Now as NASA says it wants to make another lunar visit a priority, the solution may be at hand. Just yesterday details of a new study by Australian scientist Brian O’Brien came out giving some new facts on moon dust.

Joining The Takeaway to help us understand the sticky situation is Miles O'Brien, longtime intergalactic reporter, joins us to tell us all about it and everything else going on in outer space.

So there’s this show, you might have heard of it, called Battlestar Galactica. And on the show, the human race is on the hunt for a mystical planet called Earth. Now, we humans today don’t share their problem, because we’re actually on Earth already. But for NASA, that’s not enough. Tomorrow, they are launching a telescope into space that is looking for other sustainable planets. We're checking in with Miles O'Brien, The Takeaway's intergalactic correspondent for more on this mission.

We spoke with William Borucki, the principal investigator for the Kepler Mission, earlier today, click here to listen to our discussion.