Scientists have found that babies can become fluent in foreign languages at an extremely fast rate; one that begins to slow down by their first birthday. What is it about the make-up of their brains as newborns that gives them this ability? Could adults train their brains to be more like the brains of babies?

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner both addressed the nation last night, explaining where each of their parties stand on the current debate over the debt ceiling. What impact did the speeches have?

President Obama stood before the nation and pleaded with Congress to come to an agreement as soon as possible, in a prime-time speech to the American public last night. "We can't allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington's political warfare," he said. House Speaker John Boehner immediately followed Obama's speech with his response, agreeing that the debate needs to be resolved, but urging Obama to sign on to the Republican proposal to raise the debt limit.

Yesterday, President Obama held the first ever White House Twitter Town Hall meeting. The president fielded questions from Twitter users (asked in the site's standard 140 characters or less). But the president's answers were anything but concise. In fact, he responded to participants' questions with the same long-winded, professorial rhetoric he's been criticized for throughout his presidency. Obama's ability to address his base and stimulate audiences was perhaps his greatest strength as a candidate in 2008. This begs the question: Why has President Obama failed to properly get his messages across to the American people since then?

President Obama is set to deliver a much anticipated speech 1:30 p.m. at George Washington University in Washington. The speech will detail his long-term plans for reducing the nation's deficit. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent says that the president will have to prepare the public for tough decisions as he faces the debt.

President Barack Obama stood before the nation yesterday and explained our role in the allied forces air assault on Libya and its embattled leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi. While he recognized Americans' hesitation for more involvement in the Middle East, the President said that Libya represented a unique situation and a challenge to American ideas about freedom and human decency. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, has reactions from Washington to the speech. Dirk Vandewalle, professor of government at Dartmouth and the author of, "A History of Modern Libya," looks at how President Obama's speech will impact the current situation in Libya. 

President Obama has faced criticism from the left and the right regarding his decision to join coalition forces in enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya. The President addressed those critics last night in a speech to the nation, saying he was committed to keeping American troops off the ground. He also appealed to our morality by saying, “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, dissects Obama's speech in terms of policy and how it might play in the capital.

From English teachers to grammar grouches, people have been complaining for generations that the English language is going down the drain. As they see it, our vocabularies are shrinking, our grammar is abysmal, and we’ve all but forgotten about how to punctuate (?!). Carol Shaffer is one of those grammar grouches. A former teacher, she’s also the founder of the website Grammarpolice.com, which has been pointing out language usage errors for fifteen years. Robert Lane Greene has a different perspective. The author of the new book, “You Are What You Speak,” he thinks what some people see as errors are in fact evolution.

Presidents throughout history have had to deliver speeches in the wake of tragedy to comfort the nation. Ronald Reagan did so after the Challenger explosion; Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine shootings; and George W. Bush after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Virginia Tech shootings. President Obama is set to deliver his own speech tonight in Arizona to try and comfort a nation following the shooting of twenty people, that left six dead. How will President Obama approach the events, and their political impliations, from the scene of the tragedy?

Every  Monday, we give you an assignment to record audio or video, or take a picture on our iPhone app. Every Friday, we put together the best submissions and talk about them on the air.

This week, the words you say that you think are different from the way everyone else says them.

Accents differ from place to place and change from time to time. We’re tracking them with your help. And at Yale University, they just started a project where they’re trying to track dialects across all of North America.

Takeaway digital editor Jim Colgan curates some of the submissions and shows how the way he pronounces his words gets in the way of buying movie tickets.

President Obama continues his Asia trip this week with a stop in Indonesia, to emphasize American ties with the Muslim country. In a speech to Indonesians last night, the President sought to highlight those bonds; he did so by recalling his time growing up in Jakarta. Did Obama succeed in reaching out to Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world?

President Obama addressed the country last night, marking the official end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq. Balancing his own former opposition to the war with congratulating the troops required Obama, a gifted orator, to thread several rhetorical needles, but a larger question remains: do people care what Obama had to say about Iraq?

On August 20, 1940 Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army looked unstoppable. With the United States still remaining neutral in the war, Great Britain was the soul protector of Europe. The country was being constantly bombarded by German air raids, and morale was low when UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill took the microphone and uttered these famous words: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

With the help of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communications and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, we take a look at President Obama's Oval Office speech from last night. Jamieson analyzes the president's rhetoric, looking at whether it was effective in communicating his control over the Gulf oil crisis and setting up the changes in the country's energy policy.