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President Obama endures it. So does Mitt Romney. Comics make a living off it. And even a PGA golfer heard a chorus of taunts at a recent tournament. So what is it that makes heckling such a cultural institution?

Through their Facebook pages, chat rooms and message boards, patients are recruiting each other to participate in medical research in a kind of virtual word-of-mouth. Patient-initiated research is especially appealing to people with rare diseases whom researchers can't easily find.

Heart implants supply doctors with data that can tell them a lot about a patient's health. But that information isn't directly available to patients. Now some patients are on a mission to get faster access to information about their hearts.

Farm worker advocates and top Obama administration officials have been pushing hard for new regulations that would improve safety for teenagers working on farms. But facing fierce opposition from the agriculture industry and its allies in Congress, the Department of Labor abruptly withdrew a set of rules that advocates said could save dozens of lives every year.

Many young people expect to spend some time couch-surfing when they're just starting out. For Eric Simmons, the couch came courtesy of an unsuspecting AOL. Simmons had been enrolled in an incubator program at the tech firm's Palo Alto campus. And when the program ended, the card that gave him access to the building kept working. That key card unlocked the solution to his housing problem.

Vatican authorities have charged Pope Benedict XVI's butler with illegally possessing secret documents. His arrest is the latest embarrassment for the Vatican. David Greene talks to NPR's Sylvia Poggioli for the latest on the investigation.

The unlikely bond between a nurse and one of her many patients began at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Ann Remington was with her brother, Army pilot Scott Saboe, when he got a POW/MIA bracelet — on it, the name of an Army airman who went missing in action in Vietnam. Scott died a few months later when his helicopter was shot down in Iraq. Ann found the bracelet in his things and kept it. Years later, the nurse was interviewing a new patient, World War II veteran Ted Soyland, and the name sounded familiar.

David Greene speaks with NPR's Joe Palca about Morning Edition's upcoming series, "Summer Science."

The Syrian government is denying allegations that its military killed more than 100 people, nearly half of them children, in the village of Houla. On Monday, the United Nations' special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, was in Damascus to pressure the Syrian government to abide by a cease-fire that most agree has been a failure. For the latest developments, NPR's Kelly McEvers talks with David Greene.

Salt Lake City's Veterans Affairs center is one of just a handful where veterans can participate in Native American sweat lodge ceremonies. Over the years, these ceremonies have drawn men and women who have served in wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan. In the sweats, veterans say, they find relief.