NPR: Story of the Day Podcasts

PodcastDirectory / Variety / Unknown
PodcastDirectory / Regions / XX / Unknown

Funny, moving, exceptional, or just offbeat -- the NPR story people will be talking about tomorrow. The best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs. Primary Format : Unknown Language : Unknown Also Listed as: City : Unknown State/Province : Unknown Country : Unknown Region : XX User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of NPR: Story of the Day Podcasts Methings.com listings of NPR: Story of the Day Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Who's Gaming Now? Seniors Turn To Wii Bowling The introduction of the Nintendo Wii and its sports and fitness games has greatly expanded the appeal of video games — especially among senior citizens. From California to New York, dozens of teams and more than 1,000 bowlers are in the throes of a virtual Wii bowling competition. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gigantic Cruise Ship Buoys Company's Hopes We're headed into the year's biggest travel week, and there's not much bigger than what's sitting in the port of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., right now. It's called the Oasis of the Seas, and it's the largest cruise ship ever built — five times the size of the Titanic, with a price tag of $1.5 billion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Army Family's Choice: Kids' Care Or Deployment? Repeated deployments of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan are taking an increasing toll on military families, especially those with young children. But for Ken and Kristie Halander, it came down to a difficult choice: another long deployment to Iraq for Ken or access to medical care for their children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Massillon, High School Football Is 'Who We Are' The Ohio school has a 20,000-seat stadium, a $3 million indoor practice facility and a live tiger for a mascot. Massillon teams have won 22 state championships and they're in the running for another one. It's football "sunup to sundown," the head coach says. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Do Long Island Police Ignore Hate Crimes? With the Latino population booming in Suffolk County, N.Y., so is anti-immigrant sentiment. Illegal immigrants see a rise in the kind of violence that took Rosario Lucero's son, but often won't report it for fear of the police and deportation. Now the Justice Department is probing whether local police are turning a blind eye. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Parking Garages: A Multilevel History "House of Cars," an exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., traces the origins and design challenges of the places we store our cars. While it's unclear who created the first parking garage, the exhibit highlights some little-known and quirky facts about these structures that dot the American landscape. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Story Specialists: Doctors Who Write The history of literature is filled with authors who also performed surgery or scribbled prescriptions. Lynn Neary speaks with two doctors who are also fiction writers — Abraham Verghese and Terrence Holt — about the link between medicine and writing literature. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Why This Wisconsin City Is The Best Place To Die Joe Hauser lives in La Crosse, Wis., where nearly all older adults have signed a directive outlining their end-of life plans. Hauser's kidneys are failing and he doesn't want to live on a machine, but he's keeping his options open. Talking about end-of-life care helps people make informed choices and have their wishes heard, hospital staff says. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Hawaii Is Diverse, But Far From A Racial Paradise The state is known for its "Aloha Spirit" — a diverse mix of friendly people living on an island paradise. The rainbow of cultures its residents brag about is no exaggeration, but some say that beneath the veneer of geniality are deep-seated ethnic and racial tensions between the island's white community and native Hawaiians. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Can New Yorkers Be Impartial In Terrorism Case? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks are to be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to New York for prosecution. The city may be prepared to tackle the security and logistics of the trial, but emotions will present a challenge. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Obama's Half-Brother Recasts Story Of Their Father One person who plans to meet with President Obama during his trip to China is his half-brother, Mark Obama Ndesandjo, who lives in China. Ndesandjo has recently released a semi-autobiographical novel, revealing the abusive nature of their father. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | What's Behind Lou Dobbs' Leaving CNN? The CNN anchor quit Wednesday after months of tensions with executives, saying he would seek new ways to advocate his opinions. Dobbs evolved as a hard-liner on illegal immigration after the Sept. 11 attacks. His often inflammatory views conflicted with corporate strategy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Portrait Emerges Of Hasan As Troubled Man Neighbors of Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan say they are shocked about his alleged role as the Fort Hood gunman. But psychologists and experts say Hasan shared several traits with other mass killers, such as social isolation and trouble finding a mate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 40 Years Of Lessons On 'Sesame Street' As the classic children's television program celebrates its 40th anniversary, the producers of Sesame Street talk about how the show has changed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | High Court Weighs Life Terms For Minors Is it unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment to send a juvenile away to prison for life, without the possibility of parole, for a non-homicide crime? The Supreme Court on Monday will examine two cases, including that of Joe Sullivan, who was convicted of rape when he was 13 years old. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | House Health Care Vote Makes History The House of Representatives passed a bill to overhaul the nation's health care system Saturday night. The vote was close, 220-215, and it only included a single Republican. To pass the bill, Democrats also had to allow a controversial amendment banning abortion funding in both public and private plans in the new marketplaces the bill would create. But as NPR's Julie Rovner reports, passage represents a major hurdle cleared for President Obama's top domestic priority. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rough Road For Military Families With Special Needs Deployments are usually hard on families. Spouses must become single parents for months on end, managing households with little outside help. These challenges become even more daunting for families with special needs children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gore Urges Obama To Take Lead On Climate Change In his new book, Al Gore argues that consumers have "all the tools we need" to solve climate change. But unless the United States takes a leadership role, "it would be impossible to resolve this crisis," he tells NPR. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Differing Views On What U.S. Should Do Next Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is calling for a counterinsurgency strategy based on more U.S. troops and more training of afghan troops. Max Boot, of the Council on Foreign Relations, backs this strategy. But Vice President Joe Biden instead wants the focus to be counterterrorism. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) is seeking a limited troop increase, and a credible Afghan partner. But retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes wants U.S. troops withdrawn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gay-Marriage Advocates Weigh Next Move Same-sex marriage supporters are vowing to continue their fight after a loss at the polls in Maine on Tuesday. Voters there passed a measure blocking gay marriage, dealing a major blow to the cause of same-sex marriage around the nation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Magic And Bird: A Rivalry Gives Way To Friendship In the 1980s, the "golden era" of the NBA, basketball superstars Larry Bird and Earvin "Magic" Johnson had an intense rivalry that elevated the entire league. But after years of hating each other, they developed a close friendship, chronicled in a new book, When The Game Was Ours. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Marco Rubio: Conservatives' New Man in Florida? A former Florida state House speaker, Rubio is challenging former Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination in next year's Senate race. Rubio is confident and gifted on the stump, but some local GOP officials worry his message is too extreme to attract moderate voters. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Facing Identity Conflicts, Black Students Fall Behind Why do middle-class black and Latino teens often have lower test scores and college attendance rates than their white peers? Some researchers suggest media stereotypes might be to blame; others point to a peer culture of underachievement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | New Cubs Owner Feels Fans' Pain, Promises Relief There's an old joke: How do you become a millionaire? Have $1 billion — then buy the Chicago Cubs. Well, Tom Ricketts did buy the storied franchise and its famous ballpark, Wrigley Field, spending almost $900 million. And it's a team that hasn't won a World Series for more than a century. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Cases Show Disparity Of California's 3 Strikes Law Not everyone who has been put away for 25 years to life under California's three strikes law has committed a violent crime, including two people convicted of stealing. Both challenged the law — and while one was released, the other wasn't as lucky. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Democrats Unveil Health Care Bill House Democrats bowed toward their more conservative members with their new health care overhaul bill, which was unveiled Thursday. Throughout the negotiations, Republicans remained firmly on the sidelines, leaving Democrats to cobble together a bill that can satisfy enough of their own members to make a majority Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Two Torn Families Show Flip Side Of 3 Strikes Law California voters passed the nation's strictest three strikes law in 1994. The "third strike" carries a mandatory 25 years to life. Mike Reynolds, whose daughter was murdered in 1992, brought the ballot initiative and has fought to uphold it since. But Sue Reams, whose son is in prison because of it, is working for change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Former NBA Coach Switches Gears At Charter School Joe Carbone is the gym teacher at a small New York Charter School called The Equity Project, based in Manhattan's Washington Heights. The former NBA strength coach has given up the big league to teach gym at the innovative charter school where the kids are only somewhat impressed with his NBA credentials. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Planners Contemplate Phoenix's Post-Boom Future The vast majority of the Phoenix metropolitan area — 90 percent — was built after 1950. It's been a pell-mell push for growth. But like many places, that growth came to a screeching halt during the recession. Planners now wonder whether the area can build a more sustainable economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Recession Squeezes Mexican Workers In U.S. The vast majority of undocumented Mexican workers in the U.S. are staying put. They are working less and hoping that an economic recovery restores jobs. Besides, they say, the recession back home in Mexico is even worse. Immigrant economic ties are strong between New York City and the Mexican city of Puebla. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | At Great Lakes, Tom Hanks Gets Back To His Roots The star of The Da Vinci Code and Toy Story visits the Cleveland theater where he got his professional start to speak with host Scott Simon about his early years in theater — and the ups and downs of working in the movies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Brain Battered By Football The years of hard hits have left former NFL player George Visger with severe memory loss. His doctors warn his brain problems could get worse quickly. While he struggles with his short-term memory, his days as a star high school lineman are vivid and special. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Accidents Of History Created U.S. Health System Since the 1960s, Americans have looked at employer-based health insurance as though it were the natural order of things. But economic historians say there was never any central logic at work in building that system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | On Rural Navajo Reservation, Jobs Are Still Scarce Many rural tribes of the nation's 500 Indian tribes are struggling despite $3 billion in stimulus money earmarked for Indian country. The money hasn't started flowing, and even when it does, it won't have a huge impact, according to a Harvard economist. Shonto, Ariz., is trying to find "different avenues of funding," says community developer Brett Isaac. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bionic Eye Opens New World Of Sight For Blind Implanting an electronic retina can help restore some vision to people who've been blinded by retinal diseases, scientists reported Tuesday at the Neuroscience 2009 conference. Other researchers partially restored sight by growing new retina cells from stem cells. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ore.'s Fly-Fishing Governor Aims To Hook Green Jobs Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat who is in his second and final term, has two passions: fly fishing, and bringing the renewable energy jobs of tomorrow to his state, where unemployment currently hovers near 12 percent. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Silenced By Violence, Texas Club Nurtured Misfit Music When you think of San Antonio, you might be inclined to "Remember the Alamo." But there's a lesser-known city landmark, a cinderblock building that was once Taco Land, the loudly beating heart of San Antonio's underground music scene. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Thrill Ride Lies Under A Montana Main Street Main Street in Lewistown looks like a postcard with its barber shop, soda fountain and old movie theater. But below the street runs Spring Creek — the scene of a rite of passage for many of the town's residents. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Not Spam: Monty Python Reunites For Night The surviving members of the legendary Monty Python comedy group gathered Thursday night in New York to attend the opening of the documentary, Monty Python Almost The Truth (The Lawyers' Cut). Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study: When Soda Fizzes, Your Tongue Tastes It Every time you crack open a soda, your taste buds may help you get the full experience of the carbonated beverage. A new study shows that your tongue's sour-sensing cells may be partly responsible for the sensation of carbonation's fizz. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Government Keeps Close Eye On Swine Flu Vaccine Public health officials are confident that the new H1N1 vaccine is safe. Still, as with any vaccine, they have systems in place to monitor vaccine recipients in order to spot any potential problems. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Mission To Save Real Jewish Delis, A Dying Breed Save the Deli author David Sax aims to preserve and celebrate the Jewish delicatessen. He has traveled across North America in search of the best examples of that endangered culinary species — and says there are certain rules patrons should follow to enjoy the intense meat flavors. Ben's Best in Queens, N.Y., is a rare surviving example. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How The Modern Patient Drives Up Health Costs Between television and the Internet, patients today are exposed to a myriad of health information. But more isn't always better. Patients' frequent requests for drugs and procedures are part of what's driving up the costs of health care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fort Carson Quietly Mourns War Deaths Eight soldiers, all from a Fort Carson, Colo., unit, died on Oct. 3 when their outpost in Afghanistan was attacked. People at the base and in nearby Colorado Springs are remembering those who were lost, but after suffering 279 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, a form of stoicism has set in, too. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Needle Exchanges Face A Fight In Congress The Centers for Disease Control says needle exchanges can help fight HIV. But these programs are under fire on Capitol Hill from critics who say they put children at risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Miami Condo Market Heating Up Again Last year, the Miami condo market was just about dead. Thousands of new units were being delivered, but buyers were nowhere to be found. Now investors, many of them foreigners attracted by drastically lower prices, are again looking to get a piece of Miami real estate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Telltale Wombs Of Lewiston, Maine In the mid-1970s, a health researcher discovered an unusually high rate of hysterectomies in a small town in Maine. If the rate continued, nearly 70 percent of Lewiston women, like Carol Bradford (above), who had a hysterectomy, would be without their wombs by age 70. A major driver of health care costs: a system that pushes doctors to deliver unnecessary care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Meet 'Glee' Star Jane Lynch, TV's New Queen Of Mean The actress has made a career of memorable character parts, from a folk-singing porn star to an outspoken gay lawyer. Now she's got a juicy marquee role as the hilariously hard-charging villain in Fox's new hit comedyGlee. Melissa Block talks to Lynch about her new role as cruel, ruthless cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Myrtle Beach Helmet Law Stirs Anger The city used to be a haven for tens of thousands of motorcyclists before a law was passed requiring all riders to wear helmets. The law has cut down on rallies, but it has also led to a lawsuit before the state Supreme Court. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | For One Senior, Medicaid Provides Model Care When Gracie Scarrow, 94, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure she didn't have the money to pay for the care she needed. She turned to Medicaid — which covers the long-term care in a nursing home — and she couldn't be happier. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Prayer Effort Seeks 'Right Thinking' From Liberals A Christian conservative group, fearing a liberal drift in the country's leadership, has put 11 prominent politicians and activists on an "Adopt a Liberal" roster. They're asking God to help their targets change their stances on a variety of social issues. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Using Music To Mentor Venezuela's Poorest Youth Through music education, many children from Caracas' worst slums learn to overcome adversity and go on to become professional musicians. Conductor Gustavo Dudamel, an alumnus of El Sistema, is now music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Health Care Ads, Drug Firms Change Their Tune Today's TV advertisements on health care are reminiscent, in some ways, of those that aired 16 years ago around President Clinton's overhaul effort. Even the Harry and Louise ads have returned. But now, the TV couple backs an overhaul — as do the pharmaceutical firms. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Seniors Worry As Medicare Advantage Is Threatened About 25 percent of senior citizens are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, where they can choose a privately run health plan with extra benefits. But some health bills aim to scale back its growth, and seniors worry their coverage might get the ax in the overhaul. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Swine Flu Sweeps Through Austin, Hitting The Young Twenty-six states are experiencing high H1N1 virus activity — most in the lower half of the nation, according to the CDC. In Austin, Texas, hundreds are seeking treatment; most of them are young and resilient enough to get through it. One medical center recently erected three field tents on its parking lot to deal exclusively with swine flu. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Is Obama In An 'Afghan Box'? During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama cited the war in Afghanistan as a "good war" — in contrast to the U.S. effort in Iraq. But as violence in Afghanistan escalates while support for the war deteriorates, can President Obama afford to stay the course? Can he afford not to? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Holding On To Health Insurance That Works For some Americans, insurance is what it's supposed to be: coverage when you need it. Dave Koenig, 49, has a job with good benefits. Still, he thinks some aspects of the insurance industry should be changed to protect patients from losing coverage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Spider Wranglers Weave One-Of-A-Kind Tapestry The American Museum of Natural History in New York unveiled something never before seen: an 11-by-4-foot tapestry made completely of spider silk. The tapestry took four years to make, with the help of more than 1 million spiders. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Swinging Chicken Ritual Divides Orthodox Jews In the days before Yom Kippur, which begins on Sunday evening, many Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, N.Y., will wave chickens over their heads and say the prayer of Kapparot (or Kapparos, depending on heritage). But the more than 1,000-year-old atonement ritual has concerned some in the community, who worry about animal cruelty. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chicago Tries Heavy-Hitters To Boost Olympic Bid With one week to go until the International Olympic Committee selects the host city for the 2016 games, Chicago is hoping star power in the form of Oprah Winfrey and one of the Obamas will boost its bid. But how would hosting the Olympics really benefit the city that wins the competition? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Wall Streeters Weigh Life After 'Giant Pool Of Money' Glen Pizzolorusso and Jim Finkel each made a fortune in the mortgage industry. Then the bubble burst. The global economic crisis forced them to reconsider what they believed about life and the investment world they lived in. One is spending time in school, the other cleaning up the debris from toxic assets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | U.S. Navy Sailors Say They Were Hazed, Abused Six sailors from a canine unit in the U.S. Navy interviewed by Youth Radio told stories of hazing and abuse a few years ago. The Navy investigated the abuse and found evidence to support accusations of physical assault on sailors and prostitutes on base, but no courts-martial resulted. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | French Police Clear Calais Refugee Camp French police cleared Tuesday a squalid refugee camp known as "the jungle," which for 10 years has been a festering immigration sore between Britain and France. Iraqi, Afghan and Sudanese migrants, who are desperate to reach Britain and try to hide in trucks and cross the English Channel, are now hiding from French police. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | U.S.-Mexico Border Crossing Grows More Dangerous Over the past decade, easier places to cross into the U.S. have been closed, so people are being pushed into isolated areas. Now, even though the number of illegal crossings has dropped substantially, the number of deaths remains a constant 200 a year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Jay-Z: A Master Of Occult Wisdom? Well, not exactly. But Mitch Horowitz, author of American Occult, says that the rap star is also a shrewd observer of certain secret societies. He analyzes occult imagery in the video for Jay-Z's new single, "Run This Town." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Even T. Rex Started Small An ancestor of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex shares its big head, deep jaws, tiny arms, long legs and lanky feet — but it's 1/90th the size. Even pint-sized, it was a predatory powerhouse. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mayor's Dilemma: Can Houston Grow And Be Green? As a city in motion, Houston constantly evolves. And it uses enormous amounts of energy. Mayor Bill White has made it his goal to help Houston evolve again — into a more energy-efficient city. But his obstacles include a cultural shift. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Eyetooth' Helps Restore Woman's Sight By putting a lens in a portion of a blind woman's tooth — then placing the tooth in her eye — a Florida eye surgeon has given a 60-year-old patient with a scarred cornea a new chance to see. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Secret Of The Masons: It's Not So Secret Best-selling author Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, draws on the lore and mystique of the Freemasons. Once the object of fear and suspicion, the group is now a social organization with spiritual leanings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Marine's Family Awaits Word From The War Zone Lance Cpl. Josh Apsey is serving in southern Afghanistan with the Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment — known as "America's Battalion." Back home, his parents wait for any word from him. They must rely on old-fashioned letters and the occasional phone call to stay in touch. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Consensus On Fixing Financial System Erodes When the financial crisis erupted last September, politicians, regulators and scholars from the left and right said it was so severe that something drastic needed to be done to prevent another meltdown. But now as a depression has been averted, consensus is slipping away into the muck of politics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Marine 'Trust Game' Has Deadly Consequences Last week at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Marine Cpl. Mathew Nelson was sentenced to eight years for killing a fellow Marine in what's known as a "trust game." But it's not the first military fatality from this dangerous diversion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Beware The Attack Bird: Vineyards Turn To Falcons It's harvest time for California's winemakers, and no one knows that better than starlings. The grape-loving birds can eat their way through a vineyard pretty quickly. Over the years, winegrowers have tried a number of methods to scare the birds away — and some are now turning to an ancient art: falconry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Post-Sept. 11, Colleges Take On Law Enforcement Role Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. colleges have assumed new responsibilities for reporting information about foreign students. Some school officials feel a tension between a university's mission of openness and Homeland Security's mission of keeping out problematic people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Furloughs May Not Save As Much As States Hope Nineteen states have imposed or are considering unpaid time off for government workers as a cost-saving measure. But with the drop in income, workers are spending less, which harms the local economy and costs the state in lost taxes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Geithner Still Pushing For Major Financial Reforms The economy might finally be turning around, but the Treasury secretary says it would be a "terrible mistake" to let the financial system go back to where it was at the peak of the boom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rethinking 'Retarded': Should It Leave The Lexicon? People are starting to think twice about using the word "retarded" as a casual put-down. The word is no longer used in medical and social service circles, and activists are campaigning against television shows and movies that use the so-called r-word offensively. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | KitchenAid Mixers Still Proudly American While the economy continues to shed jobs, one iconic American appliance is still being manufactured in Greenville, Ohio: the KitchenAid stand mixer. The factory employs about 700 people who run three shifts to create the tool of the trade of cooking. At $200 and up, it's an investment in both money and counter space. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Recession Diary: From Mom's Home To Their Own Back in May, recession-related money troubles led Caitlin Shetterly and her husband, Dan Davis, to leave Los Angeles with their 3-month-old baby, drive across the country and move in with Shetterly's mother in Maine. As they adjust to their new situation, the couple finds that opportunities are beginning to emerge. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Magnet No More: Florida's Population Shrinks After beckoning retirees, sun worshippers and developers alike for the past century, Florida saw its population shrink last year for the first time in decades. That has come as a shock in a state that has long relied on growth to power its economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | California Edges Ahead In High-Speed-Train 'Race' California's ambitious 800-mile high-speed-rail network is 13 years in the works, making it a leading contender in the race to win federal funding. But some critics question the need for the project, which could cost close to $45 billion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fixing Health Care By Altering Patient Behavior Economists have long said health care, as a market, is a strange animal. One reason is that patients don't act like regular consumers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | First-Term N.Y. Lawmakers Attend State Fair First-term New York Democrats Rep. Dan Maffei and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand made their rounds at the New York State Fair. Freshmen lawmakers have been feeling the heat this summer, as they try to sell their health care ideas to constituents. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | States Make Pitches For High-Speed-Rail Money As the Obama administration prepares to start doling out $8 billion in funding for high-speed-train projects, proposals have flooded in from around the country. Forty states and the District of Columbia have already requested more than $100 billion for high-speed-rail projects. Though many projects are ambitious, the U.S. is still far away from a European- or Asian-style rail network, experts say. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Robert Frank's Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later "I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it," she says. "And then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Surviving The Storm: Voices From Katrina Hurricane Katrina blitzed the Gulf Coast four years ago Saturday. Ever since then, researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi have been collecting the stories of those who survived the storm — and its aftermath. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Football, Grief And Resolve At Iowa High School Tiny Aplington-Parkersburg High in Parkersburg, Iowa, plays its first game Friday since the slaying of its beloved coach, Ed Thomas, allegedly by a former player. The coach was a pillar of the community, and was instrumental in rebuilding efforts after Parkersburg was devastated by a tornado last year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Big Dreams For Small Wind Turbines As huge wind farms get up and running to generate electricity on mountaintops and in fields, another market for wind energy is also emerging, known as "small wind." These turbines provide clean power to single homes and businesses, but are they economical? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Kennedy's Lasting Devotion To Health Care For All The late Edward Kennedy was a liberal powerhouse for changing the nation's health care system. Though he died before he was able to realize his goal of providing health insurance for every American, he pushed through many health care bills in his lengthy Senate career. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Promises Unkept: Disappointments In Digital TV Because of the digital transition, TV stations can now offer four or more different channels. But critics say that offerings are a far cry from what broadcasters could be doing with the new channels. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Descendant Of White House Slave Shares Legacy In 1814, Paul Jennings, a slave in President James Madison's White House, helped rescue George Washington's portrait from the White House before it was burned down by the British. Hugh Alexander, his great-great grandson, calls the legacy "awe-inspiring." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | For Early Man, It Wasn't Easier Being Green Researchers are rethinking the notion that hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with their environment. Archaeologist Torben Rick says indigenous people altered America's coastlines, thousands of years ago, to make their lives more comfortable. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Orchids: 'Inflatable Love Dolls Of The Floral Kingdom' You might know something about the birds and the bees, but did you know the bees have been having a fling with the orchids? Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, has written about the scandalous affair and says orchids "practice some very weird sex." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Last California Auto Plant Awaits Its Fate Toyota reportedly is on the verge of closing a plant it had jointly run with now-bankrupt GM in Fremont, Calif. The plant has turned out thousands of vehicles and supported about 5,000 factory jobs over the past two decades. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Independent Farmers Feel Squeezed By Milk Cartel With the price of raw milk at historic lows, dairy farms are going under across the United States. As the crisis deepens, many blame two dairy giants that they say are trying to monopolize the industry, to the detriment of independent farmers and consumers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Lawmakers Strive To Avoid Heated Town Halls Lawmakers this summer are discussing the move to overhaul the nation's health care system. But as criticism of the plan, and of them, becomes heated, many members of Congress are working hard to avoid getting caught in front of an angry town hall meeting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Search For Green Power On And Off Of The Grid Hundreds of utilities around the U.S. — and a growing number of companies — are offering customers a chance to buy green power. Businesses use them to promote their environmental consciousness. But where does the power come from? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Not Enough Money Or Time To Defend Detroit's Poor In Detroit, the public defender system that guarantees poor defendants a voice in court is in crisis. Public defenders struggling with low pay and unmanageable caseloads say they can't provide proper representation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | To Avoid Bird Strikes, Just Tell The Birds To Move When US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in January after hitting geese, it turned the spotlight on so-called bird strikes — a longstanding problem of aircraft colliding with birds in flight. Airports try a lot of tricks to keep birds away, but now some researchers are shining light on a possible solution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | If It Rolls In Philly, It Better Not Be On The Phone This fall, Philadelphia's skateboarders, bicyclists and inline skaters will have to either pocket their cell phones or use hands-free devices, making the city the first in the nation to extend the measure to include non-motorists. While that might be a grind for some of the city's wheeled residents, others are cheering the move. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Richard Montoya: 25 Years Of Laughing About Race In the mid-1980s in California, at a time when few people wanted to talk about race, Richard Montoya was laughing about it. His thought-provoking performances with the group Culture Clash over the past 25 years have cracked up audiences, and changed some minds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gene May Determine How Much Sleep You Need How much sleep you need might just be written in your genes, according to a new a study. Researchers have discovered a genetic mutation that appears to allow some people to get by on less sleep than others. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Kill Grandma? Debunking A Health Bill Scare Tactic Some analysts say false claims that the health bill encourages seniors to end their lives early were purposely spread to undermine the bill. In fact, the bill would pay health care providers to discuss a patient's health care wishes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Can Corals Survive In A Warming World? The world could lose all its coral reefs within the next century. As the Earth heats up, warming ocean waters could be deadly to these fragile ecosystems. On the Caribbean island of Bonaire, scientists are trying to figure out how to help coral reefs become more resilient. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Debate Over Plastic Bags Heats Up In Seattle In an effort to reduce plastic and paper waste, Seattle's City Council imposed a 20-cent-per-bag charge last year. But the American Chemistry Council helped fund a petition drive that forced the issue to a citywide ballot that is coming up on Aug. 18. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Spreading Lionfish Invasion Threatens Bahamas In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed an aquarium tank in Florida. About a half-dozen spiny, venomous lionfish washed into the Atlantic Ocean, spawning an invasion that could kill off local industry along with the native fish. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mike Seeger Cleared Paths, Showed Us The Way Folk music's Mike Seeger was an adventurer who wanted nothing more than to share his discoveries. He found overlooked musical treasures, polished them off a little and wondered at them. He sought out undiscovered or disappeared musicians in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina — including Dock Boggs. Seeger died Friday at 75. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tri-State Water Fight Spurs Questions On Growth A federal judge recently ruled that Georgia doesn't have the right to take drinking water from the Lake Lanier reservoir, but that is where 3.5 million Atlanta residents get their water. Now, some wonder whether the area can continue to grow without it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Shaky Economics Of 'Cash For Clunkers' A government program enticing people to trade in old cars for new ones has proved wildly popular, except with economists. They say the benefits of "cash for clunkers" may not outweigh the costs, in terms of finances or the environment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | E-Cigarettes: The New Frontier In War On Smoking Federal regulators are cracking down on the latest smoking trend: electronic cigarettes. Despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration that the battery-powered tubes that deliver a nicotine vapor are illegal because they haven't been cleared by regulators, so-called e-cigarettes are still for sale. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Lawmakers Face Hostile Groups At Town Halls As lawmakers begin their August recess, small groups of protesters are taking over town hall meetings on health care and other issues. The resulting scenes are showing up on YouTube. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Call Of The Wild: How Ranger Became 'Yosemite Bob' Bob Roney first fell in love with Yosemite National Park as a senior in high school. More than 40 years later, he uses technology — like Twitter and a tape recorder — to document the wonders that have kept him enchanted with the place. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | U.S., Afghan Lives Increasingly Lost To Roadside Bombs U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and local civilians now share a grim common enemy: death by roadside bomb. The deadly bombs have become a favorite tool of the Taliban, who are shifting away from ambushes and frontal assaults. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Comedy Writing: How To Be Funny When it comes to writing comedy, every syllable counts. Host Scott Simon talks to Mike Sacks, author of And Here's the Kicker: Conversations With 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft, and writer and director Harold Ramis about the art of being funny. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | At School, Lower Expectations Of Dominican Kids Parents and teachers often expect less of students who are the children of Dominican immigrants. This causes their grades and ambitions to suffer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Jellyfish May Help Keep Planet Cool Researchers believe that some small marine creatures may help curb global climate change. A new study suggests that jellyfish and creatures like them play an important role in circulating ocean waters, mixing nutrients, and helping to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mayan Calendar Spurs End-Of-The-World Debate The Mayan calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012, spelling doomsday predictions. While astronomers say this is nonsense, others believe there will be a shift in world consciousness from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Religious scholars say this has the beginnings of a new religious movement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Housing Market Shows Some Signs Of Recovery The housing crisis helped propel the country into the worst recession in decades. Now there are some tentative signs that the real estate market may be improving. Some leading housing analysts say the market may be nearing a bottom in certain areas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rural Medical Camp Tackles Health Care Gaps About 2,700 people lined up outside the county fairgrounds in Wise, Va., to receive free vision, dental and medical treatment at a volunteer-run medical camp. Some arrived three days early to make sure they wouldn't be turned away. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Drinks After Hemingway's Own Heart If Hemingway were throwing a celebration for his 110th birthday, it's a sure bet that the festivities would include a hefty dose of spirits. Phil Greene of the Museum of the American Cocktail meets us at a watering hole in downtown Washington, D.C., to tell us about the drinks Hemingway wrote about, and show us how to make them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Starbucks Goes Into Stealth Mode This week, Starbucks opened a remodeled café, and a key ingredient was missing. Not Caffe Verona Blend or Iced Grande Lattes, but the name — a name that may now be better known in the U.S. than any car company. Host Scott Simon talks with ad critic Barbara Lippert of AdWeek magazine about why the company is trying this new strategy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Boston Teacher Pushes English-Language Learners Francisco Ruiz, who runs a program for non-English speakers at The English High School in Boston, refuses to give up on his students even though the dropout rate is 50 percent. Ruiz says that's because the students don't feel like they fit in. But he tells them: "You are privileged." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Dig Finds A Thriving Cultural Mecca In Indianapolis New evidence suggests that an African-American neighborhood bulldozed decades ago to make way for a university wasn't as blighted as the city's popular history portrays. The area was once home to Madam C.J. Walker, the nation's first self-made female millionaire. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Who Has Access To Max Baucus? Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has the clout to determine winners and losers in the health-care debate. Several former staffers are now industry lobbyists with a unique brand of access to the man at the debate's center. In Washington, access is money. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bridge Still Home For Miami Sex Offenders A colony of sex offenders living under a Miami bridge has been steadily growing since state corrections officers began ordering offenders there a few years ago. Now, state judges are being asked to mediate a dispute over the encampment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Two Military Daughters Start Sisterhood For Teens Two teenage girls from California are trying to organize a statewide get-together for daughters of troops who have gone to war. Moranda Hern and Kaylei Deakin have put up videos on YouTube and appealed for help from the National Guard in Sacramento. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Single Wing Starts Quest For Mystery Bird Birdwatching might not seem the kind of hobby to attract the Indiana Jones type, but Gerry Nicholls is what you might call an extreme bird watcher. This year he and his friends set out on an international chase for a creature that has never been officially sighted. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | From The Archives: Cronkite, Live Via Satellite The death of legendary CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite on Friday sent us scurrying for the archives — and we found a series of reports that he and producer John McDonough did for All Things Considered. We hear part of one of them — Cronkite remembering the first live satellite broadcast to Europe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Military Chefs Battle On Pentagon's Cooking Show Every week, you can catch some of the military's best chefs on The Grill Sergeants, the Pentagon Channel's cooking show. Brad Turner, the original "Grill Sergeant," is shooting new episodes focused on cuisine from different countries. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | An Industry Icon's Quest For The Signature Cigar Cigar icon Ernesto Perez-Carrillo is back in business at age 57, hoping to pass on his family's cigar-making tradition. Among a new wave of independent cigar makers, Perez-Carrillo is starting a new company in Miami with his son and daughter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Skeletons Of The Auto Industry Linger Across U.S. In all, 21 Chrysler and General Motors plants will be closed permanently or idled over the next few years. In addition to the loss of thousands of jobs, the closures can mean a substantial drop in tax revenue for affected communities. Some cities converted the vacant auto plants into other businesses in an attempt to reinvent their economies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Entrepreneurs Remain Optimistic Despite Recession The No. 1 problem entrepreneurs face is getting enough money to fund their ideas. Attracting capital during the worst recession in decades is even tougher. So, entrepreneurs with big ideas are increasingly turning to the entity that's still spending: the federal government. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Searching For The Soul Of L.A. Through Kitsch The self-professed historian Charles Phoenix gives tours of places locals often overlook in Los Angeles. And he says he finds beauty in just about everything — even an income tax office shaped like a tamale. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Birds' Survival Relies On World's Largest Crab Orgy Mating season for horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay brings millions of crabs onto the beaches. It's a feast for tens of thousands of migratory shorebirds, including the red knot, but lately their population has been dropping. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Horseshoe Crabs Pile Up For Night Of Whoopee On the Delaware Bay shore, there's a swinging party that's been taking place for millions of years. Some aren't there to take part in the orgy, however. Human volunteers in headlamps and waders come to tally up the amorous crabs and make sure the party's still going strong. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Back From Iraq ... With A Traumatic Brain Injury One in five soldiers reports coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with mild traumatic brain injury, often from roadside bombs and Humvee wrecks. Although symptoms are hard to identify, Army doctors are finding more cases because of baseline testing that began two years ago. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Author Paints Small Town's Struggle In 'Methland' In his new book, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, Nick Reding describes how methamphetamine transformed the town of Oelwein, Iowa — and how the town attempted to combat the epidemic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fans, Family Bid Goodbye To Michael Jackson Twenty thousand fans with tickets said their final goodbyes Tuesday to pop icon Michael Jackson at a star-studded farewell at Los Angeles' Staples Center. Thousands more jammed the streets, hoping for a glimpse of the funeral motorcade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Alzheimer's Patients Struggle Without Insurance Alzheimer's is thought of as a disease of the elderly, but hundreds of thousands of cases are in men and women under 65. Because the disease makes it difficult to work, these people often lose their jobs — and their health insurance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Texas Tea Takes New Meaning At 'Parties' Tens of thousands of people gathered at hundreds of rallies across the country on Saturday to celebrate Independence Day, but also to protest federal government spending and taxes. The rallies were called "tea (aka "taxed-enough already") parties" and were organized on the Internet. One of the biggest events was near Dallas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fossil Hunters Uncover Rare Dinosaur Skin Dinosaur bones are pretty rare ... but even more unusual is dinosaur skin. Paleontologists working in North Dakota have unearthed the remains of a hadrosaur with much of its fossilized skin still intact. They hope it will offer insights into how these creatures lived, and what they really looked like. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Maestro Maazel On Life After N.Y. Philharmonic After conducting the world's most famous orchestra for seven years, Lorin Maazel gave his last performance June 27. Now, at 79, Maazel has launched a two-week festival on a Virginia farm, and he also intends to teach aspiring conductors. Maazel tells NPR what it takes to be a successful conductor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Young Doctors Weigh In On Health Care Two young doctors, just finishing up their residencies, discuss the decisions behind their career choices. Nicole Loeding is going into primary care, while Brian Southern, after becoming disillusioned with primary care, has chosen pulmonary critical care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Doctors Say Costs, Not Care, Have Become Focus As health care costs have soared, many physicians have struggled to manage the business end of health care and provide quality care for their patients. Two doctors, each with more than 30 years of experience, talk with NPR about the changes they've seen in health care, and where the system might be headed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | High Court Rules For White Firefighters The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the New Haven, Conn., fire department violated the law when it dumped the results of a firefighters promotion exam. Most of the applicants who placed high enough to qualify for promotions were white. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Poetry From Iran, One Tweet At A Time Persians are known for their poetry. So it is not surprising that following Iran's disputed elections, many Iranians have tweeted poetically. Meet 26-year-old Parham Baghestani, whose tweets range from the mundane to the spiritual. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | On The Appalachian, Some Hike Off The Recession Whether recently laid off or just without any job prospects, some people have traded their resumes and interview suits for sleeping bags and hiking boots. They're on the Appalachian Trail for the next four months — and they hope that by the time they're off, the economy will have recovered. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Jackson's Birthplace, Shock At Icon's Death The last few decades have not been easy on the city of Gary, Ind., just outside of Chicago. Crime and high unemployment plague the manufacturing city of less than 100-thousand. But even through the difficult times, Gary residents remained proud to live in the hometown of superstar Michael Jackson. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Taxing Imports, One At A Time Every time a car or a T-shirt or an apple comes into the U.S., it's taxed. But determining how much is quite complicated. Import specialists, like Bret Ewing in Seattle, use an old, enormous book to figure it out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | One Question To Obama, One Heck Of A Backlash When President Obama called on Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney during Tuesday's news conference, he set off criticism from mainstream news organizations. There have been charges that the question was a plant or, at the least, a departure from protocol. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Conservatives Have 'Originalism'; Liberals Have ... ? Conservative Supreme Court nominees espouse originalism, the theory that the Constitution's meaning remains static. With Sotomayor's nomination, liberals are looking for a way to sell their own view that interpretation must reflect the changing norms of society. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ohio's Burning River In Better Health 40 Years Later Forty years ago, Ohio's Cuyahoga River, which had been compared to "an open septic tank," caught fire. Cuyahoga became a rallying cry for environmentalists and sparked the creation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act. Now the river teems with fish and wildlife. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Conservatives Push For Rival U.S. Anglican Church Conservative Anglican leaders arrive in Bedford, Texas, this weekend to discuss creating a new Anglican province in the United States. Conservatives split off from the U.S. Episcopal Church, aligning themselves with bishops in other countries, after the ordination of an openly gay bishop. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Amid Fears Of New Restrictions, Gun Sales Surge The recession has put the brakes on all sorts of industries, but the upward spike in gun sales that began about the time President Obama was elected continues. The FBI reports a strong surge in applications for background checks — the best available indicator for gun sales. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Costs Of Health Care: Finding Ways To Save In Howard County, Md., health care providers are seeking ways to save costs. Howard County General Hospital's CEO says getting people to go to primary doctors instead of the emergency room is one way. Other doctors say costs can be saved through electronic record keeping and a single-payer system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Battling Despair: One Mother's Search For A Job Despite diligently applying for work every day for eight months, Sylvia Martinez still hasn't landed a job. The mother of three struggles to cope with her financial difficulties and the emotional stress — sometimes despair — of being jobless. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Sotomayor Shaped By Her 'Nuyorican' Roots Growing up in a largely Hispanic neighborhood in the Bronx, Sonia Sotomayor has said, she never saw herself as a minority. But the culture shock of being one of the first Latinas to attend Princeton helped forge her commitment to community service and social justice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In New Model, County Offers Low-Cost Health Care A new program in Howard County, Md., aims to provide the uninsured access to health care. Despite impressive incentives, only 200 of the county's 10,000 uninsured have fully enrolled. Program Director Peter Beilenson says he is learning valuable lessons that could well serve the larger health care debate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Trials Of Paying For Health Care In A Recession With health care reform on President Obama's agenda, NPR visited Howard County, Md., a rich, progressive suburb of Baltimore. Patients, doctors and employers talk about how expensive health care is — and how hard it is to pay for in a recession. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Regulating AIG: Who Fell Asleep On The Job? The Office of Thrift Supervision oversaw institutions that turned into some of the biggest failures of the economic crisis, from Washington Mutual to AIG. Like other regulators, the OTS courts its eventual clients, who pay the agency for making sure it follows the law. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rural Layoffs: Losing A Grip On Retirement As manufacturing plants leave rural towns, many workers close to retirement are left with diminished retirement savings and few options for new work. Randy Badman, 60, of DeWitt, Neb., was laid off three times in four years — and isn't sure how he'll fund his eventual retirement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Buying The Farm: A Good Bet For Rural Retirees People who have invested in Midwest farmland in this recession, instead of 401(k)s, may have made a wise choice, according to one economist. Dan and Lorna Wilson of Paullina, Iowa, are counting on their 640 acres to fund their retirement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Recession Offers Hard Lessons In Paying For College Last year, Marlo Johnson and Emmanuel Garcia graduated from high school with big dreams and no money. Emmanuel scraped together enough funds to pay for college. Marlo wasn't so lucky, but a year of earning minimum wage has reinforced why that college degree is so important. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | President Obama Outlines Mideast Vision President Obama leaves Tuesday for a weeklong overseas trip that takes him to the Middle East, France and Germany. In Cairo, Obama will give his much-anticipated speech on relations between the United States and the Muslim world. Obama outlines his vision for the Middle East. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | All Aren't Happy With Health Insurance For All Requiring all Americans to have health insurance is one of the proposals now being considered in Washington, D.C. Massachusetts already requires its residents to be insured, but people aren't always able to afford a policy, even when the state helps out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Undercover At An Evangelical University Brown University student Kevin Roose passed himself off as an evangelical Christian to blend in with students at Liberty University — the school founded by the late Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | DC Youth Orchestra: Success On A Shoestring They rehearse in a ramshackle Washington, D.C., high school. But the young musicians in the DC Youth Orchestra say they're inspired by their teachers and the music they play. Hear how the cash-strapped music program inspires kids from all around the nation's capital. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Roxana Saberi On Her Imprisonment In Iran In her first in-depth interview, Roxana Saberi, who spent four months in an Iranian prison, talks about the events leading to her arrest, why she gave a false confession to the Iranian authorities that she was a spy, and what ultimately kept her going. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How Benny Goodman Won Over America By 1926, at age 16, Goodman was already a jazz virtuoso. But when he finally hit the big time, ushering in the swing era in the mid-1930s, his arrival converged with a burst of modernity throughout the U.S. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Shanghai Girls' Details A Chinese-American Odyssey Lisa See describes the lives of Chinese girls who move to Los Angeles during the World War II era in her new novel, Shanghai Girls. As Chinese immigrants, See's characters endure a shifting political climate once they make it to California. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Residents Pitch In To Keep Calif. Town Afloat Small towns all over the country are feeling the recession's pinch and Gilroy, Calif., is no different. The town faces a cut of at least $2 million in tax revenues and a deficit of $4.7 million. But residents are volunteering to help with police patrols and staff the city's museum. Mayor Al Pinheiro says residents have taken it upon themselves to organize the town's Memorial Day parade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Civil War, Woman Fought Like A Man For Freedom Disguised as a man, Jennie Hodgers marched thousands of miles and fought dozens of battles as a Union soldier during the Civil War. Living in drag gave Hodgers access to a life — with better pay and the right to vote — unavailable to women of her era. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Real Men Wear Pink Boxers Army Spc. Zachary Boyd needn't worry about being photographed out of uniform during a firefight in Afghanistan. "Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person? The idea that positive thoughts and prayer can affect your health has been taught at medical schools for years. But can your thoughts affect another person physically? A few renegade scientists are conducting studies between loved ones to find that out — and they say it's possible. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Sex Offenders Forced To Live Under Miami Bridge Sex offenders with few resources who want to stay in Miami have just one option: an encampment of tents and shacks under a causeway. What began as a stopgap solution to a city ordinance limiting where offenders can live has become de facto public policy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head? Scientists suspect Moses and other religious figures were epileptic. But that doesn't mean they didn't really hear God. One researcher has created the "God helmet," which uses sensors to reproduce mystical experience by manipulating brain chemistry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Secret Advantage Of Being Short Imagine if someone touches your toe and your nose at the same time. You feel those touches simultaneously; but really the signal from your nose reaches your brain before the signal from your toe. This is part of the reason why one neuroscientist thinks short people might experience things faster than tall people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Restaurant Of The Future: A Living Lab In the Netherlands, the Restaurant of the Future, co-owned by Wageningen University, uses video cameras and scales to keep close tabs on diners' behavior. To eat there, you have to sign a research waiver. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Recession Diary: The Long And Winding Road Home Back in March, Caitlin Shetterly and her husband, Daniel Davis, had a 2-month-old son, an empty bank account and an apartment in Los Angeles they could no longer afford. The couple decided to pack up and head home to Maine to move in with Shetterly's mother. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Reporter's Life Inside The Mortgage Meltdown Several books have been published about the subprime crackup, the housing bubble and the financial meltdown, but Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown by reporter Edmund Andrews is special. That's because as he was writing about the issue, he himself was sinking as fast as anyone. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Donors Turn To Giving Circles As Economy Drops Charitable donations have been declining, along with the economy. But one type of giving appears to be on the rise: giving circles. Many people are forming these groups to pool their funds so they can have a greater impact on a charitable cause. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Moms Become Breadwinners As Job Losses Hit Men Legions of women will have little time to mark Mother's Day this year. They will be busy working weekend jobs as they step up to being their families' primary wage earners. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Solved: The Mystery Of The Missing Artist Seventy-five years ago, a young explorer named Everett Ruess rode off alone into the Utah wilderness, never to return. Now, a team of geneticists and forensic anthropologists has finally uncovered his fate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Stimulus Funds To Make Kansas City Safer, Greener Missouri Rep. Emanuel Clever envisions channeling at least $50 million from the federal government into the "Green Impact Zone," a particularly violent and blighted part of the city's urban core. His plan includes weatherizing houses, buying new buses and possibly installing a new power grid. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Elizabeth Edwards On 'Facing Life's Adversities' Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, has survived campaigns, cancer, the death of a child and her husband's infidelity. In her new book, Resilience, Edwards discusses the adversities she has faced — and her efforts to move on. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Record High Army Suicides Prompt Action A U.S. soldier is now more likely than a civilian to take his own life, and the situation is getting worse, not better. To combat suicides, the Army is taking new steps, such as using an interactive video game in which soldiers role play with an imaginary buddy in crisis. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Game Not Over Yet For Housewares Chain Retailer Mark Giarrusso wants to reorganize his family-owned chain. But the landlord is trying to get him to liquidate. Just six months ago, Giarrusso couldn't fathom closing even a single store. Now, there are days he can't imagine staying open another minute. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Military Psychologist Says Harsh Tactics Justified The military's role is to look out for the best interest of the United States, says former military psychologist Bruce Lefever — even when that means using controversial techniques to obtain information. Military psychologists' true ethical obligations lie in protecting America, he says, and harsh interrogation techniques can crack anyone, eventually. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Portraits Capture Life In Dissecting Class Visual explorations of how the human body works have had us riveted since before Leonardo da Vinci sketched the famous Vitruvian man sometime around 1487. That fascination is the focus of what may be one of the most gruesome coffee table books ever. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | New Grid May Be Needed, But So Is Smarter Use Plans are under way to beef up the nation's electricity transmission grid. At the same time, conservationists are trying to reduce the vast amount of power wasted in homes and offices. If we used energy more efficiently, would we need to spend billions of dollars on a new grid? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Parrots Join Humans On The Dance Floor So you think you can dance? Maybe. But Snowball, a Backstreet Boys-loving cockatoo, certainly can, scientists say. Parrots are perhaps one of only three kinds of animal species that can truly move to a beat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Grid May Be Smart, But Will It Also Be Green? The push is on to make the nation's aging electricity grid smarter, so it can handle our growing demand for electricity. Many assume that a smart grid will also be a green grid — delivering clean electricity and helping to address climate change. But that's not necessarily so. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Smart Meter Saves Big Bucks For Pa. Family By installing a smart meter on her Pennsylvania home, Tammy Yeakel and her family are able to save nearly 20 percent on their electric bill each month. They can track their energy consumption in real time on a Web site provided by her power company, PPL. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Obama Seeks Delicate Balance Between Two Wars President Obama ordered strategy reviews to help chart the way forward in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But changeable military and political conditions in the countries threaten Obama's strategy to shift emphasis from the war in Iraq and instead "finish the job" in Afghanistan. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Congress Tackles Credit Card Debt This week, Congress will vote on a Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights — and last week, President Obama met with the heads of card companies, signaling his support for the bill. Host Jacki Lyden checks in with some of these credit card holders — including one woman who froze her cards in a block of ice — and talks with U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who co-wrote the bill that the House will consider this week. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Animal Researchers Unite After Extremists' Attacks Over the last few years, UCLA researchers have received death threats, had their cars firebombed and had their homes vandalized by activists seeking to stop animal testing. This week, one UCLA professor said enough is enough. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How Now, Wench? Talking Like Shakespeare Chicago Mayor Richard Daley declareth Thursday "Talk Like Shakespeare" day in honor of the 445th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth. And folks in the Windy City are learning to speaketh the Shakespearean lingo. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Smog Deaths In 1948 Led To Clean Air Laws On Oct. 27, 1948, the people of Donora, Pa., awoke to a thick yellow blanket of smog. They soon learned that 20 people were dead and half the town was sick. A museum has opened to commemorate an event that many say was the genesis of clean air laws. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Historic St. Louis Schools Face Uncertain Future As the St. Louis school district cuts back, it is putting for sale landmark school buildings designed by architect William Ittner. His emphasis on open spaces, big windows and high ceilings influenced school designers around the country. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | What If Marijuana Were Legal? Possible Outcomes NPR came up with a hypothetical scenario and asked experts to respond: Marijuana has been legal in the U.S. for two years. Legally, it is treated similar to alcohol: It is taxed and regulated, and users must be 21 or older. Under these parameters, what are some possible outcomes? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Test May Determine Smokers' Lung Cancer Risk A new urine test appears to determine which smokers are most likely to get lung cancer. It looks for a chemical created as the body metabolizes tobacco. Those with higher levels of the chemical have a higher risk of lung cancer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Five Days In The Clutches Of Pirates As the captain of the Maersk Alabama returns to the United States for a hero's welcome, we look back on five days he was held captive by pirates. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chaucer's Cheek Returns To Britain Modern Britain is no less diverse than in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and sometimes even bawdier. The walk along the modern-day route from London to Canterbury reveals characters who embrace the earthy sexuality from Chaucer's day, along with more staid British traditions like foxhunting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tax Day Tea Parties In a CNBC meltdown about the stimulus bill, Rick Santelli proposed a modern-day tea party to protest unjust taxes. Santelli and his network have since disavowed the idea, but Fox News has taken up the cause. Hundreds of protests are going on Wednesday. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Trees May Dry Up With Global Warming Warming global temperatures could cause massive tree die-offs. That's the gloomy conclusion of a new study by scientists at the University of Arizona. They've discovered that trees exposed to temperatures warmer than those in their native environment were less capable of tolerating drought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Catherine's Choice: To Plan A Death With Dignity NPR Health Correspondent Dick Knox tells of the story of his friend and neighbor, Catherine Royce, who died recently — by choice. Catherine suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, and as she became sicker, she decided to plan a deliberate death. It wasn't easy — some around her felt it was wrong. But Catherine wanted to die on her own terms. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Matzo Ball Matriarch of American Jewish Food The Settlement Cook Book is largely forgotten today. But in its time, Lizzie Black Kander's book exposed Jewish homemakers transplanted from Eastern Europe to the American way of cooking — and living. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Stained Glass Artist Lets The Light Through At Last Rowan LeCompte's wit and wonder have been on display in the stained glass windows of the Washington National Cathedral for more than half a century. Now, he's working on a final design — one that will bring light to one of the darkest works of his career, the cathedral's so-called Black Window. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pill For Alcoholism May Also Dampen Urge To Steal For people with kleptomania, stealing can provide an intense high or rush. But a new study says that a pill long used to treat alcoholism may also take the thrill out of stealing. It may help people with kleptomania overcome what can feel like an uncontrollable need to steal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tying Together Coats, Ships And Pita Bread People talk about "the global economy," but many connections are hard to see. "Planet Money" establishes the ties between clothing buyers in England, a shipping company in Copenhagen and a bakery in Egypt. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | TARP Inspector Gears Up To Oversee Bailout The $700 billion TARP program comes with its own internal police force tasked with ensuring that taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street is spent properly. Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, heads the new office, which is up and running, but undergoing some growing pains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Huge Indoor Dog Park Pampers Your Pooch Kelly and Cody Acree raised $10 million and opened a 50,000-square-foot indoor dog park in Dallas, complete with a supply store, grooming and day care. When it opened last week, more than 300 dogs arrived. Dog handlers patrol the park; no pit bulls are allowed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Recession And Pets: Hard Times For Snoopy When a family loses its home, a pet can lose its family. As the recession deepens, more pets are being turned over to shelters. A local Humane Society official says more animals are getting put down "because there just aren't enough homes." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Before I Get Old: 'The 27s' Made Early Exits Joplin, Hendrix, Cobain: The list of rockers who departed this world at the age of 27 is long — and eerie. Author Eric Segalstad explores this phenomenon in his new book, The 27s. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Forget 'Blue Velvet,' Rossellini Tries 'Green Porno' That's not a starfish, it's a movie star. The latest project from the actress is not exactly what you'd expect from the icon of Blue Velvet. It's a series of short Web films about the sex lives of sea creatures and backyard bugs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Employers May Face More Immigration Scrutiny The Obama administration's approach to immigration enforcement is still a bit of a mystery. Department of Homeland Security guidelines for how field agents should deal with illegal immigrants in the workforce are secret. But a recent raid in Washington state could provide some clues. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Social Experiment: Communes In Cul-De-Sacs Stephanie Smith, who launched the project "Wanna Start A Commune?" has created a model to show how communities that live in cul-de-sacs can share resources and save money. But these communes are integrated into society, not separate from them, as in past models. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Rural Wisconsin, German Reigned For Decades In the contentious debate over immigration, critics often assert that immigrants and their children are not learning English as quickly as previous waves of newcomers did. In one Wisconsin town, German flourished as a dominant language and culture almost until World War II. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Dealer, Customers Ponder Future Of GM John Medved feels a direct connection to what happens to General Motors — eight of his Colorado dealerships sell GM products. Meanwhile, customers shopping for cars have mixed feelings about the administration's role in deciding the future of the auto industry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Out Of Work And Need Support? Try A Local Church Support groups for the unemployed are cropping up at churches nationwide. At Hope Community Church in Raleigh, N.C., a support group for the unemployed meets to share job leads and resume tips. They also pray and try to support each other spiritually. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Critics: Texas Agency Favors Builders Over Buyers Texas homebuilders are rallying to save a state commission created to handle buyers' complaints. Homebuyers say the process is stacked in the builders' favor — and two state reports agree. Now state lawmakers are considering whether to abolish the panel. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Stimulus Money To Launch Texas Health Clinic The Los Barrios Unidos Community Health Center will receive a $1.3 million grant as part of the massive federal stimulus package. The money will open the first and only community health clinic in Grand Prairie, Texas, a town near Dallas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Anatomy Of A Bank Takeover When a bank fails, agents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. slip into town and quietly assume control. Staffers at Washington's Bank of Clark County describe the top-secret mission as amazingly swift and precise. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Recession Tests Citizens' Patience With Obama President Obama says bringing the country out of recession will take "many months and many different solutions." But some Americans may be losing patience with Obama as he struggles to improve the economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | New Orleans' Mayor Says Investors Will Come Mayor Ray Nagin tells NPR that levees are "still not where they need to be," which has hurt the city's recovery. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently started work on a canal sometimes called the "hurricane highway" to protect the city from floods, and Nagin says that once it's blocked, New Orleans East will see "an explosion of investors." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Life Stands Still On New Orleans' Honeysuckle Lane Honeysuckle Lane in New Orleans East was a veritable ghost town after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. The area is slowly rebuilding, but as homeowner John Brown says, it still lacks a hospital, nearby schools and stores. Residents say they're still "waiting for normalcy." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | ERs Report Rise In Binge Drinking By Teens New research out of the University of California found a 30 percent spike in ER visits from teens with alcohol-related injuries. Emergency rooms across the country say they're seeing the same trend. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tangled Up In School: Teaching Dylan In Boston Classes in Bob Dylan are big at Boston University. Kevin Barents teaches students about poetry using Dylan albums such as John Wesley Harding, which is written in what Barents calls "perfect iambic pentameter." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | At The U.N., 'Battlestar' Troops Talk Ethics Of War The acclaimed sci-fi drama grappled often with issues that plague real-world leaders. As the show neared its end, cast and producers gathered to ask how fiction can offer wisdom on profoundly tough choices. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Housing Chief Plans To Shore Up HUD's Foundation The Department of Housing and Urban Development's new secretary, Shaun Donovan, says he needs to prove that his agency, long blasted as mismanaged, can deliver on promises. That's key now that HUD is tasked with implementing the $75 billion housing rescue plan. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Wary Of Wall Street? Invest In A Dairy Farm Organic farmer Dante Hesse needs to raise about $700,000 to upgrade his dairy. When Hesse couldn't get a loan through usual channels, he turned to his customers for help. Though he's got no collateral or co-signers, some say they're ready to invest. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Sexting': A Disturbing New Teen Trend? One in five teens reportedly texts nude or partially nude photos to another teen. In at least four states, "sexting" kids are facing charges of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor. Many other states are grappling with how to handle the issue. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Schools Already Making Plans With Stimulus Money The more than $100 billion allocated for education in the administration's stimulus package will take some time to trickle down to local school districts, but planning is already under way in some areas for how to spend the money. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ex-Prisoner Sues California Over Years In Solitary Ernesto Lira spent years in solitary confinement after California authorities declared he was associated with a violent prison gang. Now he's suing California in a case that's bringing the state's pre-emptive methods of dealing with suspected gang members and associates under scrutiny. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Optimism Boosts Florida Housing Market Construction and real estate play big roles in the Florida economy. The area around Cape Coral is known as "ground zero" of the housing crisis. Last year, it led the nation in foreclosures. But there are signs of hope as sales increase and the housing inventory shrinks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | IRS Chief: Agency Works With Taxpayers In Trouble As Americans struggle with the economic downturn, the IRS says it is trying to be more flexible this tax-filing season with those who are in financial trouble. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman says the agency can be lenient in hardship cases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Arrests Revive Debate Over Assisted Suicide Prosecutors in Georgia recently charged four members of a group called the Final Exit Network with assisting in suicides. Investigators say they could be involved in as many as 300 deaths. The group's president, Jerry Dincin, who was not charged, says the group isn't doing anything wrong. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | After 66 Years, Veteran Reunited With Dog Tag In 1943, Joseph Farish was based at Camp Kilmer, N.J. Before leaving to fight in World War II, he traveled to New York City and lost his dog tags. Last week, Sydney Rector, 19, and her boyfriend, Stevin Tyska, spotted one of the tags in a tunnel in Manhattan and tracked down its long-lost owner. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Banks Refusing To Take Back Foreclosed Properties Let's say you made mistakes, borrowed more than you should have — or maybe you lost your job — and now have to walk away from your house. In some parts of the country, simply walking away isn't so simple — especially if the bank doesn't want your house. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | QWERTY Love: Typewriters Endure In A Digital Age Before the advent of cell phones and texting, typing was done with all 10 fingers — not just two thumbs. Those were the days of clackety machines of communication called typewriters. Those days aren't totally gone. In the heart of California's Silicon Valley, business is still clacking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Welcome To The Twitterverse NPR's social media strategist, Andy Carvin, spends most of his time working behind the scenes, but once a month or so, he finds his way on air to talk about Internet culture. For Weekend Edition, he found himself talking about technology — and Twitter in particular — to a most unlikely person. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bailing Out Banks, One Toxic Asset At A Time Raj Bhatia and Albert Behin are convinced they can make money buying up mortgages that no one else seems to want. The former hedge fund manager and mortgage broker want toxic assets — the stuff that's killing banks' balance sheets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Wall Street Banker Turns Toxic Asset Sleuth Wit Solberg is a sort of "toxic asset detective." After a career on Wall Street — where he was part of the industry that helped create toxic assets — Solberg now works in Kansas City, helping small banks unravel the investments they have bought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | American Express' $300 Deal Shows Industry Trend American Express announced Monday it's offering $300 to a limited number of cardholders who agree to close their accounts. Consumers Union attorney Gail Hillebrand says the deal is a trend among credit card companies looking to protect themselves from future defaults. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Who's Hiring These Days? The FDIC The FDIC is bringing on hundreds of employees to help cope with increasing bank failures. When a bank collapses, agency employees quietly show up and take over. Some will secure the vaults. Some will audit files. All are told to keep quiet about it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Scientists Close To Universal Vaccine For Flu Every year, scientists have to predict what strains of flu will be prevalent and then build a vaccine around them. And sometimes those predictions are wrong. But now, researchers may have found an Achilles' heel common to many flu viruses, even the viruses that cause bird flu. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Stimulus Money Meets Mixed Reactions From States Around the country, the lights in governors' offices have been burning late as staff members digest the details of the new federal stimulus package Congress passed on Friday. Some governors are concerned the federal spending might not be the help they need. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Americans': The Book That Changed Photography In 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans dramatically altered how photographers looked through viewfinders and how Americans saw themselves. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Valentine's Cupcakes From Nigella Lawson As Valentine's Day approaches, one person who doesn't get mushy about it is food writer Nigella Lawson. Still, she jumps at the chance to make her own cupcakes. "I think that adults have some sort of yearning for childish things, childish foods," Lawson notes. "And I don't mean that disparagingly." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Darwin's Earthworm Experiments Broke New Ground While Charles Darwin is most remembered for his revolutionary theory of evolution, he also studied earthworms. He proposed the theory that earthworms, then considered pests, actually processed soil, making it more fertile. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Six-Word Memoirs: The Valentine's Day Edition Can you sum up your love life in exactly six words? Hundreds of famous and not-so-famous authors rose to the challenge for Smith magazine's Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Brewery Business Hopping Despite Tanking Economy Beer sales in the U.S. are going strong despite the lagging economy. Both small breweries and large breweries alike are struggling to keep up with demand as consumers are drinking at home more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fruit Fly Scientists Swatted Down Over 'Cheap Date' One of the privileges of being a scientist is that when you discover something new, you get to name it anything you want. So scientists have labeled fruit fly genes things like "Cheap Date," "I'm Not Dead Yet" and "Sonic Hedgehog." But human patients tend to take offense when they're diagnosed with having "Lunatic Fringe." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S. Science long ago proclaimed Darwin's theory of evolution a winner. And in honor of his 200th birthday, England is issuing commemorative stamps, coins — even quilts — in honor of its hero. But in parts of the U.S., Darwin's theories remain socially controversial. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Young Bosses Push Elders To Embrace Technology As baby boomers delay retirement, they are finding themselves with bosses who are younger — and more tech-savvy — than they are. For many older workers, that means learning to live with a BlackBerry, Facebook and other high-tech tools. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Treasury Debates What To Spend, Whom To Save A small group is meeting at the Treasury Department — largely in secret — to rewrite the rules of how the government will save the banking system. It is deciding how to spend more than $300 billion — the remainder of the $700 billion in bailout funds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Joe Torre On Life With The Yankees The former New York Yankees manager tells NPR about his time running the team, his views on steroids, and his relationships with key players like Alex Rodriguez. Torre, who now manages the Los Angeles Dodgers, has a new book out called The Yankee Years. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Abuse Scandal Plagues Hasidic Jews In Brooklyn Two men have come forward with allegations that they were abused by leaders of their Hasidic community in Brooklyn when they were children. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, known for devout religious beliefs and insular culture, says it has investigated the claims. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Can Stimulus Funding Help Promote Wellness? The stimulus bill would support programs to promote healthier lifestyles. But an ongoing debate is taking place as to whether these programs would actually save money in the long run. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Harvey Pekar Makes His Opera Debut Leave Me Alone is a new jazz opera by writer and social commentator Harvey Pekar and saxophonist and composer Dan Plonsey about the future of cutting-edge music and marital discord. The entire opera will be webcast live on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Dusty': PBS Vet Takes Kids' TV Out Of The Box In 2005, PBS decided not to air an episode of a children's show because it featured a family with gay parents. Now a real-life kids'-TV writer has built a stage play around the story behind the episode that didn't air. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Obama Gives Keynes His First Real-World Test British economist John Maynard Keynes believed government spending could pull an economy out of recession. After deficits ballooned in the 1970s, his ideas were widely discredited. Now, with the Obama administration's $825 billion stimulus plan, Keynesian economics gets its first real-world test. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | For Tips On Riding Financial Waves, Ask Fishermen Americans suffering in the anemic economy could take a lesson from fishermen, who have learned how to manage ebbs and flows. They cooperate with their competitors, diversify their businesses and depend on their communities. Above all, they stay optimistic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Blagojevich At The Movies: A Hero In His Own Epic The Illinois governor has taken to using movie quotes to make the case that he's being railroaded in the ongoing corruption case brought against him back in December. Bob Mondello takes stock of the footage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'No Cussing' Founder: Mind Your Dang Language A 15-year-old launched a club to encourage his friends to stop cussing around him. He's now spawned a 30,000-member global movement and has made media appearances and written a book. His fame and ideas, though, have made him a target of bullying and harassment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Eternal Flame: Zippo Set To Reach Milestone The windproof Zippo lighter's familiar click and blue flame have been an American mainstay. As the company prepares to make its 500 millionth lighter, it is still guaranteeing them for life — and repairing them in Bradford, Pa., where the company was founded in 1932. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ice Climber Tackles Iowa Silos When you think of locations for extreme winter sports, Iowa doesn't usually spring to mind. For the past 10 years, Don Briggs has been trying to change that. He's been icing the sides of grain silos and scaling them just as you would Mount Everest or any other ice wall. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Friday Night Lights': One Final Shot At Glory? Though hailed by critics, NBC's Friday Night Lights has struggled to find an audience. Can a unique deal with DirecTV turn the game around? As the third season airs on NBC, fans hold out hope. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Saving Folk History, One Recording At A Time A small group of musicians is trying to preserve American folk music. These players aren't professional archivists or producers; their old, rare cassette and reel-to-reel tapes are scattered across the country. Members of the Field Recorders' Collective want to introduce these recordings to a new generation of musicians online. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | National Zoo Desperately Seeks Bamboo Most homeowners who battle bamboo in their yards know it to be a tenacious and exasperating opponent. Some species of the giant grass can grow 2 feet in a day. Now, the National Zoo is turning to Washington, D.C.-area residents for help feeding its three giant pandas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'We Are One' Concert Kicks Off Inaugural Festivities The first official inaugural event: a free concert at the Lincoln Memorial, with a cast of megawatt singers, rockers and actors. NPR's Debbie Elliott joins host Rebecca Roberts to talk about the scene at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In One State, There's Little Celebration Over Obama Many people in Wyoming are anticipating Inauguration Day with a mix of curiosity and dread. Only 33 percent of voters in the Cowboy State went for Barack Obama. No state voted less Democratic. Even so, many say they'll still give him the respect any U.S. president is due. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gifts For The Gods: Food For The Chinese New Year A tradition for the Chinese New Year is to leave out food for the kitchen god to ensure a prosperous year. Food writer Grace Young talks about the reasons for putting food on the altar —and some of the recipes her family cooks up, like fried garlic lettuce. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Unemployed Without Benefits: A Couple's Struggle Barbara and Gary Ratner, who live in Atlanta, aren't eligible for unemployment assistance, so they're seeking creative ways to make ends meet. The couple — in their 60s — have drawn $10,000 out of retirement and are considering dropping their health insurance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Bush's Wake, A New Political Landscape In a few days, George W. Bush's presidency will come to a close. He leaves the political landscape considerably altered in his wake: The path to the White House is now a grass-roots one, and a once-strong GOP coalition is now shattered. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Interactive Games Make Museums A Place To Play On a recent evening, 100 museum professionals gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear a lecture — not about funding, or curatorial responsibility — but about games. Museum directors are hoping alternate reality games will get visitors of all ages engaged with their collections. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Day That Defined A Presidency: Sept. 11, 2001 The White House went on war footing after Sept. 11, expanding executive authority and establishing a rationale for pre-emptive war. Framing every policy in terms of the attacks became the theme of the Bush era. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Joan Rivers Talks About Nips, Tucks And New Book Joan Rivers' plastic-surgery adventures are as well-known as her penchant for joking about them. And her new book, Men Are Stupid... And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery, doesn't hold back any details. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Missions Leave No Soldier Behind In Afghanistan No American soldiers are listed as missing in action in Afghanistan, thanks in part to the emphasis on helicopter rescue and recovery missions. One recent nighttime mission to recover a dead soldier required precision flying and harrowing rescue maneuvers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Auto Models Rev Up To Sell At Detroit Auto Show Auto models have been showing off cars for decades, but now they play a much bigger role in selling vehicles, according to Margery Krevsky, who runs an auto modeling talent agency. They may be needed this year more than ever with the industry in the tank. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | This Winter, More Cause For Broadway Discontent The recession has hit Broadway hard: Nine shows, including Young Frankenstein, closed this week, and four more have posted notices. Jeff Lunden talks to a veteran producer and a young investor to see how bad the outlook is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Burris Gets The Senate Boot, Vows To Take Seat Roland Burris came to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to take his seat as the junior senator from Illinois, but the Democratic leadership in the Senate kept him out. Despite getting shunned, Burris says the law is on his side. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Time' Photographer Captures Obama Moments President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, sent their daughters off to the first day at their new school Monday morning in Washington, D.C. One of the people capturing the intimate moment was Time magazine photographer Callie Shell, who has been snapping photos of Obama since 2006. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Predictions For 2009 From 'The Onion' Not much happened in 2008, says Onion editor Joe Randazzo, but one event did prove popular enough that his satirical news publication predicts we'll see it reprised this year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | NASA's Mars Rovers Still Making Tracks Five years ago, NASA's roving robot called Spirit landed safely on Mars, followed by the rover Opportunity three weeks later. Expected to explore for about three months, the rovers are still exploring the Red Planet today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Iowa Family Pitches In To Make Profit Off Livestock Each year, the Griffieons net about $5,000 from the cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys they raise on their farm. Craig Griffieon tends to the cattle, while his wife, LaVon, and daughter Autumn sell the meat. Autumn says she gets attached to the animals, but the money helps reconcile her feelings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Coping With An Autistic Brother: A Teenager's Take Each year, about one child in every 150 is diagnosed with autism. Eleven-year-old Andrew Skillings has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. Andrew's older sister, Marissa, talks about how she copes with her brother's meltdowns — and how she protects him from the other kids. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 2008: Spitzer, Chillicothe, Zion And Pierre As the year draws to an end, we revisit some of the major news stories we reported on and the people — and penguins — we met to find out what's happening now. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Loaves And The Fishes (And The Ducks) As long as anyone can remember, locals and tourists have tossed bread to the carp and ducks at the Linesville Spillway in northwest Pennsylvania. The fish are so thick that mallard ducks, also in search of a free meal, literally hop, skip and jump on the fishes' backs to compete for a slice of bread. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids' Suicide Risk Gay young adults have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts, and kids who are rejected by their parents have the most problems. New research says when a parent is neutral about a son or daughter being gay, or even only mildly critical, that goes a long way in reducing a child's risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Reclaiming Detroit Means Reinventing A City These days, stories about Detroit paint the American auto mecca as a city that's lost its way. But for the remaining residents of the shrinking city, it's also an urban frontier of the imagination. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Israeli Airstrikes Target Hamas In Gaza Strip A day-long Israeli bombardment of Hamas police and security compounds across the Gaza Strip has left more than two hundred Palestinians dead and several hundred wounded. It was the single bloodiest day of fighting in Gaza in years. NPR's Eric Westervelt joins host Jacki Lyden from Jerusalem. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Filmmaker Reflects On 'Waltz With Bashir' Reception Although Ari Folman's father warned him not to create the animated film about Israeli involvement in a massacre during the 1982 Lebanon war, the filmmaker did so anyway, in part to dissuade teenagers from going to war. To Folman's surprise, it was embraced by the Israeli government. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Activists Clamor For Organic Farm At White House Barack Obama will have his hands full when he takes office in January, and some groups want to make sure his belly is full, too — full of fresh fruits and vegetables. Several campaigns are petitioning the next president to feed his family with produce grown on the White House lawn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Blind Man Sees With Subconscious Eye A man left clinically blind by a stroke was able to perfectly navigate an obstacle course. Yet he had no idea he was doing it. This remarkable case of "blind sight" is providing new clues to the mind's subconscious eye. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | For 'Fight Club' Director, A Side Step Into Romance The director of the brutal Fight Club and the serial-killer thriller Seven has teamed up with Brad Pitt again — but this time the movie they've made is a swooning big-screen romance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Vet's Recovery Takes Family's Dedication Army Staff Sgt. Robert Henline suffered severe burns over 38 percent of his body when his truck hit a roadside bomb. His recovery has been difficult, but he and his family keep looking forward to the "next positive thing." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Master Bricklayer Preserves His Craft Melvin Moore, 75, teaches beginner "brickies" this age-old craft. His masonry work can be seen at the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and buildings at nearly all the major universities in Washington, D.C. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How To Make A Dream Gingerbread Home Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan offers tips on how to make a gingerbread house, cottage or McMansion. Although Greenspan suggests spreading the work out over a few days, she and Michele Norris recently constructed one in a day. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Jason Crigler: Hope And Recovery The guitarist's new CD, The Music of Jason Crigler, deserves attention because of the variety of style and performance, and the natural fit you often hear between singer and song. But the story behind this recording, which was nine years in the making, goes beyond music. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | First U.S. Face Transplant Performed In Cleveland A near-total face transplant has been conducted at the Cleveland Clinic. The procedure is the first of its kind in the U.S., following partial face transplants performed in France and China. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Researchers Find New Evidence Of Dark Energy Studying the growth of galaxy clusters has led researchers to new clues about the possible existence of dark energy. Though some say it could be that scientists just don't fully understand gravity yet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Holiday Technology Guide: What's Affordable Despite the dour state of the economy, there are still plenty of technology gifts that may not be fancy, but may be useful and affordable. Omar Gallaga, technology reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, talks about how to stretch those tech dollars. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Injured Veteran Reunites With Bomb Dog And Medic Jamie Mangan suffered catastrophic injuries when her Humvee ran over an IED near Kirkuk, Iraq. She still suffers from the effects of brain injuries, but she gets support from Rex, the bomb-sniffing German Shepard she thought had died in the blast, and from her husband, the medic who saved Jamie's life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Balancing Form, Function In Museum Architecture Two American museums designed by one world-famous architect have evoked two very different reactions from visitors and critics alike. Laura Sydell investigates the tensions between form and function in the latest installment of NPR's series on 21st-century museums. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Iraq Veteran Suffers Wounds That Can't Be Seen For thousands of young men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the price exacted by war is obvious. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, John Blaufus' injuries didn't appear until he tried to resume the life he had before the war. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tom Jones Still Sings To The Back Rows For more than 40 years, Tom Jones has been strutting his stuff across the stage. Now, at 68, he's got a new album called 24 Hours, his first U.S. studio disc in more than 15 years. It combines big-band sounds with catchy beats, occasionally suggestive lyrics and a booming voice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | General: Why Afghanistan Needs More U.S. Troops Gen. David McKiernan, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, tells NPR that defeating the threat in Afghanistan is of "vital national security interest." He says fighting the insurgency will take a long time and the U.S. needs resources from the international community. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 100-Year-Old Gears Up For Obama's Inauguration Lillian Allen, who turned 100 in April, says she never expected to see a black man sworn in as president in her lifetime. The Pittsburgh native who volunteered for the Obama campaign plans to travel to Washington, D.C., for the historic inauguration. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Companies Say 'Bah, Humbug!' To Holiday Parties Scores of U.S. businesses plan to forgo their annual bash as a response to the slumping economy. One business consultant says the decline in parties doesn't bode well for the futures of the companies cutting back. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mexico's 1968 Massacre: What Really Happened? In 1968, students in Mexico City challenged the country's government. On Oct. 2, troops opened fire on a crowd of student demonstrators. Forty years later, the exact death toll remains a mystery. But official documents suggest that military snipers may have triggered the massacre. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Jon Scieszka, A Seriously Funny 'Knucklehead' Children's author Jon Scieszka has written two dozen fantastical books, including The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series, but his most recent work is an autobiography geared toward children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Career In Radio And Listening For The Edits As part of StoryCorps' National Day of Listening project, Susan Stamberg and Noah Adams talk about how radio has changed them and the art of listening. The project encourages people to sit down with a loved one on Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving, and record a meaningful conversation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Indigenous Echoes In A Thanksgiving Feast Though historians aren't entirely sure what was served at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621, chefs at the National Museum of the American Indian have developed a menu reflecting tribal culinary traditions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Back In Vogue: The Retro Way To Pay For Presents This season, stores like TJ Maxx and Sears are offering customers the option to buy on layaway — make a deposit, and the store keeps the goods until the price is paid in full. Layaway had been discontinued decades ago, but it's making a comeback because credit cards are no longer cheap or easy to use. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ex-Skinhead And His Victim Form Unlikely Alliance For nearly three decades Tim Zaal thought he had kicked a gay man to death during his rage-filled youth. Then one day, he found himself face to face with the man he thought he had killed. After some extreme awkwardness, they decided to use their story to educate people about the dangers of hate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | When Is Social Networking Kosher In The Office? Millions of people use Twitter to post short updates about what they're doing, what they're reading and whom they're talking to. Now there's a new tool similar to Twitter that can help keep work e-mail inboxes clean. It's called Yammer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Border Security Challenges Next Administration Nearly 700 miles of barriers are under construction along the U.S.-Mexico border as a part of a three-pronged strategy to beef up border security. It's up to the next head of Homeland Security to assess whether the strategy is working. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Maps Give Glimpse Of How The World Really Looks Mark Newman, co-author of The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live, says there are more things to understand about the world than how many acres there are in a country. The new book redraws the world in ways other than by land mass. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Thanksgiving Treat: Special Cranberry Relish Every year as Thanksgiving approaches, friends ask NPR's Susan Stamberg for her mother-in-law's recipe for cranberry relish. The side dish combines the sweet tartness of cranberries with soothing sour cream — and gets a kick from a little horseradish. "It sounds terrible but tastes terrific," Stamberg says. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Museum Of American History: A Gem Gets Polished Washington's National Mall will regain a star attraction Friday, when the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History reopens after a two-year renovation. It took $85 million and a horde of curators, builders, architects and advisers to reframe space for the museum's 3 million historic objects. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How To Track Music, Scan Bar Codes On A Cell Phone Tech expert Omar Gallaga of the Austin American-Statesman talks about some of the newest cell phone applications. One allows you to scan bar codes on products like books to comparison shop. Another will identify music you're listening to if you're in the car or in a store. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gun Sales Rise On Fear Of Democratic President Gun shops around the country have been reporting record sales in the past month. Many of the sales are due to anxiety that a new Democratic administration may impose tougher gun laws. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Black Masculinity: Dueling Images Of Power Byron Hurt, the producer of the Web documentary Barack and Curtis, talks about the changing face of black masculinity in the U.S. since Barack Obama's rise to power. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Municipalities Squeezed In Bond Market When the normally quiet bond market went haywire, cities and towns across America found themselves stuck with rising payments and projects in jeopardy. But why? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Brit Hume To Step Down As Fox News Anchor The longtime journalist plans to leave the nightly news anchor chair later this year to become a part-time pundit. Hume says he wants to devote more time to golf, grandchildren and Bible study — and that he's tired of the partisan sniping in Washington. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How Obama Mapped Out His Path To Power President-elect Barack Obama has followed an extraordinary path that lifted him from the category of "flash in the pan" first-term senator to the Oval Office in less than four years. His well-organized campaign always seemed to know how to respond to crises. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gut Bacteria May Cause And Fight Disease, Obesity These genes aren't from your parents, but the genetic code of the bacteria in your gut can determine your health — and affect conditions like type 1 diabetes and obesity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Court Weighs Reach Of Drug Warning Labels In a case involving drug labels and the Food and Drug Administration, the court considers whether lawsuits against drug makers can be limited when consumers are harmed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Growing Pains Come To Harlem New York City's famed black neighborhood wrestles with what the current round of gentrification means for its identity. Some residents are concerned that what once made Harlem special will soon be lost through new economic growth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Studs Terkel, Oral Historian And Radio Legend, 96 Terkel, who came of age during the Great Depression, often said America suffered from what he called a national Alzheimer's disease. His oral histories and radio interviews with everyday Americans helped document the nation's past. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Missouri Farming Couple Worries About The Future Bryan and Christina Truemper live on the "brink of poverty" with their two young children in Frohna, Mo. They don't have health care and worry about the country falling into a depression. But they also say a new presidency could make a difference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | On The Mississippi, Two Views Of The Candidates In Missouri, polls show presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama are neck and neck. Two voters — a deckhand on a small passenger ferry and a fuel truck driver who takes the ferry — have vastly different takes on the election. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Favors, Inconsistencies Taint Angola Murder Case Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox spent 36 years in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison for the murder of a corrections officer. Decades later, questions are surfacing about how the wife of the lead investigator ended up as the forewoman on the jury and why the key witness was promised a pardon. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Doubts Arise About 1972 Angola Prison Murder In 1972, a popular young correctional officer was stabbed to death at Angola prison. Two inmates were quickly convicted of the crime and placed in solitary confinement for nearly four decades. Now, all these years later, the murder seems even more elusive than it did then, and there are questions about their guilt. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In S.D., Native Americans Face Voting Roadblocks Early voting in the United States is giving voters easier access to the polls. But if you're a Native American on the Rosebud or Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota, early voting is not so easy. Most South Dakotans have the option to vote early in person at their local county courthouse or polling place. But this is not an option offered to these two reservations, which can't afford courthouses and are too poor to hire a full time country auditor. Voting rights advocates are crying foul ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chicago High School Raises Crops, Career Hopes Students at Chicago's High School for Agricultural Sciences learn from farming livestock and crops, but they also train for several other careers. Ag High's curriculum includes subjects such as English, history and science, along with classes literally taught in the field. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How McCain Shed Pariah Status Among Evangelicals John McCain's relationship with evangelicals became strained during his 2000 presidential bid. But he has boosted his standing by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate and by making appearances at places such as Southern California's Saddleback Church. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Debating 'Drill, Baby, Drill' At Site Of '69 Spill Since 1969, when Santa Barbara's coast was the site of a devastating oil spill, the county has been staunchly opposed to more offshore drilling. But with the recent removal of a federal ban, some in the area seem to be having a change of heart. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Facing The Downturn On A New York Farm Doug and Kathy Rutz live on a farm near Binghamton, N.Y. The credit crisis has them wondering if they will be able to get loans to put their children through college. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | McCain Shakes Off Powell's Endorsement Of Obama Republican presidential hopeful John McCain was campaigning Sunday in the swing state of Ohio. He cast himself as the guardian of middle-class workers and small-business owners. McCain also said he was not surprised that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, endorsed his Democratic opponent Barack Obama. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday morning. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Terrence Howard Talks Tunes, Family, Science Two weeks ago, Terrence Howard's mother died. In the wake of her death, he is considering his family, his music and his career. He says it was not until two weeks ago that he became a grown man. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Queen Latifah Buzzes About 'Secret Life Of Bees' The Golden Globe-winning actress talks about racism, her fear of bees and playing the oldest sister in The Secret Life of Bees. The new film is adapted from Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling novel. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chocolate Milkshakes On The Brain Scientists say they've discovered one reason overweight people eat more than they need to — and find it so hard to stop. Their findings, reported in the journal Science, stem from some high-tech brain scans, fancy genetic tests — and chocolate milkshakes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | ACORN Has Long Been In Republicans' Cross Hairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee and others have accused ACORN of widespread voter registration fraud. It's the latest, and most bitter, battle in a long conflict between conservatives and the grassroots group. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Arranged Marriage: Trapped Between Two Cultures Many young Muslims in the U.S. clash with their parents over the issue of arranged marriages. Tensions involve family traditions and the yearning for independence. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Never-Ending Battle Over Farming With Chemicals The Griffieons, who run a 1,150-acre farm in Iowa, disagree about whether to use chemicals on their corn and soybeans. They reserve a 10-acre plot for experiments with organic farming, but the crop yield wasn't as hearty as those sprayed with pesticides. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Air Bag Fraud: Underreported 'Life And Death Scam' A Weekend Edition investigation shows that some unscrupulous auto repair shops and used-car dealers have victimized consumers by stealing or not replacing air bags. Get tips for spotting air bag fraud and see what one victim found inside her car. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Jellyfish Protein Researchers Win Chemistry Nobel Two Americans and a Japanese researcher have won the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work creating a method of unveiling the previously invisible machinery inside living cells, using a protein that glows in the dark. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Le Carre Tackles Terror In 'A Most Wanted Man' John le Carre, a one-time British intelligence officer, has been writing spy stories for more than 40 years. In his latest novel, he explores the complexities of the war on terror. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Artist Macaulay Decodes Body In 'Way We Work' Best-selling author and illustrator David Macaulay takes a head-to-toe trip in The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body. He says illustrating how we work was so difficult, he almost gave up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Political Humor's Hysterical History Satire has played a part in politics for hundreds of years, but how is it different in the YouTube era? Is it all in good fun, or is there something being lost in all the laughter? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Where Wall St. And Main St. Collide -- Literally Politicians can't stop talking about the impact of a metonymical Wall Street on a metaphorical Main Street. But what about the spots across the country where the two streets actually intersect? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Julianne Moore: Seeing Past Surfaces In 'Blindness' Julianne Moore plays a seeing woman in a sightless world in Blindness, the film adaptation of Jose Saramago's apocalyptic novel. She describes working with director Fernando Meirelles on the eerie film about an epidemic of "White Sickness." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Political Songs: Beyond 'Obama Girl' There's another debate taking place in this campaign: Its rhetoric is musical, and it's happening where presidential politics and homemade music collide. This goes beyond the Obama Girl and the McCain McCutie, into the realm of homemade and heartfelt music. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Unlike Stocks, Credit Market Fails To Rebound The stock market bounced back Tuesday, regaining nearly 500 of the 777 points it lost Monday. While the volatility in the stock market has gotten a lot of attention, many economists are much more concerned about what's happening in the credit markets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Prosecutor To Probe Firings Of U.S. Attorneys Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy to pursue possible criminal charges against Republicans who were involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys. The move was recommended by a Justice Department report on the firings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Thomas Jefferson's Love Affair -- With Wine Past fortified doors and beyond tourists' eyes, researchers are digging deep in the cellars of Monticello. It turns out the nation's third president may also have been America's first wine connoisseur. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Fact-Checking The Candidates' Debate During their debate Friday night, Barack Obama and John McCain clashed on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the U.S. role in the world. A flare-up over Iran was the most contentious part of the debate. Were the candidates' statements about their foreign policy positions truthful? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Week America's Economy Almost Died When short-term credit markets seized up last week, many economists and regulators say America faced a terrifying abyss. The nation risked becoming a place where no banks would lend and no customers could buy, where no one could get paid and commerce would cease — perhaps for decades. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A New Contender For Earth's Oldest Rock It's hard to find rocks from the earliest days of the planet because the Earth's surface is constantly changing. But exposed bedrock on the eastern shore of the Hudson Bay in Quebec may be 4.3 billion years old. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tim Russert, 'Meet the Press' Host, Dead at 58 NBC newsman Tim Russert died suddenly today of an apparent heart attack. Russert, who was 58, had hosted Meet the Press since 1991. He was known as a dogged interviewer and a well-sourced Washington insider. Under his leadership, the show became an essential stop for politicians and officials at the highest levels. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A. Cyclists in Los Angeles have to deal with traffic, smog and a scarcity of bike lanes. Now one group of activists has created a new kind of protest — riding their bikes on the interstate at rush hour. The Crimanimalz say they're out to prove a point. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Trees Do Their Best Work with Thermostats at 70 Scientists have uncovered a jaw-dropping fact: Trees around the world employ a range of tricks to keep their leaf temperature at 70 degrees when they soak up the sun and produce wood and sugar. It's as true for a tree growing in the tropics as for a tree in the frigid North. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'David vs. Goliath': City Takes On BAE Systems A small suburb of Detroit takes on BAE Systems, alleging the giant British defense contractor funneled payments to a member of the Saudi royal family. The case, involving the city's pension fund, has players ranging from Tony Blair to a substitute teacher. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | iPhone Updated with New Features, Lower Price Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced the next generation of the popular iPhone. The new version, due in stores July 11, runs on the fast 3G network. The 3G iPhone costs less money and has other few new features. The new iPhone starts at $199 — far less than the $600 price tag when the phone debuted a year ago. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Can 'Blue Zones' Help Turn Back the Biological Clock? Author Dan Buettner's new book The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest identifies parts of the world where pockets of people tend to live longer than the rest of us. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mother of Three Returns to Weight Lifting, Olympics Melanie Roach has been chasing an Olympic dream for more than a decade. A self-described "girly girl," Roach hardly looks like she can lift twice her body weight. But lifting may be the easiest part of her day — one of Roach's children is autistic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rowling's Harvard Speech Doesn't Entrance All J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address at Harvard on Thursday. While some graduates were giddy to hear from the Harry Potter author, others grumbled. They noted that Harvard is known for inviting heavy hitters, like Bill Gates, to address students. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Whither the Necktie? The End of One Natty Era Tie sales have been dropping for years, and now the trade group that represents American tie makers is shutting down, according to JA Apparel CEO Marty Staff, who considers the tie's uncertain future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bred for Edge, Greatest Racers May Have Handicaps Big Brown may accomplish what no horse has done for 30 years — win racing's Triple Crown. But Big Brown's path to the Belmont Stakes has been marred with questions. Some vets say racehorses are breaking down more often because they're being bred for speed at an early age. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Summer Books to Feed Your Literary Addiction Alan Cheuse confesses his literary addiction — and offers reading suggestions for other book junkies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Nod to Obama Costs Lawyer Kmiec in Church Conservative lawyer Douglas Kmiec was denied communion recently at a mass connected with a gathering of Catholic business people. The priest denounced Kmiec's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, then refused to give Kmiec communion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mr. Spock: The 'Mystery of Masculinity' Embodied When Gene Roddenberry was putting Star Trek together, NBC execs had some advice: "Lose the Martian." We all know how that turned out: Mr. Spock (a Vulcan) ranks among the most fascinating characters in TV history. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Perfect Pitch: The Drama of Collegiate A Capella Scott Simon talks with Mickey Rapkin about his new book, "Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory," which weaves together the drama of three groups trying to claim glory without instruments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | McClellan: Bush Embraced Political 'Game' Too Often Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan insists his scathing memoir is not the work of a disgruntled ex-employee — as some of his old colleagues have argued — but an effort to tell the truth to help clean up Washington. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Chimp that Learned Sign Language Project Nim was a research study conducted in the 1970s meant to find out if a chimpanzee could learn to sign. The study's chimp –- named Nim Chimpsky -– lived in a Manhattan brownstone with a family who could teach him sign language. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Some Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy Although polygamy is illegal in the U.S., some Muslim men in America have quietly married multiple wives. No one knows for sure how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families, but estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mosquito War: New Chemicals May Beat DEET A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found several chemicals that may be more effective mosquito repellents than DEET. The gold standard for discouraging mosquitoes, it wasn't known until recently how DEET affects the insects. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Dude: A Little Lebowski, Alive in All of Us His given name is Jeffrey Lebowski — but the stoner hero of The Big Lebowski prefers to be called the Dude. As Guy Raz discovers, he's part fiction, part reality. But there's a little Dude in each of us. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mel Brooks Blazes Wacky Trail Actor, director, producer and comedian Mel Brooks talks about his new Broadway musical Young Frankenstein, the movie and potential stage production of Blazing Saddles, and his long and successful career. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Booksellers' Selections for Summer Afternoons What better way to spend a summer afternoon than curled up with a good book? NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg asks three independent booksellers for their picks for lazy days and warm nights. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Slugging to Work: Anonymous Ride-Sharing If you've ever sat in rush-hour traffic, gazing longingly at the cars rushing by in the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, try doing something your parents warned you never to do: Hop in a car with a complete stranger behind the wheel. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Nanotubes, Like Asbestos, Could Threaten Health Tiny tubes made of carbon atoms have promised to revolutionize industry. But a new study in mice suggests that one kind of nanotube produces biological changes like those caused by asbestos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Authorities Hunt for Graves at Manson Hideout Authorities are searching for bodies at a Death Valley, Calif., ranch where Charles Manson hid after killing seven people in the summer of 1969. A dog named Buster, trained to find cadavers, helped spark the search. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Who's the Brain Behind 'Aztec' Crystal Skulls? Dozens of crystal skulls exist around the world, but none has proved to be a genuine Aztec artifact. Scientists remain puzzled: Where did they come from? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Captain Fatty Lives the High Life on the High Seas For 48 years, Captain Fatty Goodlander has lived aboard a sailboat exploring the world's high seas. This summer, he will send regular dispatches from his 38-foot cutter as he sails through Southeast Asia. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Search for Victims Turns Up a Quake Survivor Four days after a powerful earthquake struck China's Sichuan province, survivors are still being located, freed from rubble by rescue teams. Days after the quake, a search party found and rescued a survivor in a devastated village in Sichuan. But getting the man out of a collapsed factory was no simple matter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bible Theme Park Faces Opposition in Tennessee Developer Armon Bar-Tur has proposed a $200 million Bible theme park on 280 acres in Rutherford County, Tenn. Not everyone is convinced it will benefit the county. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | On Reality TV, Less Sleep Means More Drama Research shows that sleep deprivation makes people emotionally volatile and temperamental — a fact that hasn't escaped the notice of some reality TV producers, who deny contestants sleep in an effort to kick up televised drama. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Science, Symbolism Mix in Army Mortuary Training At Fort Lee in Virginia, soldiers train to become 92Ms — mortuary affairs specialists. They will go on to help recover, identify and prepare the remains of fallen soldiers. The 92Ms use the language of medical examiners, and they also make sure to properly honor the soldiers in their care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Shattered School Shows Power of Chinese Quake Among the victims of a powerful earthquake near Chengdu, China, are hundreds of young students who are feared dead after being trapped in the rubble of their middle school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Saving Endangered Species One Mouthful at a Time Conservation scientist Gary Nabhan says the best way to recover some of America's at-risk species is to eat them. He documents lost and threatened foods in his new book, Renewing America's Food Traditions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Circus Family Is Ready for a Safety Net After spending 10 years traveling the world in a 1962 double-decker bus that maxes out at 33 mph, the Sprockets Circus family is ready for the next attraction: a home. The trip taught its members some valuable lessons about their fellow man. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag Now that many airlines are charging for a second checked bag, one packing expert reveals tricks travelers can use to pack everything they need in one checked bag. He says the key is to draw up a list and bundle wrap clothes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Parents Consider Treatment to Delay Son's Puberty After years of struggling with their son's gender identity issues, Robert and Danielle decided to seek treatment. One option they are looking into would buy Armand, now Violet, more time to decide whether he wants to physically become a female. But it comes with risks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences Thousands of miles apart, two families noticed their toddler sons gravitated toward toys, colors and clothes generally associated with girls. Each family eventually decided to go with radically different approaches to their child's identity issues, as directed by their therapists. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | FBI Raids Office of Special Counsel FBI agents on Tuesday raided the Office of the Special Counsel, the agency that investigates whistleblower and discrimination complaints by federal employees. The FBI is examining allegations of political misconduct by agency employees. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Dallas Man Exonerated After 27 Years in Prison James Lee Woodard walked out of a Texas prison last week after almost three decades behind bars. The state now agrees that Woodard was wrongfully convicted in 1981 of killing a girl he had been dating. Woodard is the 17th man from Dallas to be cleared by DNA evidence. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Tornado's Gifts: Greensburg Rebuilds, Revitalizes A year after one of the most powerful tornados on record obliterated Greensburg, Kan., wind turbines, dozens of houses and some of the world's most environmentally friendly buildings have sprouted where the storm left only splintered rubble. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Baltimore Sun' Series Profiles Con Woman Justin Fenton discusses his three-part series in The Baltimore Sun on the unbelievable criminal life of Cindy McKay. Among her crimes, McKay faked her own death and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from a seminary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Injured GI's Care Reflects Army's Uneven Progress Following the controversy over shoddy care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other hospitals, the Army has changed the way it treats injured soldiers like Sgt. Scott Metcalf. Still, problems such as shortages of trained staff remain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Some Patients Say Life After Lasik Not Perfect About 5 percent of patients are unhappy with the results of their Lasik procedure. Some cite lack of information about possible results to be key. The FDA is beginning a Lasik study and wants to hear from those who are dissatisfied. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Indiana Town: From Racist Past to Primary Present The Democratic presidential campaigns are crisscrossing Indiana, stopping in Republican strongholds such as Martinsville. In this town with a troubled racial history, voters share their views on the match-up between a white woman and a black man. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Minty E. Coli and Other Bioengineering Feats Scientists all over the world are matter-of-factly amending, changing and rearranging living creatures for all kinds of reasons, some silly, some profound. Take the case of the MIT team that made the icky-smelling bacteria E. coli and gave it a wintergreen-scented twist. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | One Family, Two Views on How to Run Iowa Farm The Griffieons have owned a farm for five generations and are training their three children to take it over. But the couple has differing views on whether or not to sell genetically modified products and treat their produce with herbicides and pesticides. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Learning from the Virtual You How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behavior in real life, according to researchers at Stanford University. We examine how people interact psychologically with their virtual-reality selves. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Judi Dench, Living Quietly in 'Cranford' The actress, whose career has spanned splashy Bond blockbusters and Sondheim on stage, plays a shy, sweet English spinster in the Masterpiece TV series based on Elizabeth Gaskell's tales. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pierre Sheds Wet Suit for Real Penguin Suit After beginning to go bald in 2006, a penguin in San Francisco was fitted with a wet suit — and started to re-grow his feathers. Pam Schaller, a senior aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, shares Pierre's remarkable story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Doctors Get a Crash Course in Healthful Cooking Chefs at the Culinary Institute of America have teamed up with Harvard's medical school to show Americans how to make healthful food instead of quickie meals of pizza or taquitos. And they're starting with physicians. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Show-Stopping Aria Encored at the Met There is an unofficial moratorium on taking encores at New York's Metropolitan Opera. But tenor Juan Diego Florez broke the 14-year old ban Monday night, singing 18 high C's back to back. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Talula's: The Toughest Reservation in the U.S.? When foodies hear the phrase "tough reservation," they might think of the French Laundry in Napa or Le Cirque in New York, both known for their six-month waiting lists. They're a snap compared with Talula's Table in the historic Pennsylvania town of Kennett Square. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Lucy's Laugh Enlivens the Solar System We make a lot of noise here on Earth with our TV and radio broadcasts, and some of that sound escapes into space. But how far will our signals travel? Can Lucille Ball's laugh be heard across the universe? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Couple's Custom Microphones Carry Colorful Past In rural southwestern Virginia, Mary and John Peluso meticulously assemble microphones modeled after some of the world's legendary and infamous microphones, but at a price today's musicians can afford. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | High-Fidelity Memories on Record Store Day Saturday, independently owned record stores across the country toast loyal patrons with giveaways and in-store performances. Singer-songwriter James McMurtry remembers browsing, and awkwardly self-promoting, in music shops. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Dear First Lady': Letters Offer Glimpse of History American citizens have written to the first ladies of the nation since the days of Martha Washington. The letters make requests, ask for favors, criticize and praise. A number of letters to presidents' wives have been collected in the new book Dear First Lady. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pets Carry Wide Range of Chemical Pollutants What if you stretched out on stain-resistant carpet and then licked yourself? The average dog harbors at least twice the level of a type of chemical pollutant found in people. A new report has found a wide range of industrial chemicals in household cats and dogs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rising Demand for Meat Takes Toll on Environment As global demand for meat products has increased in recent years, so has awareness of the environmental damage that the industry causes. Modern meat production uses enormous amounts of energy, pollutes water supplies and creates greenhouse gases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists At just 16 years old, Kristen Byrnes is attracting attention for her Web site, which attacks mainstream science's views on climate change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Me Llamo Dora: An Explorer in Modern America Animated heroine, beloved of preschoolers throughout the U.S., breaks the cartoon mold: She's Latina, bilingual, a tomboy and she knows how to get problems solved. NPR's Rolando Arrieta explores how Nickelodeon's scrappy heroine came to be. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Italian Elections Similar to Race in U.S. Italy holds its parliamentary elections the day after tomorrow and the political campaigns have some surprising parallels to the contest in the U.S. For example, one of the two major candidates for prime minister is a relative newcomer to the national stage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Apprenticeship, Illumination in a Modern-Day Atelier In her home studio in East Hampton, New York, illumination artist Ellen Frank is working to revive the atelier, a workshop where apprentices learn the skills of a master by working with the artist on his or her original works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study Finds More than 'Truthiness' to 'Colbert Bump' It turns out there may be some truth to the curious phenomenon through which Colbert Report guests excel following an appearance on the show. Political science professor James Fowler found a bump in Democratic campaign contributions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Safire: 'Change' and Other Old Political Phrases "Change" may be the most common word being flung around on the presidential campaign trail this year. But William Safire, who chronicles political words and phrases, notes that "change" was big in Abraham Lincoln's day, too. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Preparing African Warriors to Meet the British Among the 30,000 runners in Sunday's London Marathon are six Maasai warriors. In anticipation of their trip, the conservation charity Greenforce prepared a pamphlet to help the Maasai meet the strange residents of London. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study Links Lack of Sleep to Weight Gain in Babies Infants and toddlers who slept less than 12 hours a night were more than twice as likely to be overweight by age 3. That's according to a study in this week's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Other studies have produced similar findings with school-age children and adolescents. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Birth of Organic, Polygamous Spiritualism Father Yod's followers were a fixture on the Sunset Strip in the late '60's. They took names like Electricity, dressed in robes and lived communally in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. A large group of followers, including many of Father Yod's 13 wives, recently held a reunion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Why?': Remembering Nina Simone's Tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. Three days after the Rev.. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, performer Nina Simone and her band played at the Westbury Music Festival on Long Island, N.Y. They performed"Why? (The King of Love is Dead),"a song they had just learned, written by their bass player Gene Taylor in reaction to King's death. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Eric Cartman: America's Favorite Little $@#&*% He's more bigoted than Archie Bunker, more short-tempered than Jackie Gleason, and much more trouble-prone than his animated precursor Fred Flintstone. NPR's Julie Rovner profiles South Park's wildly inappropriate fourth-grader. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Democrats Thinking the Unthinkable: Voting GOP Once upon a time, Democrats were extolling that they had two worthy contenders to choose from in Clinton and Obama. But now, some Democrats say they might just vote Republican if their preferred candidate doesn't win the party nomination. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Yale Money Whiz Shares Tips on Growing a Nest Egg Turmoil in the stock market has people on edge, but Yale's investment guru, David Swensen, explains how his allocation strategy and rebalancing technique have earned consistent double-digit returns over the past two decades. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Cheese' Heroin Hooking Young Users in Dallas A cheap but highly addictive form of heroin known as "cheese" has swept through Dallas in recent years, and local health officials are seeing Hispanic children as young as 9 suffering from the crushing effects of withdrawal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Three Writers are Drawn by the Allure of Comics Comic books -- or, in more highbrow parlance, graphic novelizations -- are nudging their way onto the shelves of bookstores and the pages of literary magazines. And writers such as Joss Whedon and Jodi Picoult are trying their hand at the genre. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chimps with Spears Captivate Photographer Unlike most members of their species, the chimps of the Senagelese grasslands spend most of their time on the ground. As Frans Lanting observed their creative survival tactics -- hunting with spears and drumming to impress potential mates -- he was reminded of himself. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bar Code Hopping in San Francisco Some restaurants and tourist attractions now have bar codes that cell phone users can scan to download an array of information. Will the pilot program take off like it has in Japan? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Treasure or Trash? Artist Says It's in the Packaging Artist Justin Gignac began putting garbage into boxes and selling them for as much as $100 to poke fun at the notion of value. A second project involves selling paintings of objects for the price of the item depicted. It's gotten him fancy dinners, video games and more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Young Genius Behind BitTorrent Bram Cohen, 26, wrote a groundbreaking program called BitTorrent. Affected by Asperger's Disorder, he says he sometimes needs his friends to remind him what's socially appropriate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | From Busy to Business: Exploring 'Semantic Antics' In Semantic Antics, lexicographer Sol Steinmetz traces how even the most basic words --including "deer," "balloon" and "kid" -- have changed meaning in unusual and unexpected ways. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Man and His Mitt: A Love Story In a new anthology of baseball essays, sportswriter Stefan Fatsis celebrates his beloved, 31-year-old baseball glove. He talks to Robert Siegel about how he set out to find out about his mitt's history and what he learned along the way. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Girl Scouts Transform to Recruit New Members The Girl Scouts have launched a major makeover to revitalize their brand and boost their membership, especially among minorities. The group hopes to debunk the image of girl scouting as making crafts, camping and baking cookies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Cruising to Otherworldly Antarctica Onboard a modern ocean liner, travel to the frozen continent is a far cry from the life-risking affair that it was for early explorers. But Antarctica's allure is still just as powerful. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Legacy of Rebellion Honored in Historic Dublin Jail The walls of Dublin's Kilmainham Jail hold two centuries of Irish history, but the place is most strongly associated with the Easter Rising of 1916, which laid the seeds for Ireland's eventual break from British rule. Many nationalists were held and executed there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study: Jazz Improv Cranks Up Brain's Creativity When jazz pianists are improvising riffs, their brains act much more like the dreaming brain, with inhibition turned down and creativity cranked way up, a new study finds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In 'Dracula,' a Metaphor for Faith and Rebirth Though his faith has waned over the years, author John Marks finds a metaphor for his own struggle with belief in the shadowy, invisible world of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Willie Brown, Well-Suited to Politics Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown's book, Basic Brown , reads like a primer for aspiring politicians. He shares advice for political success and explains why he's delighted by the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Alabama Beer Drinkers Fight for Stronger Brews Seventy-five years after the repeal of Prohibition, alcohol-related debates still flare up across the nation. In Alabama, beer with more than 6 percent alcohol is illegal. That means some of the most coveted brews in the world are off-limits. But that may soon change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Measuring the Success of the Anti-War Movement Five years ago, the United States invaded Iraq amid mass demonstrations across the country. If the United States is still in Iraq today, does that mean the anti-war movement has failed altogether? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Antarctica's Sea 'Babies' in Limbo The icy ocean around Antarctica is one of the most unspoiled in the world. It's world-renowned for its penguins, but one team of scientists is more concerned about the animals you can't see -- and the fate these microscopic creatures may face in a warming world. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Iraq at Center of Pennsylvania House Race Iraq promises to be the top issue in an emotionally charged House race in Pennsylvania. The father of a fallen Marine will take on the only Iraq war veteran serving in Congress. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Blanche DuBois: Chasing Magic, Fleeing the Dark She's one of theater's Everest roles, exhausting, perilous -- and irresistible to any actress with a sense of adventure. Even Marge Simpson couldn't resist her. NPR's Lynn Neary asks why Streetcar is such a wild ride. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pi Day: An Infinite Number of Ways to Celebrate On Friday, math enthusiasts celebrate pi, the infinite number representing the relationship between a circle's diameter and its circumference. Represented by the Greek letter pi, the number is usually shortened to 3.14, so festivities take place on March 14 or 3/14. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Taking Over the World One Sweater at a Time Photos of Leslie Hall in bejeweled sweaters turned her into an Internet star. But an influx of fans left her in debt, so she squeezed into a gold lame bodysuit and started rapping. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study: 25 Percent of Teens Have STDs A new study finds that one out of every four teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease. An official involved in the study discusses why the figure is so high and why African-American girls are the hardest hit. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Author Struggles to Stay Removed from Slave Trade With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave. This was just one of the difficult lessons writer Benjamin Skinner learned while researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. He discusses the challenges of writing about this disturbing institution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'America's Toughest Sheriff' Takes on Immigration Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Phoenix utilizes extreme tactics, like pink underwear for inmates and charging individuals with smuggling themselves, to discourage crime and root out illegal immigrants. Although some say he's a repressive "clown," most voters back him wholeheartedly. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pretty, Plastic Barbie: Forever What We Make Her At nearly 50, she's known not so much for her own strong character traits, but for the attributes people assume she has, based on her appearance. Her character, to a certain extent, has become what people make of her. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | School Offers Classes on Cooking with Pot In Oakland, Calif., a trade school is training students to work in the state's thriving medical marijuana business. Students are learning how to cook with pot and cultivate various species of marijuana plants that are best suited for treating particular ailments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Class Teaches Virtues to Children of Many Faiths It sounds like the start of a bad joke: A Jew, a Baptist and a Baha'i get together every Sunday morning ... It's a new kind of Sunday school, where families from a range of religions gather to learn about helpfulness, obedience, service and friendliness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Child's 'One Hen' Lays Microlending Success A new children's book, One Hen, tells the story of what happens when a young boy in Ghana borrows a few coins from his village's collective fund to buy a single hen. The book is based on the story of a real man, Kwabena Darko. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bruce Springsteen, on a 'Magic' Campaign As presidential candidates deliver their messages across the nation, the author of "Born in the U.S.A." and "The Rising" is traveling the country delivering one of his own. The touring rocker talks about mixing music and politics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Water Lines Remain Shattered in New Orleans Pipe leaks in New Orleans are so bad that the city is losing millions of gallons of fresh water a day. The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board is struggling to rebuild a system that was a mess even before Hurricane Katrina. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Unapologetically Harriet, the Misfit Spy Brash, disheveled and brutally honest, Harriet the Spy sees too much, says too much and never quite fits in -- which is precisely why she strikes a chord with so many fans. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | College Restores Artwork by Poet E.E. Cummings At the State University of New York College at Brockport, a little-known treasure trove of artwork by poet E.E. Cummings is in urgent need of repair. The popular poet produced more than 1,600 oil paintings, drawings and watercolors in his lifetime. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Second City Skewers Obama and Clinton The famous Chicago improvisation comedy troupe is taking shots at the presidential candidates. Its most recent revue, Between Barack and a Hard Place, got a pretty good review from Obama himself: He was seen belly laughing from the audience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Artists Lament Polaroid's Latest Development Many of us have moved on to digital photography, but fans of Polaroid photos are mourning what they see as the end of an era. Polaroid, which no longer makes instant cameras, announced it would also stop manufacturing the film. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Donkey's Tale: When Urban Sprawl Encroaches Sweet Water Red Gambler was forced out of Golden Valley. The donkey's crime? Nocturnal braying that kept a neighbor up. Now, anyone who wants to move into this suburb near Reno is warned in advance about the smells and sounds of its chickens, goats and horses. Residents hope the disclosure will help protect their rural lifestyle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Religion Survey Finds Many Americans Swap Faiths The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life surveyed tens of thousands of Americans and found that more than 40 percent will switch from the faith of their upbringing. The study also found that immigration trends are affecting religion demographics in America. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Therapists Look to Wii Games for Rehab Benefits A game system popular with teens is finding its way into rehabilitation centers. The Nintendo Wii, controlled by users' movements, is being used to help patients recovering from stroke or closed-head injuries. Therapists say the games can ease the sometimes unpleasant task of rehab. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Beguiling Bluegrass Classic: 'Ruby' Singer Amber Collins got her start singing at church, but she found her calling in bluegrass. As part of our occasional series "What's in a Song," Collins explains what attracted her to the bluegrass classic "Ruby." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Do Voices Give Candidates Presidential Timbre? Teddy Roosevelt had a thin, reedy voice, yet he's credited with being a blustery, powerful speaker. In a later generation, Franklin Roosevelt's voice projected quiet confidence. How can vocal quality affect a presidential candidate's overall appeal? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mastodons in Manhattan: A Botanical Puzzle Those long, spiky thorns on Fifth Avenue trees are no accident, says one biologist. He suspects they evolved millions of years ago to protect the honey locusts from a very large pre-Manhattan predator: mastodons. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Smurfs at 50: Ready for a Comeback Fifty years after they were created by Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, the Smurfs, as they are known in America, are planning a comeback. The little blue imps are expected to star in a 3-D movie next year and the TV series soon will be out on DVD. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Chief Beer Officer Does Best Work Before Lunch Scott Kerkmans was recently named as chief beer officer for the hotel chain Four Points by Sheraton. If you drink a beer in one of the hotels, chances are it was chosen after one of Kerkmans' rigorous morning tasting sessions. Yes, he drinks in the morning. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Hercules and Hemings: Presidents' Slave Chefs Hercules, a slave of George Washington, and James Hemings, owned by Thomas Jefferson, began a long connection of presidents and their African-American cooks. And President Lyndon Johnson's black cook may have influenced his work on civil rights reform. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Gordon Gekko, Preaching the Gospel of Greed "Greed is good," preaches Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). The character brought home all that was wrong -- and enticing -- about American capitalism. NPR's In Character series examines his appeal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Newman Wins Daytona in a Thriller The weekend's biggest plays include the NBA All-Star game, Nascar's Daytona 500 and boxing's Kelly Pavlik-Jermaine Taylor rematch. Sports analyst Bill Wolff looks at who won what -- and why. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Maps Help the Blind See Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco just launched the first-ever program to provide blind people with Braille maps. For the maps' inventor, who was blinded at the age of 4, this is part of a crusade to change the way people think about blindness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Baseball Memories: The Red Barber Centennial Walter Lanier Barber, better known as "Red" to countless baseball fans who heard his memorable broadcasts over the decades, was born 100 years ago this Sunday. Before his death in 1992, Barber spent a dozen years as a Morning Edition commentator. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | An Ode to Hickeys For Valentine's Day, there's the heart-shaped candy, the chocolate kiss, and the hickey? We talk to an array of people about the "love bite" and find that some hold this special kind of bruise close to their heart, while others are appalled by the very word. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'My Mistress's Sparrow' Gives Love a Bad Name Writer Jeffrey Eugenides, who edited the new anthology, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead, takes an unorthodox look at love. He explains how the stories in this collection revolve around voyeuristic longing or disenchanted entanglement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Classical Treasure Trove at YouTube Legendary musicians such as Arturo Toscanini, Maria Callas and Jascha Heifetz might be gone, but their performances are still alive, thanks to YouTube. Commentator Miles Hoffman considers the popular Web site a treasure trove for fans of classical music. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Arguing the Upside of Being Down Eric G. Wilson, author of Against Happiness, has embraced his inner gloom and wishes more people would do the same. He talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy and the link between sadness and artistic creation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Valentine's Day Cake Decorating for Dummies Doreen McCallister, an editor at Morning Edition, has baked delicious cakes for NPR's staff and family members for 18 years. She shows Liane Hansen how to decorate a fun, festive cake for Valentine's Day. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Guppy to Guillotin: The Namesakes of Words Author Philip Dodd traveled the world to find out how common words like guppy, saxophone and even the Mercedes got their names. The stories he uncovered in The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium are fascinating, funny and sometimes tragic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Iraq Vets Charged with Murder of Fellow Soldier Army Spc. Kevin Shields was murdered near Fort Carson, Colo., in December after being sent home with a traumatic brain injury. The three soldiers charged with the crime all served with Shields in Iraq. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Family Dinner Deconstructed The ritual of a family dinner has been praised as an antidote to bad grades and bad habits in kids. But as researchers look closer at the family dinner, they raise the question: Is it the mere act of eating together that counts, or is it that strong families are already more likely to have a family dinner? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Americans Spending Less Time in Nature A new study finds that the number of Americans fishing, camping or engaging in other nature-based activities has substantially fallen since the late 1980s. Researchers say this fact has important implications for environmental protection. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | High School Teaches Thoreau in the Woods The Walden Project, an alternative high-school program in northern Vermont, focuses on environmental studies and the teachings of Henry David Thoreau, who did some of his best thinking outdoors at Walden Pond. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Valentino's Sheik: An 'Other' Made to Swoon Over The Sheik, starring a smoldering Italian immigrant named Rudolph Valentino in the title role, helped make Valentino Hollywood's first sex symbol -- and introduced an exotic, erotic character to millions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Steve Reich: 'Music for 18 (Cornfed) Musicians' Grand Valley State University is not known for its music department. But the New Music Ensemble at the small Midwestern college has impressed the critics and the composer with a new recording of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Modern-Day Cowboys Frozen in Time Photographer Robb Kendrick traveled 41,000 miles searching for cowboys. His six-year quest took him across 14 states, Mexico, and Canada. He emerged with Still, a book of images that seem trapped in time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rehydrate, Inject ? Baby? Freeze-dried food is nothing new. Just grab a jar of Taster's Choice instant coffee, add water and you're good to go. But what about freeze-drying sperm and then using it to make a baby? NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce brings us news of an advance in human reproductive science. With the right technique, freeze-dried sperm can become viable enough to fertilize an egg. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Kibbe at the Crossroads: A Lebanese Kitchen Story In the late 1870s, Lebanese immigrants began arriving in the Mississippi Delta, working first as peddlers, then grocers and restaurateurs. Kibbe, a meatloaf of sorts, is part of the glue that continues to hold the Lebanese family culture together in the Delta and beyond. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Sports Fans' Stress Can Be Heart Hazard A new study shows that heart attacks and other cardiac events went up in Germany during the 2006 World Cup soccer championships. Doctors say the stress fans experience can be risky, especially if they have pre-existing heart problems. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum Army officials in upstate New York told representatives from Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with military disability paperwork last year. The paperwork can help determine post-discharge annual disability payments and health care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | FBI's New Technology Revolutionizes DNA Analysis At the FBI Crime Lab in Quantico, Va., experts are finding new and better uses for what many people see as a forensic sure thing -- DNA. Cases unsolvable just a decade ago, are now ripe for reopening. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Writing Project Helps Veterans Heal Wounds A writers' workshop for veterans provides a place for healing. The brainchild of award-winning writer Maxine Hong Kingston, the Veterans' Writing Group was founded in 1993. Roughly 30 vets meet every few months to read and discuss their material. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Calif. Group Comes to the Aid of Vick's Pit Bulls The lives of all but 2 of the 49 dogs seized in the Michael Vick dog-fighting case are being spared, thanks to several rescue organizations. Roughly half of the 47 dogs are in foster care and could soon be available for adoption. Ten of the dogs are in Oakland, Calif., attending training sessions to socialize them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rebuilding The Beatles, Note by Note The Fab Faux focuses on the songs of The Beatles, but don't expect matching suits, shaggy haircuts, or Liverpool accents. Its members are full-time musicians and singers, and all are meticulous in their approach to the band's most complex late-period material. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Adults Need Immunizations, Too When parents bring their children in for shots, one can often sense a touch of relief that, as adults, their time with the needle is over. Wrong. Immunizing adults is the most natural, cost-effective way of preventing illness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A New Batch of Under-the-Radar Books Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl returns with another set of titles you should be reading but haven't (yet). The latest batch features the story of three royal cousins, tales of wild animal adventures and a pun-filled picture book for younger readers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Study: Caffeine Can Increase Miscarriage Risk Limiting caffeine during pregnancy is standard advice. But a new study sheds light on how much may be too much. More than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day can double a woman's chance of miscarriage, according to the study. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Holden Caulfield: Giving Voice to Generations Since his debut in 1951, Holden Caulfield -- the funny, complex, wry protagonist of J.D. Salinger's classic The Catcher in the Rye -- has given voice to generations of teenagers caught between childhood and the adult world. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Soldiers Try to Cope with Battlefield Losses Some of the hardest fighting in Iraq is now taking place in rural areas north of Baghdad, where insurgents are trying to regroup after being forced from the capital. Last week, soldiers from an Army unit had to deal with losing three men in a firefight with insurgents there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Quirky Poetry Collection a Salute to Silly Stanzas In Calef Brown's Flamingos on a Roof, mosquitoes wear tuxedoes, dogs sport plaid suits and thunder is a cafe staple. His new collection of poems and paintings creates a carefree world full of alliteration, frivolity and fun. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Film Shows 'Dark Side' of U.S. Military Interrogation A new documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, tells the story of the 2002 death of a detainee at Bagram Air Base after a brutal interrogation by U.S. military. It links the abuses at Bagram with techniques used later at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | In Today's World, the Well-Rested Lose Respect From Bill Clinton to Martha Stewart, many successful people brag about how little sleep they need. But sleep researchers say some people sneak in some extra shut-eye during the day, and the truly sleep-deprived usually pay a price. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | UFO Sightings Stream In from Texas Townsfolk Stephenville, Texas, is abuzz with talk of UFOs. Several residents -- including a pilot -- have reported seeing a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast, describing it as "nothing from these parts." Federal officials say there's a logical explanation, but locals insist the object was larger, quieter and faster than an aircraft. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Pulp Fiction Murdered Long Sentences Although the genre has acquired a trashy reputation, pulp fiction is full of language worth relishing, says Otto Penzler editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. Magazines that sold for just a few cents in the '20s killed excessive prose and gave us the hard-boiled detective that continues to fill pop culture today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Lone Ranger: Justice from Outside the Law His story is fiction. Names, dates and other facts have all been revised in the 75 years since he hit the airwaves. But he's always on horseback. He always wears a mask. And he never accepts praise or payment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Film Captures Annual Swim of Elephant Seals The documentary A Seal's Life shows the annual return of elephant seals to the beaches along the California coast after months at sea. Filmmaker Drew Wharton and seal expert Burney Le Boeuf discuss the migration. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Candidates' Kids Find Ways to Reach Out Through blogs, YouTube videos and good old-fashioned door-to-door campaigning, many of the presidential hopefuls' sons and daughters are attempting to sway voters their own age. The question is whether the efforts are working. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Harvesting Rainwater by Not Letting It Go to Waste Instead of letting rainwater flow off their roofs and yards, more people are looking at ways to capture and reuse it. In drought-prone areas, wastewater from sinks and washing machines can also be rerouted for landscaping. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Piano Pathways: Daniel Pollack, 50 Years Later Fifty years ago, a 23-year-old piano student from Los Angeles took a chance, competing in the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Daniel Pollack didn't take home the top prize, but he did carve out a unique career, preserved with bittersweet memories. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | CIA Agent-Turned-Critic Philip Agee Dies Philip Agee, a former agent of the CIA who became one of the agency's harshest critics, died this week in Havana, Cuba. His 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, revealed covert operations and the names of covert agents. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Nation's Health Care Bill Hits All-Time High For the first time, annual health care spending in the United States topped $2 trillion in 2006. At the same time, the rate of growth of health care expenditures is slowing. That slower increase in health costs is not as encouraging as it sounds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Rights Battle Brews over Un-Edited Carver Stories In 1981, Knopf published a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Now Carver's widow wants his readers to see the original stories, which were edited heavily for the book. Knopf says it owns the rights -- but to what? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bugs Bunny: The Trickster, American Style In this installment of NPR's In Character series, JJ Sutherland asks what makes Bugs Bugs -- and decides that the bunny's mercurial nature is essential to his appeal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Mysteries of Snow Revealed No two snowflakes are alike ... or so you thought! In this week's Science Out of the Box, Matthew Sturm, a senior research scientist and snow expert with the Army's Cold Regions Research Laboratory, talks about facts you may not have known about snow. For instance, snow is a mineral, like diamonds or salt. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | The Rules of Attraction May Turn on Our Voices Anthropologist Coren Apicella hoped to learn the role a person's voice plays in his or her attractiveness to potential mates. By making recordings of men and women, Apicella discovered that the tone of one's voice can play a crucial role in how people select a mate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Resolving to Retire with a Nest Egg When it comes to New Year's resolutions, saving more money is a popular one -- even if it's seldom kept. But would-be savers take heed: Albert Einstein called compound interest one of the greatest wonders of the universe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Hawaii Couple Reestablishes Ancient Plant Species Climate change threatens many of the world's native plant species on Kaua'I, Hawaii's oldest island. But a husband and wife are leasing the land around an ancient cave in hopes of re-creating a lost world. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Dark Chocolate Not Good for You After All A leading medical journal says dark chocolate may not be as good for you as you think. According to an editorial in The Lancet, many chocolate makers remove flavenols -- the heart-healthy ingredient -- due to their bitter taste. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Holes Found in U.S. Claims of a Drug-War Win Federal officials have celebrated "an unprecedented cocaine shortage" in U.S. cities, crediting more busts in the southwestern United States and Mexico. But NPR has found that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | One Year Later, New Orleans Grieves for Artists Drummer Dinerral Shavers and filmmaker Helen Hill seemed to come from separate worlds before they were shot a year ago, but their stories are entwined in New Orleans' post-Hurricane Katrina struggle. Friends and fellow artists are still trying to make sense of their deaths. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | American Noodleman Big in Japan Ramen is considered by many Japanese to be the country's national dish. Japan has about one noodle shop for every 600 people. So, when an American chef from New York decided to open his own ramen shop in a Tokyo suburb, it attracted a lot of attention. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Nigella Lawson Shares New Year's Food Traditions While you might be hard-pressed to name a delicacy specific to New Year's -- other than champagne -- traditions abound around the world. Nigella Lawson shares food customs from Italy and other European countries. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | U.S. Soldiers Let Their Music Tell the Story Some U.S. soldiers have turned to music to communicate their experiences to friends and family back home. As several compilations on the all-military To the Fallen record label prove, some of the songs are quite good. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Bhutto's Death Forces U.S. to Rethink S. Asia Policy Benazir Bhutto's assassination has forced the Bush administration to reappraise its policies in South Asia. Some analysts say the White House has focused too narrowly on Afghanistan, when in fact there's much more at stake for the United States in nuclear-armed Pakistan. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Problem of the Year: Information Overload Business-consulting firm Basex forecasts a Problem of the Year: Information Overload. It happens when you receive so many low-priority e-mails or phone calls that you can't accomplish important tasks. Basex says in 2006, these interruptions cost the U.S. economy $650 billion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Muslim Holiday Eid Keeps Texas Butcher Busy The four-day Muslim holiday Eid ul Adha comes to an end. The holiday begins after the completion of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. This Eid is the busiest time of year for an unlikely business: a North Texas butcher shop. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Charitable Act Gets Out of Control Come Christmastime, many people look for ways to give to those less fortunate. Reporter Scott Gurian of member station KGOU in Norman, Okla., brings us this story about his dad, who plays Santa Claus, and some unsuspecting kids. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Effort Builds to Help 'Forgotten' Troops with PTSD Veterans advocates are looking to restore benefits for troops who came back from combat with mental health problems, couldn't get adequate help, misbehaved and then got kicked out of the military. One lawmaker said that taking care of such vets is "simple justice." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Senate Panel Weighs Truck-Driver Safety Rules A Senate panel is due to hear the hotly contested issue of how many hours truckers can safely drive. The Bush administration lengthened time behind the wheel in 2004. But safety advocates sued, saying tired truckers are putting themselves and everyone else on the road at risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Monkeys Rival College Students' Ability to Estimate Two monkeys were tested on their abilities to estimate amounts and compared with group of undergraduates at Duke University. Given a basic math test, the monkeys were right 75 percent of the time, while the students scored correctly 90 percent of the time. Experts say monkeys sometimes need to be able to make quick estimates to survive. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Net Game Boosts Vocabulary, Fights Hunger A computer programmer in Indiana develops FreeRice.com, a game that teaches vocabulary and helps fight hunger. The word game offers four definitions for a word, and clicking on the right definition leads to a donation of 20 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Programme. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Burials and Cemeteries Go Green Environmentally friendly funerals are catching on in some areas of the U.S. as an alternative to traditional burials. So-called "green burials" eschew embalming and fancy caskets in favor of a more biodegradable, natural return to the earth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | 'Button-Down Mind' Changed Modern Comedy In 1960, Bob Newhart stood before one of the first live nightclub audiences he'd ever faced. That performance resulted in the beloved comedy album, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart," which the Library of Congress selected for its National Recording Registry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Who Is Singing Me Lullabies? One night, Mrs. O'C, an elderly Irish woman living in the Bronx, woke up to a female voice singing Irish ballads. The problem was the voice was in her head. Dr. Oliver Sacks was able to determine why she heard the voice. But the more interesting question was -- whose voice was it? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Ex-Drug Officer Shows Users How to Avoid Arrest A former top narcotics officer, credited with more than 800 arrests in eight years, is now selling a DVD that shows marijuana users how to avoid arrest when traveling with a stash. Law enforcement officials are outraged. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Missouri Sees Teen Offenders as Kids, Not Inmates In Missouri, juvenile offenders live in college-style dorm rooms, take classes and join in group therapy. It's part of an innovative approach toward teen offenders that focuses on rehabilitation, and the results are paying off.