NPR Staff

Schooled from birth in an ancient instrument, Zakir Hussain always wanted to rock. He found a way to do both after George Harrison gave him some shrewd career advice.

Sixty years ago, opera singer Marian Anderson made her long overdue debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera. She was its first African-American soloist.

Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks should have been rivals: James Brown hired both of them to do one job. Instead, they stuck together, and laid the foundation for modern funk drumming in the process.

Two decades ago, the region of Agbogbloshie in Ghana was a lush mangrove swamp. Now, reporter and photographer Yepoka Yeebo explains, it's a vast dump full of electronic waste and young scavengers.

The actor and comedian reveals in his new memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, that he used to have a film addiction. Watching the first Star Wars prequel led to a realization that helped him kick the habit.

World music DJ Betto Arcos is back with a stash of music he collected while traveling through Portugal, including a song by someone he considers to be the Frank Sinatra of fado.

In The Guardian, Peter Ormerod argues it's time to end the ritual of forcing children to write often-formulaic letters. Instead, he says, try for something that's less of a chore and more sincere.

In The Sunday Conversation, Weekend Edition Sunday brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

Allan Edwards is the pastor of Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. He's attracted to ...

Across the Hudson River in Newark, N.J., the murder rate is down, but the new mayor there says that's just a small step in a very long effort to make Newark a safer place to live.

Mayor Ras Baraka took office this past July. NPR's Rachel Martin spoke with him ...

In the new movie Cake, Jennifer Aniston plays a woman suffering from chronic, debilitating pain. Her pain is both emotional and physical — her anger is so uncontrollable that she has been kicked out of her chronic pain support group. "You really do not know what happened to this woman," ...

The taste of foods from our childhood can trigger intense emotional reactions. Thanks to the power of food nostalgia, General Mills is bringing back the sugary cereal French Toast Crunch.

The explorer's life plays out like an adventure film. But before she ever went diving with great whites, she was cheering for the Miami Dolphins — until a required science course changed her plans.

A transgender teen's anguished suicide note has launched a national conversation. The founder of a suicide hotline for trans people says Leelah Alcorn's pain and lack of support are all too common.

NPR Music's Stephen Thompson surveys a few anticipated highlights of the coming year in music, including Screaming Females and The Lone Bellow.

The state of race relations in the United States has captivated the country for months. But a group of Northeastern University law students is looking to the past to a sometimes forgotten, violent part of American history.

The Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project is working to document every racially motivated ...

Here's a common complaint about poetry: It's the oldest form of expression, but what can it do for us now, in an age of social media, Twitter, Facebook and national urgency?

African-American poet Claudia Rankine's latest collection, Citizen: An American Lyric, has an answer. It's a very personal meditation on ...

As the new year begins, the Ebola virus continues its deadly spread in West Africa. More than 20,000 are infected and nearly 8,000 have died throughout the region. The number of victims keeps climbing in Guinea and Sierra Leone, and dozens of new Ebola cases in Liberia this week mark ...

In Almost Famous Women, writer Megan Mayhew Bergman takes us into the compelling lives of independent, inventive women at the margins of history. These are fictionalized accounts of real-life, risk-taking women who have largely been forgotten, and now are re-imagined by Bergman in her new book — a book she ...

The parents of a 5-year-old boy killed in a car accident have formed a bond with the sister of the woman who drove the speeding car. The couple says their meetings have eased their pain.

New York pastry chef Brooks Headley calls his cookbook Fancy Desserts. But his Italian grandmother is his real inspiration, he says, and she was all about homestyle: simple and fresh.