NPR Staff

With his brown skin and long dreadlocks, Marc Quarles stands out in his predominantly white neighborhood. He's particularly aware of that, he says, when his biracial children aren't with him.

Reporter Shane Harris on his new book @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, the lead designer behind Google Glass on designing wearables for a broad audience, musician Bryan Ferry on his latest album, Avonmore, and much more in this week's podcast edition of Weekends on All Things Considered.

Meghan Daum's new collection looks at life in that awkward stage of adulthood that comes before you'd call yourself middle-aged. "Are we in the twilight of youth?" she asks. "That sounds not good."

No state has an age of consent lower than 16. But in some civil cases, attorneys argue that children can make decisions about whom they have sex with — and, in some courtrooms, those attorneys win.

One big criticism of wearable technology: the teams behind these devices are not diverse enough. Some industry watchers say that can result in products designed only with men in mind.

When you think philanthropy, Facebook and Google don't usually come to mind.

But maybe in your travels across the Internet this week, you notice that both companies placed banners ads on their pages asking you to help end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Google pledged to match every dollar ...

It's well-known that our favorite fairy tales started out darker than the ones Disney animators brought to life. But you might be surprised by how much darker the originals were.

For the first time, a new translation of the Brothers Grimm's tales reveals exactly how unsanitized and murderous the bedtime ...

In 2009, Glenn Kurtz stumbled across some old family films in a closet in his parents' house in Florida. One of the films, shot more than 70 years earlier by his grandparents while on vacation in Europe, turned out to include footage of his grandfather's hometown in Poland.

"I realized ...

Famed film director Melvin Van Peebles joined the band The Heliocentrics to create music inspired by the sounds and signals of deep space exploration.

Parsons played Hilary Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The role first called for a model type, but Parsons says she couldn't do that. So, she says, she made Hilary self-centered: a "real brat."

"One if by land, two if by sea" wouldn't work these days — not when your adversary can knock out your power grid with an team of cyberforces. Today's armies have a new front to monitor.

Apple pie isn't American in the way people often mean. Every ingredient, from apples to butter to nutmeg and cinnamon, came from somewhere else.

But then, so do most Americans.

A new book traces the roots of American tastes from pemmican to Coca-Cola to what are now called "molecularly modified" ...

A new documentary about WFMU, the scrappy, chaotic and iconoclastic radio station in New Jersey, debuts today at the DOC NYC film festival. Sex and Broadcasting is described by the filmmakers as "an American tale of life, liberty and independent radio." In an opening scene, station manager Ken ...

Rubén Blades is one of the great salsa singers in the world. He also happens to be a composer, an actor, an activist and a man who's run for president of Panama. He lost that election, but became that country's Minister of Tourism.

His latest album, Tangos, has ...

Sir Roger Moore has been the Saint, one of the Persuaders, and, of course, James Bond. But he calls himself One Lucky Bastard, which is the title of this memoir about a life spent working and laughing alongside the likes of Tony Curtis, Michael Caine, Frank Sinatra, Diana Dors, David ...

Ron Riveira, who served in the Navy and Marines, now does hospice care for vets and says it allows him to help people like his grandparents. "Every time I go into a home, I see a piece of my family."

The creator of Love and Basketball has a new film out called Beyond the Lights. "For me it's just about putting people of color in every genre and making it become normal," she says.

The astrophysicist has been tweeting about the science behind the film. In an interview with NPR, Tyson goes beyond those tweets, into wormholes, relativity and even some spoilers.

Once Claudia Lucero had mastered rapid cheese-making, she knew it was time to tackle cheddar. But cheddar takes months, even years, to age, so Lucero devised a pseudo version: the Smoky Cheater.

Tennant stars as the same grizzled detective in BBC's Broadchurch and FOX's Gracepoint. It was "too unusual an opportunity to turn down," he says.