NPR Staff

Abdulnasser Gharem is a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Saudi Arabian Armed Forces, a man who's served in his country's military for more than two decades. But Gharem's true passion lies in a decidedly less rigid field — contemporary art.

His paintings, performances and installations, which have transformed the Saudi ...

On arguably the biggest day in Twitter's history, we wanted to look back to find out just how it all started, because like many Silicon Valley companies, its origin story is fraught.

That's the subject of Nick Bilton's new book, Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and ...

In the U.S., graffiti is often condemned as vandalism. But during the Arab Spring, artists say city walls were often the only places where they could talk back to tyrants.

Street art can be found across the Middle East and North Africa, and the Arab Spring protests inspired an artistic ...

They start with a beat, then add in the bass. After layering the harmony on top of background vocals, the solo shines on top — you wouldn't even know there weren't instruments being played. Named for the pentatonic scales, Pentatonix is a five-person singing group that formed to compete in ...

In a global economy, does it make sense to allow workers to move freely?

Letting people go where the jobs are would improve the lives of millions around the world, some argue. But others say an influx of labor into the richest countries would devalue workers' worth and actually hurt ...

You're probably well-acquainted with one of life's little annoyances: the password.

Your voicemail. Your email. Your smartphone. Maybe you've got a different one for each — which means you're bound to slip up.

Or maybe you use the same one for everything — a security no-no. The number of sites ...

Many couples who struggle with infertility say they would go to the ends of the earth to have a child. Some use surrogate mothers in the United States, but the high cost and legal complications keep that option out of reach for many families. So some Americans are going global ...

It's been three years since M.I.A.'s last album, but the singer-rapper has kept the pop world on its toes since then. She followed 2010's divisive Maya with a mixtape, Vicki Leekx, dropped on the resolutely unorthodox release date of New Year's Eve. A little over a year later, ...

These days, you'd be forgiven if you're more excited about watching the "big game" — whether that's football, basketball, hockey — on TV rather than from inside a sports arena. At least, that's a trend that the Chicago-based sports graphics company Sportvision is banking on.

"With wide-screen TVs and high ...

When Teddy Roosevelt was president, reporter Lincoln Steffens came to him with a request: "Mr. President," he said, "I want to investigate corruption in the federal government." And Roosevelt responded in a rather astonishing way, as presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Roosevelt gave Steffens a note ...

The small town of Rjukan has long had to make do without sunlight during the cold Norwegian winters.

But that changed Wednesday, when the town debuted a system of high-tech mirrors to reflect sunlight from neighboring peaks into the valley below.

Rjukan, originally founded 100 years ago as an industrial ...

Sir Terry Pratchett is one of Britain's best-selling authors. His science-fiction series Discworld has sold millions of copies worldwide. Pratchett is incredibly prolific — since his first novel was published in 1971, he has written on average two books every year.

But in 2007, 59-year-old Pratchett announced that he had ...

Today the beauty of Los Angeles is dramatically symbolic of the ancient prophecy the desert shall "blossom like a rose."

This blossoming was made possible by the birth of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, opened 100 years ago this month. The opening of the aqueduct might as well have been the ...

In country music, Ashley Monroe is still a new kid on the block — but the 27-year-old artist has already worked with the likes of Wanda Jackson, Jack White and Miranda Lambert, and has also found success writing for other artists, including Carrie Underwood. The singer says her tastes are ...

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in Baltimore, and it was there, as a teenager, when he first felt like he was being singled out ...

Steve Lickteig's life as he knew it was a lie. Lickteig thought he was the adopted son of a former World War II vet and his wife. Life was simple: They ran a farm in Kansas, went to mass at the local Catholic church and raised Steve and their eight ...

More than 400,000 Americans died in World War II, but thousands of them were never found. Some died in a prison camp, and others were lost behind enemy lines — and some were on planes that were lost in the vast Pacific ocean.

On Sept. 1, 1944, a massive B-24 ...

Over the years, musicians from Stan Getz to Herb Alpert to David Byrne have felt the lure of Brazilian music. World music DJ Betto Arcos just got back from a trip to Brazil, where he gorged on new sounds, and he's been kind enough ...

Stand-up comedian Rob Delaney has been called the funniest person on Twitter. He's known for his zany observations and for condensing pithy, often vulgar commentary on politics and pop culture into 140 characters or less.

In his memoir, Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. ...

Abuse of prescription painkillers is a "growing, deadly epidemic," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Oct. 24, the Food and Drug Administration recommended putting new restrictions on hydrocodone, sold as Vicodin and other brand names.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny believes the restrictions are necessary and ...