NPR Staff

Natalie Maines is a small woman with a really big voice. Flanked by Emily Robison on banjo and Martie McGuire on fiddle, Maines powered the Dixie Chicks to some 30 million records sold. And then came the collapse — after what the band calls "the incident."

It was ...

Mexican Piggy Cookies are known by many names — cerditos, cochinitos, marranitos or puerquitos. Sweetened with unprocessed cane sugar and honey, and spiced with cinnamon, the cutout cookies puff when you bake them.

A few years ago, Mexico-born chef Pati Jinich had never heard of them. But after numerous recipe ...

Jasmine Tierra is a singer whose voice is crossing boundaries of language and culture. She's African-American and grew up singing gospel music — but that's not where she's making her mark now. She has become a YouTube sensation by singing in Hmong, the language of an Asian ethnic group rooted ...

What do a forlorn Italian father, a costume-drama cad and a pair of Hollywood slapstick heroes have in common? They're all high on a list of must-see movies that David Chase, creator of The Sopranos and director of the 2012 film Not Fade Away, brought us for the occasional Morning ...

Of the many things made in Michigan that have become part of the fabric of American culture — the auto industry, Motown — punk rock is often overlooked. In 1967, years before The Sex Pistols performed incendiary anthems, Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges created an ...

If you're interested in studying in China, a new scholarship program could help you on your way. Rivaling the prestigious Rhodes scholarships, the new Schwarzman Scholars program was announced recently by Stephen Schwarzman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone Group, one of the world's biggest private-equity firms.

The financier says ...

In German, it's wiegenlied; in French, berceuse; in Norwegian, vuggevise. In any language, the universal effect of what we know as the lullaby is, of course, to coax a baby to sleep.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine had her own baby in mind when she decided to record a ...

Not long ago, the idea of Fleetwood Mac ever touring again seemed far-fetched at best. But as of this spring, not only is the band back on the road — according to drummer and founder Mick Fleetwood, they're having an easier time filling seats than in the past.

"We ...

It's the end of an era at the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio. On Tuesday, the theater will run its old, 35 mm film projector for the last time. Then, starting Wednesday, it will close for several months to install an expensive new digital projection system.

The last time we saw Walter Mosley's hardboiled hero Easy Rawlins, his car was hurtling off a cliff in the climax of 2007's Blonde Faith — a turn of events that Mosley hinted would be fatal.

But after months drifting in and out of a coma, Easy is back, and ...

Willa Cather is one of America's greatest literary voices. Most notably, her stories of immigrant farmers in Nebraska are intimate windows into the lives that make up a greater history of American settlement and struggle.

Cather was also a pioneering female writer in a literary world run by men, and ...

It's kind of surprising that Iron and Wine's Sam Beam has ended up making his living in music. Early on, he received a cautionary lesson from his dad.

"My father used to book Motown bands in college," Beam says. "And he imparted some wisdom on me that it's an ...

The narrative is become all too familiar: accusations of sexual assault, followed by bullying of the victims on social media.

The case in Steubenville, Ohio, last year drew national attention. Two high school football stars were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl. The assault was filmed and photographed; ...

World music DJ Betto Arcos returns to weekends on All Things Considered to share what he's been spinning on Global Village, the show he hosts on KPFK in Los Angeles. This week, Arcos brings some of his favorite new Cuban music. His picks include Pedrito Martinez's convergence of Cuban and ...

Iranian newspapers are rife with cartoons. They are a tradition, and play a big role voicing criticism of the country's authoritarian regime.

Increasingly, though, Iranian cartoonists have been imprisoned, received death threats, or gone into exile because of their work.

Omid Memarian was a journalist in Iran. Arrested in 2004 ...

Over the next few weeks we'll be asking NPR women about their careers — and inviting you to join the conversation. This question goes to Nina Totenberg, NPR's intrepid legal affairs correspondent.

Question: When have you been the only woman in the room?

Nina Totenberg: "When have I been the ...

Sokeel Park sees the effects of North Korea's repressive government every day. He lives in South Korea, but works for an NGO named Liberty in North Korea. His job is to debrief those who've managed to leave the North and help them start new lives in the South.

Park says ...

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, Weekend Edition is talking with younger poets about why they chose to write poetry and why it's still important in our everyday lives. This week, we spoke to Bangladeshi-American poet Dilruba Ahmed.

Ahmed says it's a little difficult to tease out exactly ...

In some ways, Michael Bublé is just of a different time. The songs the Canadian crooner sings are the Motown, jazz and swing classics he grew up listening to with his grandfather. Bublé says he misses the pure, unadulterated sound of music made back then — though he is willing ...

Brooklyn-based keyboardist and vocalist Xenia Rubinos likes to play with syncopation. Her debut album, Magic Trix, is based around rhythms that sometimes are identifiable as Caribbean, and at other times veer into the experimental.

"It's something I have a lot of fun with — just taking one rhythmic figure and ...