NPR Staff

For seven years, Mary Robinson served as the first female president of Ireland. Yet, she also has a long record of service as a human rights advocate.

After leaving office in 1997, she was appointed as the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations. She now runs

There's a new book about an American hero that's not just about the man behind the myth, but about the myth behind that myth.

Davy Crockett really was from Tennessee, really was a skilled frontiersman and really killed American Indians in battle. (When he became a congressman, however, he opposed ...

A few names come to mind when you say Hoosier basketball: Larry Bird, Gene Hackman, who was in a movie — and Bob Knight, about whom they make movies. Bob Knight coached three Indiana University teams to three NCAA championship titles and — a record of which he's equally proud ...

It begins with a heartbeat. Released in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd's eighth studio album. It would become one of the best-selling albums of all time, and its iconic cover image still hangs in college dormitories everywhere.

The record turned 40 this week. ...

Almost 40 years after their first collaboration, Emmylou Harris and former bandmate Rodney Crowell are back with a new album of duets. Old Yellow Moon includes Crowell originals as well as revivals of songs by Roger Miller, Patti Scialfa and

In 1970, brothers Gean and Tommie West, both reverends, started a gospel group together in Dallas. They called themselves The Relatives, pressed a few singles and amassed a good following.

By 1980, The Relatives had gone their separate ways, and for three decades that was that. But a few years ...

When Linda Hernandez was growing up in Lincoln, Neb., in the 1960s, her family was one of the few Latino families in town. And that sometimes made school life difficult, she says.

"We had to sit in the back of the class and stay after school and clean the erasers ...

When Aly Spaltro began writing music, she was literally the girl next door. After recording 12 solo songs with her 8-track, she left a stack of free CDs on the counter of the local record store next to the DVD rental shop where she worked in Brunswick, Maine. Nervous about ...

Brad Leithauser likes to look for poetry in graveyards. A novelist and poet himself, there's something he values greatly in tombstone epitaphs: brevity.

"You really don't want to go on at great length," he tells NPR's Neal Conan. "There's something very touching ... in seeing how they are meant ...

If you've ever shot the breeze, had a heart-to-heart or bent somebody's ear — in fact, if you've ever talked at all — odds are you've used an idiom. These sometimes bizarre phrases are a staple of conversation, and more than 10,000 of them are collected in the latest edition ...

Guitar players will hear the pure, ringing tones conjured by 10 fingers that seem to be doing the work of 20 and say, "Oh, for sure — that's Richard Thompson."

That nimble guitar work frames songs that are like perfectly crafted short stories, often dark and biting. Thompson ...

Natalie "The Floacist" Stewart is best known for her role as half of the British neosoul duo Floetry. Along with her bandmate and childhood friend, Marsha "The Songstress" Ambrosius, Stewart released three albums as Floetry and earned seven Grammy nominations.

After Floetry broke up in 2006, ...

Best Picture

ARGO

Amour

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

Best Actress

JENNIFER LAWRENCE -Silver Linings Playbook

Jessica Chastian - Zero Dark Thirty

Emmanuelle Riva -Amour

Quvenzahane Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts -The ...

A new album by bluesman Corey Harris pays tribute to one Southern neighborhood with a particularly haunted past.

Fulton Blues is named for a district in Richmond, Va., that was once home to a large number of the city's middle class African-American families. But by the 1960s, Fulton had fallen ...

For Terje Isungset, the cold weather in Washington, D.C., this week is no problem. The Norwegian musician was in town to perform as part of the Kennedy Center's "Nordic Cool" series, and he needed low temperatures to keep his instruments in good shape.

He has chimes, drums, a marimba and ...

What would you do if your literary idol came to life — came into your life — and then you couldn't get rid of her? Violet Epps, heroine of the new novel Farewell, Dorothy Parker discovers being a fan isn't the same as being a roommate when Dorothy Parker's spirit ...

When she was just 13, Dom La Nena left her home in Brazil for Argentina to study the cello. La Nena, whose real name is Dominique Pinto, has devoted her life to mastering that one instrument.

In fact, part of the artist's name, la nena, which means girl in South ...

If Columbia Records hadn't signed Bruce Springsteen in the early 1970s, there's a chance The Boss could have just been a small-stakes act, playing gigs around Asbury Park.

But music history would, of course, unfold differently. And Springsteen wasn't the first or the last huge success for Clive ...

It's called the Harlem Shake. The University of Georgia men's swim and dive team did it underwater in Speedos. The Norwegian army did it in the snow. The latest viral dance video craze starts with one dancer — jamming out on his own — surrounded by ...

Backed by broadcasting powerhouse Barry Diller, a new service picks up broadcast TV signals and makes them available over the Web — and the TV networks don't like that one bit. Curren...