Scott Simon

One man's obscenity is another man's name.

This week a scholar of medieval history announced he might have found the earliest recorded evidence of what we must call here "the F-word" being used in English to describe intimate relations.

Dr. Paul Booth of Keele University says he was examining court ...

Did you have a good summer? I spent much of mine being a critic. Perhaps you did, too.

Take a flight, you get an email: "Tell us about your flight to Cleveland." Stay at a hotel, you get another survey: "Rate your stay!"

Go to ...

Some pictures produce thousands — sometimes millions — of words. This week, it was the image of a little boy in a red shirt and little rubber-soled shoes lying in the waves of a Turkish beach.

You may hope the boy is just napping after he's played. His clothes look ...

Mornings are made by routine. The alarm that warbles at the usual hour, the smell of coffee, the sound of familiar voices.

Those of us who work the morning shift grow to appreciate the intimacy we have with those who tune in. People wake to our voices. We ...

Jimmy Carter told a press conference he called on the morning of the day he would have the first radiation treatment on the cancer in his brain, "I'd like for the last guinea worm to die before I do."

Mr. Carter was frank, funny and graceful speaking this week about ...

Eighty years ago today, the most famous man in America besides Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and in 1935, I'm not sure you needed to add a "besides."

Will Rogers was 55. He was flying through Alaska with his friend, the pilot Wiley Post, to mine some material for ...

What do you give a city that has everything? Maybe not the Olympic Games.

This week the city of Boston declined to sign what's called a host city contract that would make it liable to pay for any losses incurred by the Olympics, which effectively ended its bid for the ...

Willis Conover was known around the world, but not so much at home. He was the voice of jazz over the Voice of America for more than 40 years, most of it during the Cold War.

Imagine what it was like to sit in the dark of a hushed room ...

Pluto turns out to be pretty lively.

Not Las Vegas, perhaps, but more vivacious with geologic activity than we've ever known about, and for good reason: Pluto is currently almost 3 billion miles away from Earth, a dwarf planet spinning in the lonely last ring of our solar system.

There has been an outpouring of grief and sympathy since the shootings in Charleston, S.C., and calls for Americans to examine our minds and hearts.

But this week, in several spots around the country, little bags of candy have been left with harsh and hateful messages.

Many refugees around the world have to make a grim decision: what few things can they carry in their arms and on their backs as they try to run for safety and freedom?

This week the United Nations refugee agency said the number of people forced to flee their homes ...

Vincent Musetto wrote some of the most widely quoted words in the history of journalism:

"Headless Body in Topless Bar."

Vinnie Musetto — I'm told no one called him Vincent — died this week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 74.

He was a managing editor of the New ...

Della Curry gave a free lunch to a hungry child that may be costly.

Curry is the kitchen manager — the lunch lady — at the Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora, Colo. She set off a national debate this week when she said that last Friday, "I had a ...

It's commencement season — and commencement speech season.

Schools compete for eminent names to be commencement speakers. But I think unless you're Stephen Colbert, who told Wake Forest graduates that as soon as they've shucked their gowns they faced "brunch first, then yawning uncertainty," or Maya Rudolph, who gave her ...

What kind of man or woman risks their lives for strangers?

Eric Seaman of Murrieta, Calif., was 30. He had two children, and was a U.S. Marine sergeant. His wife, Samantha Seaman, told CNN, "Last week I got an email telling me that he felt purpose and that he delivered ...