Melissa Block

Olympic skeleton racers' chins rest an inch or two above the ice. "Obviously, you don't want your face scraping across the ice 'cause it does slow you down," says one. "But it also doesn't feel good."

U.S. Olympic bobsledders explain their craft as they prepare for Pyeongchang in 2018. Success depends on immense precision. One false step or a miscalculated lean can spell disaster.

American rocker Tom Petty has died at age 66. Petty is known for hits like "American Girl" and "Refugee" — hard driving paeans to everyday folks.

Some growers say that President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has made a chronic worker shortage even worse.

More than 100,000 homes in the Houston area were damaged or destroyed by Harvey's floodwaters. Now the city is trying to figure out what steps should be taken to prevent or reduce future floods, if people should be allowed to rebuild in the flood zones, and if authorities will put a brake on development and agree to restore wetlands.

After Harvey flooded out Houston, people sprang into action to help with rescues, medical care and food. The key was social media. People who came to do minor tasks wound up taking on leadership roles.

The author's books are set in the poor, black Mississippi community where she grew up, a place where, she says, "the past bears very heavily on the present."

Murad Rahimov got to see the inner workings of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center after an NPR listener learned of his passion for space.

Meyers Chuck is off the grid, with no roads or cars; just a sprinkling of houses on the water, and a post office that's the social hub of town.

On her eponymous debut album as Bedouine, folk musician Azniv Korkejian explores her itinerant, transnational upbringing and the war in Syria, where she was born.

David Leveaux's new film follows exiled German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II as he realizes that the new Germany of National Socialism has nothing at all in common with the Germany of his memories.

Daniel Day-Lewis says he is no longer going to act. Weekend Edition guest host Melissa Block remembers an interview she had with him that might shed some light on what he'll do next.

Klukwan is home to about 100 people, most of them from the Tlingit tribe. Once their land reached to the mountains. Today, the village is struggling to retain its land and its culture.

All the pomp and circumstance of Elizabeth II's speech to Parliament won't be all the pomp and circumstance it usually is. That's a bummer for NPR's Melissa Block as she writes in this commentary.

A businessman named Kris Hart had big plans to run for the governor of Pennsylvania. But the would-be Republican politician ran into a roadblock before the campaign even got started.

Jason Haaheim was a senior scientist at a nanotech company before deciding he wanted to play in a professional orchestra. He's now principal timpanist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Gerda Saunders was a university professor when she learned she had early-onset dementia. Now, she's struggling to define herself anew as her defining characteristic — her intellect — begins to fail.

In southeast Alaska, the commercial king salmon fishing season has been shut down a month early, because the number of wild salmon returning to rivers to spawn is at an all-time low.

In most of the Inside Passage, there are no roads connecting the communities, so Alaskans depend heavily on ferries: the Alaska Marine Highway System.

Politics in Haines, Alaska — population 2,500 — has grown intensely bitter lately, reflecting the volume and heat of national politics.