NPR Staff

"I like all kinds of music, and nobody ever told me you gotta pick one, so I never did," lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard says.

Advertisements don't need any words to say a lot about a culture.

That's one of the messages that shines through in the work of artist Hank Willis Thomas. In 2008, Thomas removed the text and branding from ads featuring African-Americans, creating a series he called Unbranded, which illustrated how America ...

StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative records stories from members of the U.S. military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before Marine Cpl. Zach Skiles left for Iraq in 2003, he shared a quiet moment with his father, Scott Skiles.

"I remember saying to you, 'Every gift that I've been given, ...

Last year, singer Becca Stevens caught the attention of critics with a striking song she'd written for jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, called "Our Basement." The angular melody and dark harmonies intrigued and enchanted listeners, and the song turned up on several 2014 year-end lists, including NPR ...

When the truck bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, there were 21 children in the building's day care. Six survived, including Chris Nguyen and PJ Allen.

Large projects funded by the bank have left millions of poor people worse off, an investigation found. The bank says the vast majority of its projects don't fall into this category.

Ned Parker has covered Iraq for more than a decade. But the Reuters bureau chief abruptly left the country last week after a report of human rights abuses prompted threats from a Shiite paramilitary.

On the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln's death, Morning Edition's Renee Montagne and historian Terry Alford explore John Wilkes Booth's life, and how the assassination affected his family.

Over the past 25 years, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson watched China turn into the world's second largest economy. He explains what could halt the country's massive growth.

"The anxiety in this film is much more directed at the humans," director Alex Garland tells NPR's Audie Cornish. "It was more in defense of artificial intelligence."

The New York Times columnist wrote The Road to Character after seeing the gratitude for life of people who tutor immigrants. He thought, "I've achieved career success ... but I haven't achieved that."

In her new book Women of Will, Tina Packer traces Shakespeare's maturation — and, she argues, the corresponding transformation of his female characters from caricatures to fully-realized humans.

Hannah Reynolds, a slave, was the only civilian killed in the Battle of Appomattox Court House during the Civil War. A new discovery suggests, contrary to earlier belief, that she died a free woman.

It's 1963 Cuba and a woman named Maria Sirena is taking shelter from a hurricane inside the former governor's mansion, along with a small group of other Cuban women. Maria distracts the women at their request by recounting stories of her childhood — personal stories that trace the history of ...

When English journalist Graham Holliday got tired of his office job in the U.K., he knew he wanted a change — a big one.

So he packed up and moved to Asia, first to Korea to teach English and ultimately, to the place that would be his home for nine ...

Viet Thanh Nguyen grew up in America with war movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon, which offer accounts of the war focusing on Americans. His new novel, The Sympathizer, follows a Vietnamese spy.

Shortly after Saudi airstrikes began in Yemen, an American importer realized he was stuck in a war zone. Only with some quick thinking — and a tiny boat — did he narrowly escape back to the U.S.

The show is about a government conspiracy. But co-creator Peter Horton says beneath the action, human stories drive the show. "That's the little dirty secret," he says. "This is a character piece."

Inspired by a Uruguayan author's three-volume history of the Americas, jazz pianist and composer Myra Melford has written a suite for her new quintet.

There's not a whole lot to do in prison, so inmates spend a fair amount of time playing cards.

For several years, law enforcement officials around the country have been putting that prisoners' pastime to good use. They've been putting facts and photos from unsolved crimes in front of prisoners' ...