NPR Staff

More than 360 African health workers died of Ebola this year. Some of them made headlines around the world, such as Dr. Umar Sheik Khan, the Sierra Leonean physician who treated more than 100 Ebola patients before contracting the disease himself.

But most of the fallen health workers didn't get ...

Author Roxane Gay spent 2014 thinking and writing about issues that exposed divides in America over race and gender. She offers her thoughts on some of the year's most-talked-about stories.

Daniel Majok Gai fled South Sudan twice because of war. He wants to return for good. But for now, he's giving back by helping youth there gain an education. His inspiration: a girl named Annah.

Many musical voices went silent in 2014. We lost singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors, producers, DJs and other visionaries. Explore their musical legacies here.

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Claudio Abbado

June 26, 1933 — Jan. 20, 2014

Directing the premiere orchestras and opera companies of the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic ...

Salena Godden grew up in 1970s England with a Jamaican mom and an absent Irish dad. In her memoir, Springfield Road, she looks back on her struggle to find her personal identity.

In January, members of the American Dialect Society will vote on the 2014 Word of the Year. Linguist Ben Zimmer runs through some contenders — including words both old and new.

Jamie Oliver is a food superstar — he has produced and presented hugely popular TV programs on cooking, notably The Naked Chef and more recently Jamie's Food Revolution. He has written more than a dozen cookbooks, many to accompany the TV shows. He has written about English food, Italian food, ...

In the winter of 1905, in the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury, a group of friends began meeting for drinks and conversation that lasted late into the night. The friends – writers like Lytton Strachey, artists like Roger Fry and thinkers like economist John Maynard Keynes — continued to meet almost ...

Throughout 2014, our friends Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras over at NPR's Alt.Latino have dropped by Weekend Edition to share new records they love with us.

This week, they're giving us a recap of their favorite artists of the year, from a soulful Miami singer who is taking a page ...

Before Google there was — that paragon of accuracy and calm — the librarian. The New York Public Library recently came upon a box of questions posed to the library from the 1940s to the '80s — a time capsule from an era when humans consulted other humans for answers ...

McNeil suffered from a neural disorder that prevented him from performing for decades at a time. But thanks to a medical study, he's regained enough coordination to form a new band, called Hush Point.

Now in her late 60s, Martin says she's still "excited and enthusiastic" about her work and doesn't have any intention of retiring. She published a memoir in September called Lady Parts.

Heidi Beemer has dreamed of going to Mars since she was 8 years old. In January, NPR talked to her about her application to Mars One, which is still pending — now she explains she has a plan B, too.

Former pastor Ryan Bell embarked on a year without God at the start of 2014. He says, "Before I wanted a closer relationship to God and today I just want a closer relationship with reality."

In August, a couple in Jackman, Maine, created a scholarship for a student willing to train as a plumber and come back to work in the rural town. Months later, no student has taken the plunge.

Boo Hanks' home is wedged between greenhouses and a tobacco field in rural Buffalo Junction, Va., hugging the North Carolina border. He still helps farm tobacco when his old body lets him. Home is a disheveled, one-bedroom trailer.

The trailer, and its lights and water, were paid for by the ...

Writer Meline Toumani grew up in a tight-knit Armenian community in New Jersey. There, identity centered on commemorating the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I, a history that's resulted in tense relations between Armenians and Turks to this day.

In her new book, There Was ...

Writer Mette Ivie Harrison is no stranger to struggles of faith; she says she spent six years as an atheist within the Mormon church.

"It wasn't something that I talked about openly," she tells NPR's Eric Westervelt. "I lost my faith, and I felt like I had made a promise ...

A San Francisco man talks about why he volunteers to deliver groceries to his elderly and disabled neighbors.

For most of the year, the tiny town of Rudolph is best known for the cheese factory off Main Street. But around Christmas, people worldwide covet a Rudolph, Wis., postmark on their cards and letters.