NPR Staff

The regular NFL season has officially started, which — for many viewers — means hours of excitement (and angst) fueled by chips and dip, sliders, nachos and, of course, chicken wings.

Sunny Anderson, a personality on the Food Network and author of Sunny's Kitchen: Easy Food For Real Life, is ...

Of all the world's birds, perhaps none are more mystical than cranes.

From Asia to North America, these tall birds with haunting cries have been woven into paintings, literature and folk tales. But today, 10 of the world's 15 crane species are threatened, and some are on the brink of ...

The background of the Syrian conflict can seem obscure to outsiders, but the spark that started it all is often traced back to the city of Dara'a, in February of 2011.

A group of young people writing Arab Spring protest slogans on a wall are arrested and beaten.

"When that ...

Diana Nyad's successful swim from Cuba to Key West on Monday was made all the sweeter because she had tried — and failed — four times before.

She learned you should "never, ever give up," but she also learned some practical lessons to help beat the elements in those ...

Texas has a pig problem.

Wild hogs have overrun the state so rapidly that in 2011, Texas allowed them to be hunted all year round. The feral hog epidemic even spawned a reality show called Aporkalypse Now, following Ted Nugent as he shoots hogs from a helicopter.

But what was ...

The hosts of Alt.Latino stop by Weekend Edition Sunday once again to share some favorite new songs from across the Americas. Speaking from Mexico City where she's currently on assignment, Jasmine Garsd offers a tune that's getting nonstop airplay on Mexican radio, and explains cumbia, a genre she says is ...

Back in 1995, Cheryl Strayed hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail along the West Coast of the United States. After the three-month journey, she came out on the other side stronger in every way: better able to cope with her divorce, her past drug abuse and her mother's ...

On the surface, Norman Rush's new novel is about a middle-aged man, Ned, who reunites with a group of college friends after one member of the group dies unexpectedly. But what transpires over the next few days ahead of the memorial service is less about Ned's relationship with these men ...

We spend about one-third of our lives sleeping, but much of that function remains a mystery. Weekend Edition Sunday is asking some pretty fundamental, yet complicated, questions about why we do it and why we can't seem to get more of it.

Dr. Matthew Walker says the question of why ...

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

When he was just 27 years old, Benjamin Ferencz helped prosecute Nazi leaders in the Nuremburg war crimes trial after World War II. In ...

How far would you go for love? In Sara Farizan's debut novel, a studious 17-year-old girl named Sahar finds herself deeply, head-over-heels in love with her childhood best friend and neighbor — another teenage girl named Nasrin.

Their story takes place in Iran, where homosexuality is illegal, making their love ...

Janelle Monáe's music is often called futuristic. That's partly due to her subject matter: Her breakthrough releases, the 2007 EP Metropolis and the 2010 album The ArchAndroid, form a connected story arc about a robot who falls in love with a human. But moreover, the work of the ...

Billy Crystal is ... 65. He feels that he's gone from being, as he puts it, "a cool Baby Boomer into a Diane Arbus photograph."

He writes about his well-earned wrinkles and laugh lines in a memoir that takes him from his boyhood and bar mitzvah in Long Island, ...

Weekend Edition gets a lot of emails that start like this: "Why don't you tell the truth about ..." The Kennedy assassination, Sept. 11, the Lincoln assassination, the birthplace of Barack Obama or John McCain, Pearl Harbor, Area 51, black helicopters or the moon landing — fill in the blank ...

Connie Labetti worked on the 99th floor of the south tower — the second World Trade Center tower to be hit on Sept. 11, 2001.

She made it out of the building thanks to her boss, Ron Fazio. He, however, did not survive. Fazio was one of 176 Aon employees ...

Kale has experienced a renaissance in recent years. Once relegated to the sidelines as a mere garnish, the green now appears on 400 percent more restaurant menus than it did four years ago.

But not everyone has bought into the gospel of the vitamin- and mineral-rich green. Even Deb Perelman, ...

The most recent entry in our roundtable on race and online feminism caused a firestorm on Twitter. People were angry that we had invited Jill Filipovic to participate in the conversation and hadn't invited Mikki Kendall, who started the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag that sparked the whole conversation to begin ...

Trent Reznor is known as a detail guy: a meticulous composer and manipulator of sound, layers upon layers of it. From his band's genesis 25 years ago, the leader of Nine Inch Nails has been known for songs of deep, menacing pain, rage and self-destruction. Today, Reznor's dark ...

Sheila Bridges seemed to have it all. She became a superstar interior designer after graduating from Brown University and Parsons. Her clients ranged from entertainers to doctors, lawyers, even a former President. And her talents brought her magazine spreads, a store in upstate New York, and a television show. But ...