NPR Staff

In June 2014, the Sunni militant group ISIS declared that it had established a new caliphate spanning territory in Syria and Iraq. Since then, the region under its control has expanded, despite airstrikes and the deployment of U.S. military advisers, and Jihadist groups across the Muslim world have pledged their ...

The N.W.A biopic pays homage to a cultural reference made famous by member Ice Cube in the 1995 film Friday, but writer Allison Davis didn't find the joke funny.

In Susan Barker's novel, a few strange letters bloom into a saga of two souls' reincarnations. Barker says her characters' many lives gave her an instrument to explore China — both past and present.

The British expat has absorbed the funk and R&B of the Crescent City from a young age. His new album, GoGo Juice, revels in his adopted hometown and its people.

A new clinical trial is set to begin in the United Kingdom using the powerful noses of dogs to detect prostate cancer in humans.

While research has been done before, these are the first trials approved by Britain's National Health Service.

The trials, at the Milton Keynes University Hospital in ...

On-air challenge: Every answer this week is the name of a state. For all the words given, ignore the vowels in them. The consonants in them are the same consonants, in the same order, as in the states.

For example, the word "regain" would be "Oregon."

Last week's challenge from ...

Syd tha Kyd, the lead vocalist of the neo-soul crew The Internet, got that nickname from a next-door neighbor growing up. That man is still her neighbor, because she still resides in the house she's lived in since she was 2.

"My dad makes me breakfast every morning; he's very ...

A man in his early 40s with a kind, weathered face is talking to a room full of children.

"In some ways, all of us are basically abandoned or not really a wanted person," he says. "Everybody kind of give up the hope on us. But in this place, you ...

Earlier this month, author Lauren Willig released The Lure of the Moonflower, the last of her fantastic, genre-bridging Pink Carnation series.

I call them genre-bridging, because they satisfy romance fans who love the pinch-in-the-chest, soul-satisfying, "all is well in the world" happy-ever-after denouement — but they also have such densely ...

Cara Nicoletti loves food almost as much as she loves books. Over the years she has found herself thinking about the delicious dishes woven into the stories she loved as a child. In fact, she tells NPR's Rachel Martin that when she re-read her old books, she found underlines that ...

Amateur slow-pitch softball would seem to be a low-stakes game. A bunch of friends join a league, take some swings, run the bases and retire to the dugout for postgame beers. At best, there might be a plastic trophy for the winners.

But there's a dark and dangerous side to ...

Joe Domanick's Blue traces the history of the Los Angeles police and the shift away from a "disastrous policy" of using military-style tactics. The author shares lessons for departments nationwide.

Adam Johnson won the 2013 Pultizer Prize for his bestselling novel, The Orphan Master's Son, set in the nightmare state of North Korea. This summer, he has come out with a collection of short stories, set in locales that range from California to East Germany to a techno-dreamlike South Korea.

...

How much is a visible work of genius worth? In May, a 1955 painting by Pablo Picasso was sold at auction for more than $179 million, the highest price at auction ever. And attendance at major art museums is booming.

"The art world has never been healthier if you ...

Mike Flanigin has been a working musician for two decades. His first gig was at a Holiday Inn in Dallas, Texas, followed by a stint in the house band at Antone's in Austin. And for eight years he made his Hammond B3 organ growl and purr for the crowds at ...

Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin have enjoyed lengthy careers — especially for men in a business as dangerous as spying.

The American and Soviet CIA agents had a wildly popular run on TV in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in the '60s. But long after the show came off the air, ...

In this season of anger in many black communities that are reacting to police brutality, we're remembering the largest urban riot of the civil rights era.

Fifty years ago this week in Los Angeles, the African-American neighborhood of Watts exploded after a young black man was arrested for drunken driving. ...

Monica Harwell was the first woman to climb utility poles for Con Edison in New York. The men she worked with didn't think she could do it, but Harwell never let them paint her into a corner.

"Frankly, we've done a pretty good job on some big pieces of business, which then allows me also to focus on some issues that we might have been working on quietly," Obama told NPR.

Iran will need at least a year to produce the material needed for a bomb, up from the current two or three months, the president says. But he acknowledges that those limitations will fall away.