Elizabeth Blair

For 20 years, the New Orleans band Galactic has made people dance at clubs, festivals, house parties — you name it. "A first-rate funk band" is how The New York Times describes it.

The group's half-dozen musicians hold their own without a regular vocalist. For their ninth album, ...

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers throughout our newsroom share pieces that have kept them reading. They share tidbits using the #NPRreads hashtag — and on Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

This week, ...

Celebrities like Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy are helping bring plus-size clothing into the mainstream. But most retailers lag behind, making it difficult for women to find clothes in stores.

Burt Shavitz, the eccentric co-founder of Burt's Bees skin care products, has died at age 80. His bearded face is on your lip balm.

Moody was defined by the role of Fagin in Oliver!. He played it on stage in London and New York and in the Oscar-winning film version of the Dickens story. Moody died Thursday at 91.

With a scruffy beard and devilish twinkle in his eye, Ron Moody's Fagin is one of the most memorable, musical theater villains of all time. Moody died Thursday at a hospital in London. He was 91.

As the guardian of his band of little thieves in Oliver! Moody's Fagin was ...

"I take these pictures so that we can look; we can see what we're not supposed to see," says photographer David Jay. "And we need to see them because we created them."

Missing for nearly 75 years, a painting by Henri Matisse is being returned to the family of its rightful owner Friday. Seated Woman belonged to renowned art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who fled the Nazis in 1940.

The story of the painting's recovery reads like a historical crime novel.

In ...

In Germany, a Matisse painting is being returned to Paul Rosenberg's family. It was one of more than 400 paintings stolen by the Nazis from the "first family" of art in Paris in the '20s and '30s.

On the 70th anniversary of the books that spawned Thomas The Tank Engine, NPR's Elizabeth Blair considers the economic model of Thomas's home island of Sodor, and its elaborate railway system.

Ben E. King, best known for the classic soul song "Stand By Me," has died at 76.

It has been two years since more than 1,100 workers were killed in a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. "Ethical fashion" is gaining momentum — though what that means depends on whom you ask.

Cooper Union architecture professor Diana Agrest has influenced generations of accomplished architects. Agrest was one of the first women to teach in the largely male-dominated field.

For the first time, two black dancers will star in a major American production of Swan Lake. NPR's Elizabeth Blair peeks behind the curtain to see why it has been so hard for ballet to diversify.

In 1960s London, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp approached a young band to be the subjects of their first film. As a new documentary explains, they ended up managing rock royalty.

Will Cheez Whiz survive the merger?

We don't need major business news to think about snack foods here at The Salt, but Warren Buffett's announcement this week that he and 3G Capital will merge Kraft and Heinz gave us a great excuse. Turns out, the story behind Cheez Whiz ...

Sir Elton John says he will boycott fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana over comments they made about gay adoption and in vitro fertilization.

Some feel increasingly marginalized by PBS. They say hard-hitting news and public affairs programs are being overshadowed by the likes of Downton Abbey and Antiques Roadshow.

Jazz producer and record label found Orrin Keepnews died on Sunday at the age of 91. Keepnews was behind landmark recordings by jazz legends like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley.

Peabody and Emmy Award winning filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky has died at age 58.

Sinofsky and his longtime co-director, Joe Berlinger, made such acclaimed documentaries as Some Kind of Monster, about the heavy metal band Metallica and Brother's Keeper, about four brothers in rural upstate New York. They are perhaps best ...