NPR Staff

NPR Staff appears in the following:

'One Nation Under Stress,' With To-Do Lists And Yoga For All

Monday, March 11, 2013

"I am so stressed out" is a common refrain these days, but if you think of stress as a pervasive fact of life, consider this: Before 1976, The New York Times had never published an article about stress as we understand it today. Our idea of stress — as a ...

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Toro Y Moi: A Pioneer Of 'Chillwave' On California's Complications

Monday, March 11, 2013

Chaz Bundick is the producer and singer-songwriter credited with pioneering a new genre of music called chillwave: a mix of electronic, hip-hop and dance music. Think house music meets R&B.

Hailing from Columbia, S.C., Bundick, 26, creates music under the name Toro y Moi. He says that growing ...

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The 'Nasty Effect': How Comments Color Comprehension

Monday, March 11, 2013

At its best, the Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But Web-savvy news junkies have known for a long time that reader feedback can often turn nasty. Now a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that rude comments on articles can even change the ...

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'Lean In': Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg Explains What's Holding Women Back

Monday, March 11, 2013

Of all the posters plastered around Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters — "Move Fast and Break Things," "Done Is Better Than Perfect" and "Fail Harder" — Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has a favorite: "What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?"

"[It's] something that I think is really important and ...

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A Twin Carries On Alone In 'Her: A Memoir'

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Christa and Cara Parravani were identical twins. When they were 28, Cara died of a drug overdose, and Christa spiraled into depression.

In her new book, Her: A Memoir, Christa explores their bond of sisterhood, which went beyond blood into the elliptical world of twinhood.

Both were artists, one a ...

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'The Last Five Years' Returns To New York

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Last Five Years originally ran off-Broadway in 2002. Cited as one of Time magazine's "Ten Best of 2001," it won Drama Desk awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics.

There are only two characters in the musical, Jamie and Cathy. Jamie is a young novelist and Cathy is a ...

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Solitary Confinement: Punishment Or Cruelty?

Sunday, March 10, 2013

An estimated 80,000 American prisoners spend 23 hours a day in closed isolation units for 10, 20 or even more than 30 years.

Now, amid growing evidence that it causes mental breakdown, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has decided for the first time to review its policies on solitary confinement.

...

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Novel Explores 'Silence' And 'Roar' Of Life In A Place Like Syria

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Silence and the Roar follows a young man living in an unnamed Middle Eastern country that is in chaos. The book doesn't explicitly take place in Syria, but the similarities between its setting and author Nihad Sirees' home country are undeniable.

Sirees' work has been banned from publication in ...

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Hiromi: Finding Music In The Daily Din

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Japanese pianist Hiromi approached the making of her latest album with a love for all kinds of sound, no matter how quotidian.

"Even a car honk, I love it," Hiromi says. "Sometimes, when you are at the crossing point of the street, you hear different car honks at ...

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Rita Moreno Reflects On Anita, Awards And Accents

Sunday, March 10, 2013

You could hardly design a better Hollywood success story than that of powerhouse Rita Moreno: Born Rosa Dolores Alverio in Puerto Rico, she arrived in New York when she was 5 years old. Over the years, she became a talented dancer and ended up in Hollywood, making her mark in ...

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Thirty Years Later, 'Hazzard' Still 'A Good-Old-Boy Thing'

Sunday, March 10, 2013

They were good old boys, never meaning no harm, making their way the only way they knew how — Bo and Luke Duke, the central characters on The Dukes of Hazzard, one of the biggest TV hits of the 1980s.

The show aired from 1979 to 1985, but it has ...

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Three-Minute Fiction: The Round 10 Winner Is ...

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Did you leave a message after our prompt? For Round 10 of Three-Minute Fiction, we asked you to submit a short story in the form of a voice mail message. For this contest, the original fiction must be read in about three minutes, no more than 600 words.

After ...

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Living A Life Of Joy 'Until I Say Good-Bye'

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Susan Spencer-Wendel knows how to spend a year.

She left her job as an award-winning criminal courts reporter for The Palm Beach Post and went to the Yukon to see the northern lights. Then to Cyprus, to meet family that she never knew. She and her husband, John, took their ...

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Returning From Duty, Finding Families' Embrace

Saturday, March 09, 2013

StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative records stories from members of the military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the participants in this project have been speaking about being separated from their loved ones.

This week, Weekend Edition is featuring two stories of families reuniting after deployment.

Brothers' Bond

Both ...

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The 'German Bruce Springsteen' Tackles English-Language Rock

Saturday, March 09, 2013

From Bill Haley & His Comets to Elvis Costello, English is the mother tongue of rock. But Germany has a huge rock star at home who has been famous for 30 years. His name is Herbert Gronemeyer, and he's the best-selling German recording artist of all ...

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Dave Grohl Finds Music's Human Element — In A Machine

Friday, March 08, 2013

It wasn't much to look at: a nondescript building in the San Fernando Valley with hideous brown shag carpeting on the walls. But from the 1970s on, the Sound City recording studio turned out a ridiculous amount of great music: classic recordings by Fleetwood Mac, Neil ...

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Can You Make Sad Songs Sound Happy (And Vice Versa)?

Friday, March 08, 2013

Oleg Berg, an engineer and musician in the Ukraine, had a dream as a kid. He wanted to be able to take popular songs, the recordings of which were instantly recognizable, and invert their sound: making major keys minor and vice versa.

Decades later, he has finally done it. Using ...

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Stompin' Tom Connors, Canadian Folk Hero, Has Died

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Stompin' Tom Connors was a Canadian folk legend. He was 77 when he died Wednesday at his home in Ontario. To those of us stateside, his most well-known tune is "The Hockey Song," played at hockey games everywhere. But to Canadians, Stompin' Tom Connors was an inspiration because of his ...

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Finding Flavor In The Castoff Carrot Top

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Cookbook author Diane Morgan first got to thinking about root vegetables after two encounters at her local farmers market in Portland, Ore. She was burdened down with celery root, Morgan says, when a woman stopped her to ask what she was holding and what she planned to do with it.

...

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Departing Obama Speechwriter: 'I Leave This Job Actually More Hopeful'

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Behind most politicians is a speechwriter, typing rapidly somewhere in a small office and trying to channel the boss's voice.

The man who has held perhaps the most prominent speechwriting job of the new millennium is Jon Favreau, a 31-year-old from Massachusetts who was President Obama's chief speechwriter until this ...

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