Rebecca Hersher

Producer Rebecca Hersher is just back from a monthlong reporting trip to Afghanistan. She talks to host Arun Rath about her experience.

Workers continue to clean the coastline near Santa Barbara, where some 105,000 gallons of crude oil were spilled. Several pelicans, both dead and alive, have been found soaked in oil.

In a prisoner swap this week, a militant group released 19 of 31 Afghan Hazara men kidnapped in February. The kidnapping raised fears in this minority community of being targeted in sectarian attacks.

At the start of Afghanistan's "fighting season," officially declared by the Taliban on Friday, NPR producer Rebecca Hersher meets a group of boys who just want to fly their kites.

Habib Rahman Habib has a very dangerous job in Afghanistan. He is a political cartoonist who has kept drawing through the communists, mullahs, Taliban and into the present government.

Mary Catherine O'Brien says when she first married her husband Greg in 1977, he was funny and outgoing. Alzheimer's disease has stolen much of that, she says, but the two are closer than ever.

Cape Cod journalist Greg O'Brien has always found solace in running, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer's hasn't stopped him. But making it work — for himself and his family — isn't always easy.

When he was just 15, Michael Calce pulled off one of the biggest hacks in history. Today, Calce works in computer security on the other side, and he says he thinks some good came of his 2000 attack.

Greg O'Brien talks about how his life has changed in the five years since he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. "More and more I don't recognize people," he says.

Writer Greg O'Brien was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease five years ago. He describes what it was like to hear the news — and break it to his family.

As two climbers attempt Yosemite's most daunting cliff face, documentarian Nick Rosen, co-writer and co-director of Valley Uprising, explains the park's history of climbs and culture clashes.

In the 1920s, working-class women were hired to paint radium onto glowing watch dials — and told to sharpen the brush with their lips. Dozens died within a few years, but Keane quit, and survived.

Between 1981 and 2012, 1 million extra twins were born in the U.S. One economist says all of those twins could be hurting the economy — but another expert points out some perks of twinhood.

A 65 percent increase in a woman's weight is associated with a 9-percent drop in earnings. A recent study investigated what's behind that "obesity penalty," and why it hits women harder than men.

Decontee Davis knows how she got Ebola. Her fiance's aunt was gravely ill with a fever, unable to bathe herself. Decontee helped.

A week later, Decontee and her five-year-old son began to feel sick. They both had a fever, chills and severe headaches.

It felt like malaria. "We went to ...

As Liberians fight Ebola, Americans struggle with fear of the disease.

Moffie Kanneh is angry at the United States. When I meet the Liberian lawyer, he asks immediately where I am from. "Take this back to Washington," he says. "I am extremely furious."

In the days after the death of Thomas Eric Duncan — the Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in ...

NPR producer Rebecca Hersher has reported on Ebola from Liberia for the past two weeks. She just returned to the U.S. via Brussels and into Washington Dulles International Airport — the same route flown by Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who went on to Dallas, where he was diagnosed ...

Monrovia, Liberia's capital, is a city that relies on public transportation — buses, private vans (also known locally as buses), cars and motorcycle taxis. And you can't use any of these options without coming into contact with other people, whether you're jostling in line or wrapping your arms around a ...