Sarah Handel

In the face of rising COVID cases, Dr. Bob Wachter of the University of California San Francisco offers reasons to be hopeful about the pandemic's outlook in the months ahead.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about the impact of the U.S.'s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

Looking back, countdowns weren't always good news. Think atomic bomb tests. Americans also counted down moon missions and Top 40 hits. It wasn't until 1979 that a Times Square crowd joined in.

If you had to define 2021 with just one word what would it be? Merriam-Webster Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski talks about what words were most on people's minds throughout the year.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Evan Osnos of The New Yorker about radio host Dan Bongino, who calls masks "face diapers," opposes vaccine mandates and says the 2016 and 2020 elections were rigged.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with emergency physician Dr. Leana Wen and San Francisco State University's Gaurav Suri about which activities are safe on a given day with the spread of omicron.

Americans stashed away $2.7 trillion in excess savings over the pandemic even as inflation rates hit a record high.

The new movie The Lost Daughter shows a side of motherhood that Hollywood doesn't often depict.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with John Wilson who unveils the absurdity of the mundane in his HBO show, How To With John Wilson.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal about her directorial debut The Lost Daughter, which takes a unique look at motherhood. Now in theaters, the film will be on Netflix on Dec. 31.

Dr. Horatio Cabasares died from COVID-19 just over a year ago. His son, Hubert, remembers his father, who immigrated from the Philippines and made his mark as the only surgeon in a small Georgia town.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Andy Slavitt, former senior adviser to President Biden's pandemic response team, about the White House's latest efforts to combat the coronavirus.

In Being the Ricardos, Nicole Kidman portrays Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo, Ball's character in the I Love Lucy show. Kidman received a Golden Globe nomination for the role.

Reverend Irvin Doyle Turner, "Netamishkang," died from COVID although he was fully vaccinated. His sons Doyle and Stephen Turner share what their father meant to the people of the White Earth Nation.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Twila Moon, co-editor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2021 Arctic Report Card, which shows oceans warming and sea ice disappearing.

Rameshchandra Patel got COVID-19 early on in the pandemic, when little was known about the virus. His son, Suhash Patel, shares the guiding principles of life his father left as notes in a textbook.

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Nicole Kidman about portraying Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo in the new film, Being the Ricardos.

Thomas Gavin went on a tear in the '60s and '70s, hitting nearly a dozen museums on the East Coast. He mostly stole antique firearms and stashed them in his hideout — a barn in rural Pennsylvania.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UCSF, who has studied whether the option to put a child up for adoption alleviates the need for a woman to get an abortion.

The only thing more incredible than Thomas Gavin's career as an art thief was the punishment he received for his crimes.