Scott Simon

Brendan Johnston refused to compete against Jaslynn Gallegos because of her gender. Gallegos went on to place fifth but is frustrated to be treated differently as an athlete because she's a girl.

The Chicago native's beats went viral this week after videos of his trap music started circulating on social media.

In his essay this week, NPR's Scott Simon writes about how Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather ended up in a pile of books on the streets of Kabul and sparked one young man's imagination.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Hozier about his latest album, Wasteland, Baby!

Etaf Rum's new novel draws from her own experiences of arranged marriage and early motherhood in the close-knit Palestinian American community where she grew up — and which she eventually left.

Original poems by the gangsters Bonnie and Clyde are going up for auction on May 4 in Texas. The poems reveal a more authentic side to the often glamorized duo.

As Mardi Gras approaches, the music of New Orleans is in the air. The band Galactic not only has a new album, Already Ready Already, but the members bought the legendary New Orleans club Tipitina's.

NPR's Scott Simon talks to The Verge's Casey Newton, who reported on the mental health costs to social media content moderators in the U.S., who spend hour after hour monitoring graphic content.

NPR's Scott Simon reflects on the seizure of 90,000 bottles of Russian vodka destined for North Korea's elite. A look at what this means for the regime's treatment of regular citizens.

Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, Mizrahi says he stood out like "a chubby, gay thumb." He's written about his unlikely path into the fashion industry in his new memoir, I.M.

Chloë Grace Moretz has been in the movies since she was a kid — her latest, Greta, is a horror-thriller in which she plays an earnest young woman whose new friendship turns terrifyingly toxic.

NPR's Scott Simon reflects on the treatment of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Branded as "religious extremists," dozens of Witnesses were arrested in recent raids in Siberia.

Born and raised in South Africa to Christian parents, Nakhane now makes electronic music about queerness, blackness and survival.

Bird lovers around the world are counting birds this weekend for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which provides valuable data for avian research.

NASA's admission this week that the agency has lost contact with a Mars rover brings an end to a compelling story of usefulness and resilience.

Recent stories about high-profile politicians in Virginia having worn blackface have caused many people to recount their own experiences and how it made them feel unwelcome, or unsafe.

Ethan Lindenberger had never received vaccines for diseases like polio or measles because his mom is anti-vaccine. Now he's 18, he's finally getting his shots.

Yangsze Choo's second novel features a disembodied finger, Chinese dancehalls of the 1930s and weretigers. For the author, it's a book of parallel worlds: the supernatural and the real.

Scott Simon discusses a star-studded reimagining of Gentry's 1968 cult classic with two of its contributors, country artist Margo Price and Rolling Stone editor David Fricke.

NPR's Scott Simon reflects on why someone would create a forgery of a painting by Adolf Hitler after German police raided an art house in Nuremberg with suspected counterfeits painted by the Führer.