Daily Schedule

Your morning companion from NPR and the WNYC Newsroom, with world news, local features, and weather updates.

The news is all bad regarding heroin in our area, but do the numbers justify calling it an epidemic? Michael Tracey, who wrote about this for Al Jazeera, discusses whether the response has been appropriate. Plus: A Green Beret who served in Afghanistan talks about the roles of special forces soldiers; and historian John Strausbaugh takes us for a spin through archival WNYC shows that document the changes that were happening in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s.

The Peabody Award-winning program features Terry Gross’ fearless and insightful interviews with big names in pop culture, politics and the arts.

A wrap-up of the day’s news, with features and interviews about the latest developments in New York City and around the world, from NPR and the WNYC newsroom.

A wrap-up of the day’s news, with features and interviews about the latest developments in New York City and around the world, from NPR and the WNYC newsroom.

In this episode: Soundcheck continues its look back 20 years ago to the summer of 1994 with the once-ubiquitous Lisa Loeb song "Stay (I Missed You)." Twenty years ago, it was everywhere… on the Reality Bites soundtrack, on heavy rotation on MTV and on the Billboard Hot 100 -- at No. 1 for three weeks in August. In good company with Ace of Base, Boyz II Men and others, Lisa Loeb was different in one key way: She wasn’t signed to a label. Mario Correa and Julia Cunningham of Sirius XM’s Entertainment Weekly Radio tell the story of the song.

Then: Brooklyn author Emma Straub -- who has a summer hit with her breezy new novel, The Vacationers -- shares three favorite songs as part of a Pick Three playlist.

And: Violinist and songwriter Jenny Scheinman brings guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade to the Soundcheck studio to play songs from her new album, The Littlest Prisoner.

Hear choral works that make use of a choir for color and texture, rather than the delivery of a text on this New Sounds.  From violinist and composer Timba Harris, listen to an album length suite of pieces about the Cascade Mountains at the time of Mount St. Helens’ eruption in 1980.  His “neXus I: Cascadia” features a big choir and minimal strings and electronics, depicting a monarch butterfly, black bear, and the flora and fauna in the in the Pacific Northwest affected by the eruption of the volcano. Also, listen to a work without words written for vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, called “AEIOU,” by Ecstatic Music Festival founder and composer Judd Greenstein. Plus, the vocal ensemble, New York Polyphony, makes over the medieval into something modern with their remix of a Gregorian chant piece.  And more.