SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Operas are often centered on tragic heroines who die or take their own lives at the end of the story. But Thumbprint, a new chamber opera, takes that formula and turns it around. This opera is based on the true story of a young, il...
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Several Afghan officials have been suspended following an attack on the popular restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan which left 21 people dead. It was the deadliest violence against foreign civili...
From VOA Learning English, this is the Health Report. The World Health Organization (WHO) says there has been a sharp increase in the number of children in developing countries who weight to much. In Africa countries, the WHO says the number of overw...
Let's pretend right here we have a machine. A big machine, a cool, TED-ish machine, and it's a time machine. And everyone in this room has to get into it. And you can go backwards, you can go forwards; you cannot stay where you are. And I wonder what...
I've been in Afghanistan for 21 years. I work for the Red Cross and I'm a physical therapist. My job is to make arms and legs -- well it's not completely true. We do more than that. We provide the patients, the Afghan disabled, first with the physica...
RACHEL GARLINGHOUSE: A lot of people like to tell us that kids don't notice race until they're much older. That's not true. My 2-year-old... (LAUGHTER) GARLINGHOUSE: ...when she had recently turned two had told us things like, I'm brown and you're pi...
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: This is also a landmark date in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began. Three years ago today, Tunisia's long-time ruler stepped down in the face of a popular uprising. His departure sparked both celebration and uncertainty. A nati...
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's hear again from the Race Card Project, in which our colleague Michele Norris collects short stories about race and identity; stories that are only six words long yet capture so much depth, especially on the topic we're expl...
I'd like to talk about my dad. My dad has Alzheimer's disease. He started showing the symptoms about 12 years ago, and he was officially diagnosed in 2005. Now he's really pretty sick. He needs help eating, he needs help getting dressed, he doesn't r...
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: Ishmael Beah was an adolescent when, as he's described it, rocket-propelled grenades introduced the people of his town to war. That was the mid-1990s. DAVID GREENE, HOST: In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Beah wrote of losing his...
DAVID GREENE, HOST: Here's the name of a government office that caught our attention: the Vice Ministry for the Supreme Social Happiness of the People. This is a newly created office in Venezuela, where government bureaucracy sure seems to be growing...
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: We're going to spend the next few minutes talking about a controversial theory, about living and dying and living again; reincarnation. It's long been a central tenet of certain spiritual traditions, but it's not an experience th...
How can I speak in 10 minutes about the bonds of women over three generations, about how the astonishing strength of those bonds took hold in the life of a four-year-old girl huddled with her young sister, her mother and her grandmother for five days...
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Jennifer Ludden. Rachel Martin is away. It's been nearly two decades since we learned about the word gap. That young children of well-off professionals hear millions more words than those from poor families....
Hello! Im June Simms in Washington. Thanks for joining us again for another As It Is! At this time of the year, people all around the world are looking back at the past 12 months. What was good about the year? What was not so good? And what should I...
