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All over the east coast and Midwest, forests are getting hotter and drier. Many are also overgrown and overdue for wildfire. And increasingly, Americans are moving to areas where these forests and their homes tangle close together. The fastest such growth is in the Southeast, where few consider wildfire much of a threat. Molly Samuel with member station WABE reports from Tate City, Georgia. Additi...

NPR's Tom Dreisbach reports on the story of Alan Hostetter, a former police chief and yoga instructor from California who's now facing conspiracy charges for his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol riot. Hostetter is one of more than 500 people facing charges related to January 6th. Hear more about how prosecutors are proceeding from NPR's Ryan Lucas and the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen via Apple , G...

Critical race theory is a legal framework developed decades ago at Harvard Law School. It posits that racism is not just the product of individual bias, but is embedded in legal systems and policies. Today, it's become the subject of heated debate on Fox News and in local school board meetings across the country. Adam Harris , staff writer at The Atlantic, explains why. Harris has traced the debat...

In 1969, during the same summer as Woodstock, another music festival took place 100 miles away. The Harlem Cultural Festival featured black musicians like Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder — stars who we might not have glimpsed at this point in their careers. Footage of the festival had been locked in a basement for 50 years, because TV and film companies were not interested in it at the time. Quest...

The Star-Spangled Banner is the official anthem for the United States, but there are plenty of songs that have become informal American anthems for millions of people. On this episode of NPR's Throughline , we share three stories from NPR Music's American Anthem series , which explored the origins of songs that have become ingrained in American culture. Throughline is NPR's history podcast. Listen...

Cases are surging in countries around the world as the more transmissible delta variant spreads rapidly. Also growing: pressure on vaccine-rich countries to help people in countries where vaccines are still scarce. NPR's Will Stone reports on the waiting game. And Harvard's Junaid Habi argues vaccine hesitancy in America is a peculiar privilege. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local n...

The former Secretary of Defense was a chief architect of the conflict that came to be known as America's 'forever war.' After his death this week at age 88, that conflict has now officially outlived him. NPR's Steve Inskeep reports on one group of people still living with the consequences: thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military over the past 20 years. More from that story, which ai...

Los Angeles County — America's most populous county — recently recommended mask wearing even for vaccinated people, just two weeks after the state relaxed most COVID restrictions. County officials say masks will help protect unvaccinated people from the more transmissible delta variant, which is spreading rapidly across the country. CDC director Rochelle Walensky tells NPR the federal government m...

Late last year the Senate passed a bill that required U.S. intelligence agencies to share what they know about "unidentified aerial phenomena," the technical term for UFOs. That report was released last week. Spoiler alert — it doesn't confirm the existence of alien spacecraft. But it doesn't rule them out either. Retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich recounts her first-hand encount...

Susana Alvarez, a survivor of the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida, explained to NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Weekend Edition Sunday that residents were told in a late 2018 meeting that the building was safe — despite evidence it wasn't. NPR confirmed Alvarez's account. An engineering report issued five weeks before that meeting warned of "major structural damage" to the building that would req...

Alicia Argelia met Army veteran Matt Lammers when he rolled into the store where she worked. Matt had lost both legs and one arm during a deployment to Iraq. Strangers often approached him to awkwardly thank him for his service or ask him what happened; his physical injuries made him a living reminder of the cost of war. But Alicia was different. She offered friendship without pity, and he was cha...

What's behind the 20-year success of the Fast & Furious franchise? Casting, storytelling and reinvention. NPR's Linda Holmes — who wrote an owner's manual to the franchise — explains. Linda is one of the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour . Find their episode about F9 on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or Pocket Casts . F9 premiered overseas last month while waiting for pandemic-shuttered cinemas to o...

For the second weekend in a row, parts of the American West will be gripped by historic heat, coming in the second decade of megadrought that has gripped the region for 22 years. Wildfire is an obvious threat — but there are other consequences of extreme heat and drought, as smaller snowmelts and lower reservoirs lead to water cutbacks and more expensive electricity. And climate change is making i...

Back in March, Congress approved nearly $50 billion in aid for people who need rental assistance to avoid eviction. At the same time a federal moratorium on evictions is expected to be extended till the end of the July. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy

From the beginning of the pandemic, the debate about the origins of the coronavirus was immediately politicized by former President Donald Trump. But now international efforts to investigate and find answers have stalled. NPR's Will Stone explains why. Despite a new focus on the lab leak theory, many scientists still believe the virus emerged naturally, reports NPR's Geoff Brumfiel . NPR media cor...

In June 1971, then-President Richard Nixon said the U.S. had a new public enemy number one: addiction. It was the beginning of America's long war on drugs. Fifty years later, during months of interviews, NPR found a growing consensus across the political spectrum — including among some in law enforcement — that the drug war simply didn't work. The stories in this episode are from NPR's Brian Mann...

This all started with a guest essay by Tom Hanks for The New York Times called "You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre," in which Hanks made the case for a more widespread teaching of American history involving Black Americans, especially of events like the Tulsa Race Massacre. He wrote: "History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of...

Juneteenth, the celebration to commemorate the end of chattel slavery in the United States, is the newest federal holiday after President Biden signed it into law on Thursday. It's another example of how the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd has been reshaping the way Americans think and talk about race. That shift is also evident in reparation programs for Black descendants of...

Last month, President Biden laid out an ambitious goal: to get 70% of adults in the U.S. at least one vaccine dose by July 4. With less than three weeks to go, that goal may too ambitious, Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage tells NPR, and some states may see localized outbreaks this year. Still — nearly two dozen states have already exceeded the 70% threshold. Many are clustered in the Northeast a...

Remote learning simply didn't work for many children with disabilities. Without the usual access to educators, therapists and in-person aides, the families of these children, and many like them, say they watched their children slide backward, losing academic, social and physical skills. Now they're demanding help, arguing to judges, state departments of education and even to the U.S. Department of...

Wednesday will be President Biden's first meeting with one of America's greatest adversaries. Drawing a contrast with his predecessor is the least of what the commander-in-chief hopes to accomplish when he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly is covering the summit in Geneva, where she spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about what the U.S....

From computer chips to rental cars to chicken breasts, a complex global supply chain is straining under pent-up post-vaccine demand. NPR's Scott Horsley explains what's going on — and why Biden administration officials think price hikes will eventually level out. Additional reporting this episode from NPR's Camila Domonoske — who reported on computer chips in car manufacturing — and NPR's Weekend...

About two months after the coronavirus began spreading in the United States, groups of Americans began to protest the quarantine lockdown measures in their states. At some of these anti-lockdown rallies reporters Lisa Hagen of WABE and Chris Haxel of KCUR discovered they weren't the spontaneous grassroots uprisings they purported to be. Rather, they were being organized by a group of three brother...

The story made waves in Washington, D.C., this week: The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax . ProPublica obtained private tax data from America's 25 wealthiest individuals, which revealed exactly how those people manage, through legal means, to pay far less income tax than most Americans — and sometimes, none at all. ProPublica senior ed...

For Americans who were able to work from home at the start of the pandemic, what felt like an extended snow day at first has now turned into 15 months and counting of Zoom calls and logging onto work in sweatpants. But now that about half of Americans are fully vaccinated, some are trickling back into the office. We asked you to tell us how your work has been for the last year and how you feel abo...