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'Let Us Descend' follows a slave on a painful journey — finding some hope on the way

10:27am October 24, 2023

by Gabino Iglesias

Jesmyn Ward's narrative forces readers to look at our country's ugly past and face the lingering effects of history — but it also tells a story of perseverance and the power of the spiritual world.

NPR podcast 'Throughline' takes a closer look at the birth of a nation: Turkey

5:02am October 24, 2023

A century after the founding of the Republic of Turkey, NPR's history podcast Throughline examines the legacy of founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Will Foot (left) and Lewis Henderson, of Deptford Northern Soul Club.

Northern Soul is thriving across the UK thanks to Gen Z looking to dance

4:51pm October 23, 2023

by Rebecca Rosman

"Northern Soul is inherently up-tempo, Black American music that never really made it in America," says Lewis Henderson, one-half of the Deptford Northern Soul Club in the UK.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts reopens after a major two-year renovation

6:20pm October 20, 2023

by Olivia Hampton

The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the world's first major museum solely dedicated to championing women artists, reopens after a major two-year renovation to revamp its exhibition spaces.

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'Killers of the Flower Moon' is a monstrous story of greed, masterfully told

1:15pm October 20, 2023

by Bob Mondello

Martin Scorsese's epic 3.5-hour dramatization of David Grann's true-life tragedy about the Osage Nation stars Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

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23 years ago, Israelis and Palestinians were talking about a two-state solution

5:09pm October 19, 2023

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with ambassador Dennis Ross about how close Palestinian leader Arafat and Israel's prime minister came to an agreement for a two-state solution.

This week in science: How albatrosses navigate, fossilized ocean worms, meteor shower

4:28pm October 19, 2023

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Regina Barber and Aaron Scott of Short Wave about albatrosses' impressive navigational abilities, fossilized ocean worms and an upcoming meteor shower.

President Joe Biden speaks as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli and U.S. government officials, Wednesday in Tel Aviv.

World News

Lots of U.S. presidents have pushed for Middle East peace. Progress has been elusive

10:31am October 19, 2023

by Scott Neuman

President Biden is the latest in a long line of presidents to place himself in the middle of a Middle East conflict. U.S. efforts have seen failed starts, wrong turns and dead ends, but some progress.

A crowd of mostly Evangelical Christians waves U.S. and Israeli flags during the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) "Night to Honor Israel" event during the CUFI Summit 2023 on July 17, 2023, in Arlington, Va.

This is how the Republican Party became so strongly pro-Israel

5:11am October 19, 2023

by Danielle Kurtzleben

The GOP hasn't always been so focused on Israel, but evangelicals, partisan sorting and neoconservatism all helped change that. Those ties take center stage now as the Israel-Hamas war rages on.

Children play at a kindergarten surrounded by decorated concrete blast walls designed to protect from rocket and mortar fire in 2015 in the southern Israeli Kibbutz of Nahal Oz near the border with the Gaza Strip.

What is a kibbutz? The roots of Israel's communal villages where violence raged

12:17pm October 12, 2023

by Becky Sullivan

The small, quiet enclaves have long thrived on leftist ideas about collective living. Those located near Gaza suffered some of the worst of the Hamas attacks, with hundreds reported dead.