History

Archaeologists dug into a riverbank in Zambia and uncovered what they call the earliest known wood construction by humans. The half-million year-old artifacts could change how we see Stone-Age people.

World's oldest wooden structure defies Stone-Age stereotypes

3:30pm September 22, 2023

by Gabriel Spitzer

Archaeologists dug into a riverbank in Zambia and uncovered what they call the earliest known wood construction by humans. The half-million year-old artifacts could change how we see Stone-Age people.

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Michael Harriot's 'Black AF History' could hardly come at a better time

3:13pm September 22, 2023

by Ericka Taylor

This engaging, well-researched, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny history places the Black experience at center stage with stories that should have already been part of our collective memory.

Florence Griffith-Joyner celebrates with her gold medal after winning the Women's 100 meters final event during the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.

Arts
Sports

Remembering Olympic gold medalist Florence 'Flo-Jo' Griffith Joyner

1:53pm September 22, 2023

by Ashley Montgomery

Olympic gold medalist Florence "Flo-Jo" Griffith Joyner died 25 years ago on Sept. 21, 1998. The sprinter's world records for the 100 meter and 200 meter events remain unbroken.

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Science

This 500,000-year-old structure has researchers rethinking early human intelligence

9:20pm September 21, 2023

by Gabriel Spitzer

A newly discovered example of wood construction by humans is nearly 500,000 years old and has archaeologists rethinking how technologically advanced these pre-homo-sapiens may have been.

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Horses are spooked by the Woolsey Fire near Paramount Ranch on Nov. 9, 2018, in Agoura Hills, Calif.

You've likely seen this ranch on-screen — burned by wildfire, it awaits its next act

6:04pm September 20, 2023

by Chloe Veltman

The Woolsey wildfire devastated most of Paramount Ranch's Hollywood heritage in 2018. Human-driven climate change is demanding difficult decisions about what to preserve in the rebuilding process.

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Art looted by Nazis finds its rightful owners

5:16pm September 20, 2023

by Jasmine Garsd

It's one of the longest running holocaust restitution cases: works by painter Egon Schiele were handed back to its rightful heirs today in New York. The original owner was murdered by the Nazis.

NPR's history podcast 'Throughline' revisits the fall of Tenochtitlán

5:06am September 20, 2023

Throughline takes us back 500 years to understand the rise, fall and resilience of the great Aztec city Tenochititlán. The story of European dominance has been largely accepted as historical truth.

Sally Field plays a cotton mill worker in the 1979 drama Norma Rae.

Arts

Wonder where Hollywood's strikes are headed? Movies might offer a clue

4:26pm September 19, 2023

by Bob Mondello

Hollywood has churned out films that depict labor organizers as communists, and labor bosses as gangsters. So it should come as no surprise that real-life negotiations with the studios are so tricky.

Meeting the Philadelphia team that embroiders presidential flags

4:12pm September 19, 2023

A small workshop on a northeast Philadelphia military base exclusively manufactures the presidential and vice presidential flags. The tradition has been going on for more than 150 years.

The National Museum of American History has some impeachment buttons from the Nixon years in their collection.

Politics & Government

Past impeachments, products of their times, often produced unintended consequences

4:58am September 17, 2023

by Ron Elving

Previous instances of presidential impeachment have each had contexts unique to their own political moments. These considerations have mattered as much as the alleged "high crimes and misdemeanors."