History

Her ancestors survived the Holocaust. She returns to Germany to reclaim her identity

5:10am January 27, 2023

In an excerpt from the podcast Memory Wars, a descendant of a Holocaust survivor takes back her heritage by moving to her ancestral homeland in Germany.

Tanks were invented more than 100 years ago. How have they stood the test of time?

4:56pm January 26, 2023

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with historian Antony Beevor about the role tanks play in warfare and how Ukraine might benefit from them.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones on turning 'The 1619 Project' into a docuseries

5:17pm January 22, 2023

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones about her new docuseries, The 1619 Project, which is based on the journalism project of the same name.

Abortion-rights protesters shout into the Senate chamber in the Indiana Capitol on July 25, 2022, about a month after Roe was overturned, in Indianapolis.

Most Americans say overturning Roe was politically motivated, NPR/Ipsos poll finds

5:00am January 22, 2023

by Laura Benshoff

An NPR/Ipsos poll finds that most Americans say Supreme Court justices are guided more by their politics than the law, and that lawmakers aren't deciding abortion policy based on public sentiment.

Elizabeth Colomba and Aurélie Lévy's new graphic novel Queenie: Godmother of Harlem revives the forgotten story of Harlem mob boss Stephanie Saint Clair AKA Queenie in the form of a mafia thriller.

Books
Arts

New graphic novel explores the life of 'Queenie,' Harlem Renaissance mob boss

5:00am January 22, 2023

by Seyma Bayram

Queenie: Godmother of Harlem tells the overlooked story of Stephanie Saint Clair, or "Queenie," a Black female mob boss and fashion icon who lived during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.

This handout negative dated on April 20, 1943, and taken by Polish firefighter Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski shows Jewish people being evacuated from the Warsaw Ghetto.

A firefighter's 1943 photos of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising have been found

2:29pm January 21, 2023

by The Associated Press

The photos were taken inside the Warsaw Ghetto by a 23-year-old Polish firefighter as the Nazis were brutally crushing the Jewish uprising of 1943. The photos were discovered in a family collection.

Detailed view shows inscriptions on a sandstone rock, believed to be the world's oldest runestone inscribed almost 2,000 years ago, making it several hundred centuries older than the earliest known ones.

World News

Opinion: The lessons we can learn from 'idiberug'

9:36am January 21, 2023

by Scott Simon

NPR's Scott Simon wonders about 8 characters on an old runestone found in Norway. It goes on display today, so others may look and ponder. It is a curse? A love poem? A receipt for Viking take out?

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For those on Capitol Hill who would threaten a default as a means to compel concessions on policy, the destructive power of default is what makes it makes attractive as a tactic.

Politics & Government

Why we have a debt ceiling, and why this trip to the brink may be different

9:13am January 21, 2023

by Ron Elving

We have been here before. But this time the House's new Republican majority is largely driven by a faction that says it will hold the debt limit vote as a hostage to win policy changes.

Cat stickers hang on display last week in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Lunar New Year begins on Sunday and marks the Year of the Cat in Vietnam and the Year of the Rabbit in China, South Korea and other East and Southeast Asian countries.

Arts

While many ring in the Year of the Rabbit, Vietnam celebrates the cat

7:01am January 21, 2023

by Suzanne Nuyen

This Lunar New Year, the Vietnamese will observe a different animal in the zodiac, the cat. The reasons are murky: could be linguistics or the landscape — or maybe cats are just plain friendlier.

Protesters at the March for Life on Jan. 20, 2023, in Washington D.C.

At the first March for Life post-Roe, anti-abortion activists say fight isn't over

8:35pm January 20, 2023

Seven months after overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, anti-abortion rights activists are celebrating their victories and planning their next steps at their annual march in D.C

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