Now Playing

Loading streams...

NPR News

Pages

Movie Reviews
9:51 am
Fri October 19, 2012

'The Sessions': Sex, Comedy And Something More

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Fox Searchlight
Living most of his life in an iron lung forces Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) to see the world from a different point of view.
Credit Fox Searchlight
Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a sex surrogate, is a strict professional who allows her clients only six sessions — but something about Mark gets past her guard.
Share
E-mail
By

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 9:53 pm

In 1983, Berkeley poet and journalist Mark O'Brien wrote an article about sexual surrogates — women and men trained to help people with disabilities learn to use their bodies to give themselves and others erotic pleasure.

For O'Brien, the subject wasn't academic. After a bout of childhood polio, he had spent much of his life in an iron lung. He could talk, and tap out words on a typewriter holding a stick in his mouth. He could feel things below the neck. But he couldn't move his muscles.

Read more
Krulwich Wonders...
9:45 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Charles Darwin And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Aaron Birk
Credit Aaron Birk
Credit Aaron Birk
Credit American Philosophical Society/Permission to publish required
Credit /
Credit American Philosophical Society/Permission to publish required
Share
E-mail
By

I guess everybody, even the smartest people who ever lived, have days when they feel dumb — really, really dumb. Oct. 1, 1861, was that kind of day for Charles Darwin.

In a letter to his friend Charles Lyell, Darwin says, "I am very poorly today," and then — and I want you to see this exactly as he wrote it, so you know this isn't a fake; it comes from the library of the American Philosophical Society, courtesy of their librarian Charles Greifenstein. Can you read it?

It says:

Whoah! You know the feeling, right?

Read more
The Two-Way
9:19 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Sales Of Existing Homes Dipped In September, But Prices Rose

Credit Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
A "sold" sign in San Francisco in August.
Share
E-mail
By

There was a 1.7 percent drop in sales of existing homes in September from August, the National Association of Realtors says.

But the median selling price compared to one year earlier was up for the seventh month in a row, leading NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun to say "we're experiencing a genuine recovery."

According to NAR:

Read more
The Picture Show
9:16 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Extreme Animal Portraits: Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Winners

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Luciano Candisani / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner - Behavior: Cold-blooded Animals - A yacare caiman waits for fish to come within snapping reach in the shallow, murky waters of Brazil's Pantanal - the biggest wetland in the world. Caimans can grow to be three meters in length.
Credit Anna Henly / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, The World In Our Hands Award — The photographer was on a boat in Svalbard, an archipelago midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, when she saw this polar bear at around 4 in the morning. She used a fish-eye lens to make the enormous animal appear diminutive and create an impression of "the top predator on top of the planet, with its ice world breaking up."
Credit Luciano Candisani / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Behavior: Cold-blooded Animals€ —” A yacare caiman waits for fish to come within snapping reach in the shallow, murky waters of Brazil's Pantanal — the largest wetland in the world. Caimans can grow to be 3 meters in length.
Credit Klaus Nigge / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Creative Visions — In the winter, the 22-kilometer-long estuary of the Ri’a Celestun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula attracts thousands of Caribbean flamingos, which congregate here to feed on the microscopic life in the shallow, briny water. They also use their time to engage in synchronous courtship dancing as a prelude to breeding.
Credit Grégoire Bouguereau / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Behavior Mammals — Cheetah cubs engage in hunting practice with a wounded Thomson's gazelle calf in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.
Credit Kim Wolhuter / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, The Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife — An African wild dog is seen in Zimbabwe's Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve. The pack had traveled four kilometers to the Sosigi Pan for water, only to find it totally dried up.
Credit Steve Winter / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, The Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year (part of a six-picture story) — A young Bengal tiger triggered a camera and photographed itself as it crossed through a fence at Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh, India. Some parts of the park have insufficient prey for the big cats, so park officials have deliberately made holes in the fence so they can venture out for food.
Credit Larry Lynch / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Animal Portraits — An alligator is seen at Myakka River State Park in Sarasota, Fla. Like cats, alligators have a tapetum lucidum at the back of each eye — a structure that reflects light back into the photoreceptor cells to make the most of low light. When light shines into alligators' eyes, the pupils appear to glow red.
Credit Vladimir Medvedev / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Eric Hosking Award (part of a larger portfolio) — A nocturnal porcupine is photographed hours before dawn in Canada's Banff National Park. "I had to use a slow shutter speed and maximum aperture opening, along with a narrow flash beam," said the photographer.
Credit Kai Fagerström / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Urban Wildlife — Forty years ago, a family of 13 people lived in this cottage in Suomusjarvi, Salo, Finland. They are long gone, but it is still a winter home to many woodland creatures, including this red squirrel, which lives in the attic.
Credit Paul Nicklen / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
Winner, Behavior: Birds — Emperor penguins jump from the water to escape predatory leopard seals on the edge of the Ross Sea in Antarctica. The birds can skyrocket up to two meters out of the water. The penguins' survival is vital to that of their 2-month-old chicks, hungrily waiting some 10 kilometers away.
Share
E-mail
By Coburn Dukehart

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 12:18 pm

I admit it: As much as I love hard-hitting photojournalism, there is something about photos of animals that gets me every time. So when I found out that the 2012 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest was announcing its winners, I had to take a look.

Read more
The Two-Way
9:16 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Deadly Car Bomb In Downtown Beirut Causes Devastation

Credit Hussein Malla / AP
Lebanese firefighters extinguish burning cars in Beirut following a huge bomb explosion.
Share
E-mail
By

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 1:17 pm

A huge explosion in central Beirut has killed at least eight people and wounded at least 78, state media in Lebanon are reporting, according to NPR's Kelly McEvers. The target of the bomb isn't clear, but Reuters says the blast occurred on the same street that's home to a political group that opposes Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Read more

Pages