When Water Overpowers, Wind Farms Get Steamed

The Pacific Northwest is suffering from too much of a good thing — electricity. It was a snowy winter and a wet spring, and there’s lots of water behind the dams on the Columbia River, creating an oversupply of hydropower. As a result, the region’s new wind farms are being ordered to throttle back — [...]

Your Health Podcast: Best Beaches And Lessons Old Age Teaches

In an unprecedented public hearing, a panel of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration considered whether the pricey drug Avastin should keep its approval for the treatment of breast cancer. The agency is moving to pull the approval for that use, and we talk about the outcome of the hearing in this week’s podcast. [...]

Polar Opposites Attract, And Reflect History

Romantic comedies don’t always delve into weighty issues like cultural identity or repressed memory, but that’s just what two filmmakers in France have done with their movie The Names of Love. The film recently opened in the U.S. after winning two Cesar awards (France’s equivalent of an Oscar), including the one for Best Original Screenplay. [...]

In Thailand, A Campaign For An Exiled Leader

Thai music blasts from a sound truck, as villagers in red shirts dance, listen to speeches, and eat sticky rice and spicy local cuisine at a local Buddhist temple. The residents of Baan Suksomboon, in northeast Udon Thani province, are here to declare that this is a “Red Village,” organized in support of opposition candidate [...]

Workplace Atmosphere Keeps Many In The Closet

Despite momentum for same-sex marriage in legislatures, the courts and public opinion, there’s one place that seems out of step with this shift: the workplace. A recent study finds that about half of gay and lesbian white-collar workers are not “out” when they’re in the office. The change was abrupt for Todd Sears. He says [...]

Whither The Astronauts Without A Shuttle?

On July 8, the final space shuttle will take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. With it comes the end of a 40-year program that’s put more humans in space than any other. NASA is retiring its fleet of shuttle spacecraft to build something that can take humans past the moon and into deep space. [...]

Marlon Brando’s Lost Musical Innovation

In a nondescript storage facility in West Los Angeles sits a little-known bit of Hollywood history. It concerns the late legendary actor Marlon Brando, but it’s not about any of his stage or screen roles. Behind its roll-up door sits a collection of items from the very public life of Brando — the actor. Among [...]

The Best Of The Louvre, On A Single Canvas

Beginning on Sunday, June 3, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will exhibit Samuel Morse’s painting Gallery of the Louvre. The American better known for inventing the telegraph and the communication code that bears his name, painted the large work — it’s 6 feet tall and 9 feet wide — starting in 1831, [...]

Losing Letters One Blank At A Time

On-Air Challenge: You are given a series of sentences, each of which is missing three words. The word in the first blank is five letters long. Drop the last letter to get a four-letter word for the second blank. Drop the last letter to get a three-letter answer for the third blank. For example, given [...]

No Flow? Rap Rebirth Can Help

If your flow has lost its get-up-and-go, you may need to call Jesse Kramer. The 24-year-old runs a website called Rap Rebirth, where, for a fee, he offers custom rap lyrics in any style you chose — anywhere from a verse to an entire album. Kramer tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz that [...]