Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Search results for

  • Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to fly into space, according to Blue Origin. The company, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched its first human spaceflight in July.
  • Where did this three-day-weekend come from anyway?
  • California's top election official has announced that organizers of a campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom have submitted enough valid signatures to place the question before voters later this year.
  • The iconic 26.2-mile trek through all five of the city's boroughs returned in person on Sunday after it was cancelled last year due to the pandemic.
  • In Turkey, the government is touting its donations of medical supplies abroad even though coronavirus is taking a steep toll in Turkey and the economy is on the brink.
  • Alex Jones lost a defamation case brought on by families of some of the 26 victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
  • NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on a possible wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Really. Physicists measuring the fundamental characteristics of a subatomic particle, the muon, have come up with some very puzzling results that could punch a hole in the long-standing "standard model" of how matter is put together. And that could help usher in a completely new theory of matter, time and space. Unless, of course, some scientist has made a mistake. (4:30) (It was later revealed this was a mistake: "Well, I would say I'm responsible for the mistake. My collaborator did most of the work, but I am equally guilty of making mistakes." Toichiro Kinoshita, a physicist at Princeton University. Kinoshita's sin was to have a minus sign where he should have had a plus or maybe the other way around. He can't quite remember, though it ended up having gigantic consequences. Kinoshita and his colleague were calculating how a particular subatomic particle behaves when it's stuck in a magnetic field. The particle, it turns out, wobbles like a toy top at a particular frequency. Kinoshita enlisted hundreds of computers and, after a decade of heroic work, had precisely predicted how fast it should wobble according to the laws of physics. Last winter, other physicists who were out measuring the wobble found it differed significantly from Kinoshita's prediction. In the clockwork world of physics, this was potentially a huge finding, signaling something new and mysterious, except that it wasn't. Kinoshita traced his error to a tiny quirk in a computer program he was using. He hadn't checked that bit, in part because other physicists using a different approach had gotten the same answer."
  • The rule change is an apparent victory for Norway's female handball team after it was fined for wearing shorts rather than the requisite bikini bottoms over the summer.
  • Research shows that sleep deprivation makes people emotionally volatile and temperamental — a fact that hasn't escaped the notice of some reality TV producers, who deny contestants sleep in an effort to kick up televised drama.
  • In stressful times, it's helpful to be reminded of the good people willing to help out. That's the theme of a new podcast from the team at Hidden Brain. It's called: My Unsung Hero.
2,037 of 9,756