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Humans have been speaking thousands of years longer than they have been writing. Yet many assume the written word is superior to the way we speak. In What Language Is: And What It Isn't And What It Could Be, John McWhorter argues that most of our assumptions about language are wrong.

Kenneth Branaugh is back as Hercule Poirot, and it's hard not to enjoy his company in this unusually spooky murder mystery based on Agatha Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party.

A shaky cease-fire in the South Caucasus appears to be holding. The ex-Soviet republic of Azberbaijan says it has reestablished control over the breakaway ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Thousands of migrants crossing from Tunisia to the Italian island of Lampedusa are overwhelming the tiny island, and testing the welcome of those who live there.

Jeff Zients has been getting the White House prepared for the first government shutdown of the Biden administration. Here's what the chief of staff told NPR about it.

The horseshoe crab bleeding industry is in transition. One biomedical company agreed to more oversight, and a regulatory group is paving the way for drug companies to use animal-free alternatives.

Lauren Groff's new novel, Arcadia, follows the story of Bit, the first baby born to a Utopian commune, as he grows to adulthood and the commune gradually falls apart. Groff says she was skeptical about communes at first, but her views changed as she wrote.

Liza Mundy, author of The Richer Sex, discusses the trend — and implications — of women becoming the primary breadwinners in their families, a phenomenon that cuts across race, class and geographic location.

Why all the adulatory attention, critics ask, for Jonathan Franzen's latest domestic drama about marriage and family? Even though Franzen gets more praise for doing what many fine female writers do "backwards and in heels," critic Maureen Corrigan says Freedom has earned its accolades.

One of the literary world's unexpected successes over the past year has been a book written by former French resistance fighter Stephane Hessel. In Time for Outrage, Hessel calls for young people to resist the injustices of today's world — and he seems to have struck a nerve.