Now Playing

Loading streams...

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

All ContentRSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

NPR News

Pages

Business
2:05 am
Tue June 26, 2012

What's A Taxi Ride Worth? You Set The Price

Credit Kirk Carapezza for NPR
Eric Hagen charges people only what they can afford in his Recession Ride Taxi in Burlington, Vt.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 12:07 pm

In a recession, watching the meter on a taxi tick higher and higher can be distressing. But in Burlington, Vt., the Recession Ride Taxi lets customers set their own price.

Eric Hagen is a Wall Street banker-turned-cab-driver whose one-man "pay-what-you-want" taxi service has accrued dozens of faithful customers.

'I'd Be Walking'

Read more
The Salt
2:04 am
Tue June 26, 2012

The Making of Meat-Eating America

Credit Lass / Getty Images
Men at a slaughterhouse stand near hanging beef carcasses, late 1940s.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 11:44 am

We eat a lot of meat in this country; per person, more than almost anywhere else on Earth. (Here's a helpful map of global meat-eating.)

But why? What makes an American eat ten or twelve times more meat than the average person in Mozambique or Bangladesh?

Read more
Fine Art
2:02 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Reflective Art Brings Light, Color To Historic Spaces

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot's Red Bowl installation in Beauvais, France, recalls the way lepers once bathed in animal blood in an effort to cure themselves and avoid being ostracized to the one-time leprosarium where the installation is located.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
The installation, on display in Georgetown's historic Dumbarton Oaks Gardens, combines the luxurious (crystals) with the mundane (chicken wire).
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
Cao and Perrot's White Dome hangs inside a free-standing tower that used to be part of Beauvais' Saint-Barthelemy Collegiate Church.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
According to the artists' website, the crystals that hang in the tower are meant to serve as symbols of the soul's purification by ascension to heaven.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot's Red Bowl installation in Beauvais, France, allows visitors to cross a pond into a hemisphere of metal rods topped with red marbles.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
The marbles recall the way lepers once bathed in animal blood in an effort to cure themselves and avoid being ostracized to the one-time leprosarium where the installation is located.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
Cao and Perrot's Cloud Terrace was designed to extend the shade of surrounding trees across the terrace it adorns in Washington, D.C.
Credit Courtesy of Cao | Perrot Studio
Cao and Perrot's White Dome hangs from a tower that used to be part of a collegiate church in Beauvais, France. Its 3,000 tiny crystals serve as symbols of the soul's purification by ascension to heaven.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 12:03 pm

This is a story about amazing beauty, imagination and magical effects — and it begins, ironically enough, at a one-time leprosarium, or hospital for lepers, in Beauvais, France, a small town outside Paris.

Lepers were sequestered in Beauvais in the 12th century. That history is now noted in an outdoor art installation made up of slim metal rods that curve up into the shape of a bowl. Each rod is tipped with a red, marble-sized glass ball.

Read more
Books
2:01 am
Tue June 26, 2012

Four Books To Help You Master Chicago Politics

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Southern Illinois University Press
Credit AP
Richard J. Daley served as the mayor and Democratic Party boss of Chicago for more than two decades, from 1955 to 1976. His son, Richard M. Daley, served as mayor from 1989 to 2011. Click here for more on the Daley dynasty.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By editor

Originally published on Tue June 26, 2012 8:08 am

The term "Chicago politics" gets bandied about whenever people complain about what they see as corruption and abuse of power.

Republicans often apply the concept to President Obama, who calls Chicago home. Earlier this year, presidential candidate Mitt Romney called one of the president's appointments "Chicago-style politics at its worst," and Illinois Republican Aaron Schock once described Obama's team as "the Chicago machine apparatus."

But what does that mean? And what are Chicago politics really like?

Read more
The Record
7:06 pm
Mon June 25, 2012

Springsteen's American Dream, Beautiful And Bleak

Credit Richard E. Aaron / Redferns
Bruce Springsteen onstage during the Born in the USA tour in 1985.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 6:39 pm

Read more

Pages