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Are you top notch at code-cracking? If not, listen closely to this week's guest, a former C.I.A. agent, for tips on how to stay mysterious. We quiz his intelligence about fellow spy James Bond.

More than 75,000 of you voted for your favorite young-adult fiction. Now, after all the nominating, sorting and counting, the final results are in. Here are the 100 best teen novels, chosen by the NPR audience.

A Chilean, a Swede and a Serbian cartel collide in a taut actioner set amid the Swedish drug trade. Kenneth Turan says the impressive skills of director Daniel Espinosa, who has a gift for building audience tension, make for a great summer thriller. (Recommended)

Chen's showing at the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing clenches a season-best international score and helps put U.S. figure skating on top in the team event.

Some singles linger in the Top 40 for months — and sometimes, they do so for good reason. Case in point: "Too Little, Too Late" by the teenage pop queen JoJo. For all the song's familiar R&B signifiers, formulaic pop rarely sounds so non-formulaic, nor so fabulous.

Bieber's current single, "Baby," from his chart-topping album My World 2.0, is a slickly peppy bit of pop-soul that wears its freshly broken heart on its sleeve. Along the way, it neatly accomplishes the trick of tugging at the sympathies of Bieber's most besotted fans.

The L.A. band Fool's Gold has really gotten off the ground in 2009. The group's sound is firmly planted in popular African styles, including the guitar music of Congolese rumba, Tuareg desert-blues and '70s Ethiopian soul, among others. Hear the Hebrew-language Afro dance band in a session from KEXP.

Just after the snow melts but long before the last frost, hardy New Englanders take to moist meadows and muddy riverbanks in search of the fiddlehead fern. It looks like the scrolled top of a violin and tastes a little like asparagus.

It takes a village to make the music we love. We remember the singers, songwriters, composers, instrumentalists, producers and journalists that we lost in 2024.

When artists die, it can feel impossible to imagine a world without their musical guidance. Yet it's also a moment to celebrate — not just their impact on culture but also inside ourselves.