Roundup

Coal Ash Cleanup Is 24-7 In Tenn. Neighborhood [audio 3 min 56 sec]

In Kingston, Tenn., around-the-clock cleanup operations continue at the site of a major spill of coal ash. The ash sludge broke through an earthen dam at the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal burning power plant last week. Ash now covers some 300 acres, including a river and a small lake.

Moments In 2008 That Kept Us Talking [15 min 42 sec]

As 2008 ends, Tell Me More revisits some of the year's most memorable headlines. Pamela Gentry, of BET News; Abderrahim Foukara, of Al Jazeera News Channel; Marcus Mabry, of the New York Times and NPR's Ken Rudin reflect on a broad range of defining events in 2008 — from a heated White House race to a domestic financial meltdown.

Nobel Prize-Winning Playwright Harold Pinter Dies [audio 4 min 29 sec]

British playwright Harold Pinter, who won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, died Christmas day at the age of 78 after a long battle with esophageal cancer. Pinter was best known for writing such plays as The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Old Times. He also adapted other writers' novels for the screen, including The French Lieutenant's Woman, A Handmaid's Tale and The Comfort of Strangers.

Peru Sues Yale Over Artifacts [video 1 min 47 sec]

The Peruvian Government is suing Yale University over thousands of Incan artifacts excavated by a U.S. scholar in the early 1900s.

Freddie Hubbard Leaves Permanent Mark On Jazz [audio 2 min 2 sec]

Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard captivated audiences with his explosive performances from the fifties on. He died Monday at age 70 from complications following a heart attack.

Dina Vierny, Model And Muse For Art's Masters [audio 7 min 17 sec]

Henri Matisse made drawings of her, with spare, pure lines. Aristide Maillol sculpted her in bronze. And these days, in France, the muse of those 20th-century artists — Dina Vierny — speaks of them with affection and clarity. Vierny was Maillol's last model, and has opened a museum named for him in Paris.

Conservative Icon Paul Weyrich Dies [audio 2 min 56 sec]

Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, has died. He was 66. Weyrich was a beacon on the right in American politics for over four decades.

Woodward: Deep Throat A Man Of Courage [audio 5 min 18 sec]

Mark Felt, the former FBI official who will be remembered by history as the anonymous source Deep Throat, died Thursday at the age of 95. Felt gave crucial tips to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal, which helped topple President Richard Nixon.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire [video 2 min 22 sec]

Harvard government professor Jeff Frieden explains what led to the economic crisis.

Farmer Busted With Artifacts [video 1 min 22 sec]

A farmer in Italy uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts-some perhaps 2,500 years old-but ran into trouble with police when he tried to sell some of them.

Book Explores History Of The American Rifle [audio 6 min 57 sec]

A new book traces American history — though the sight of a gun. Alexander Rose, author of American Rifle: A Biography, and host Andrea Seabrook visit a shooting range to tell the story.

Female Wedding Registrar Is First In Muslim World [audio 3 min 48 sec]

In a small town north of Cairo, an Egyptian woman has quietly made history by becoming the first female marriage official in the Muslim world. Although the job is clerical rather than religious — not unlike a registrar in Western society — her appointment shocked conservatives. But it has given hope to young Muslim women who feel frustrated by the lack of career choices offered to them.

U.S. Gives Papers On Nazis To Holocaust Museum [audio 3 min 58 sec]

The Justice Department on Tuesday donated thousands of documents to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The papers — totaling more than 50,000 pages — chronicle trials of Nazis found living in the United States over the past three decades.

Making It To America [video 34 sec]

A video that shows immigration to the US from 1820 to 2007. Each dot represents 100 people. Maybe it's because I'm an immigrant myself, but I found this simple graphic deeply moving. Whatever America's faults, what other country draws so many for so long?

Interview with John H. Summers [audio 1hour 8 min 54 sec]

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the waters of social and political criticism. One thinks of Arthur Schelsinger Jr., Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch, Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, and more recently Tony Judt, Sean Wilentz and Victor Davis Hanson. Today I had the good fortune to speak with a historian who is virtually sure to enter the top rank of hi

Saudi Women Reunite To Remember Driving Protest [audio 4 min 15 sec]

Every year, nearly four dozen Saudi women get together for a reunion. Eighteen years ago, on Nov. 6, 1990, they staged a public protest against their country's ban on women driving. For half an hour, they drove their cars in a convoy around the capital city of Riyadh until they were stopped by police.

"Cult of Dead" Cave Restored [video 2 min 56 sec]

For decades Italians adopted random skulls in a centuries-old underground mass grave as conduits to the afterlife. Now the complex is being readied for a reopening to the public

Reza: Bearing Witness To War And Peace [audio 10 min 7 sec]

Reza Deghati is considered among the world's great photojournalists. He has traveled the globe for nearly 30 years, bearing witness to wars, unrest, great leaders and the courage of ordinary people trapped by history. He has won countless awards, working for publications such as National Geographic, Newsweek and Time. Reza's latest book, Reza War and Peace: A Photographer's Journey, is a retrospective of that work, drawing on his own tale of exile and giving voice to t

Missing A Masterpiece? Call FBI's Art Crime Team [audio 5 min 6 sec]

Before Robert Wittman came along, the FBI treated stolen art in the same way it treated any ordinary property crime. But Wittman, a former FBI agent, saw art crime as different from a car theft or a bank robbery; it wasn't perpetrated by your average thief, and it wasn't sold to your run-of-the-mill fence or pawnbroker. "It has got a different group of people involved in it," Wittman says. "You have to have some knowledge of what has been taken in order to determine w

A Colonial Dame: My brief, inspiring career as a historical re-enactor [video 4 min 39 sec]

The reigning fantasy in many girlhoods is that of becoming a princess, presiding over a palace, dressing in satin, wielding a scepter. I always imagined myself as a settler, sitting by a cozy fireside, dressing in homespun, wielding knitting needles. So the tiny one-room, wood-beamed farmhouse at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a living history site set in 1771, with its dirt floor, hearth, table, spinning wheel, and sleeping loft, sent me back both to this country's beginnings and my own—it was