March Madness is officially here. Starting Tuesday, 68 college teams will compete for a spot at the NCAA men's championship on April 8. As millions across the country fill out brackets and enter office pools, this season has left longtime sports columnist Dave Kindred yearning for the good old days.
Top of the Lake, a new seven-part miniseries premiering tonight on the Sundance Channel, was co-created and co-directed by Jane Campion, who teamed with Holly Hunter 20 years ago on the movie The Piano. Hunter is back for this new project, playing a mysterious New Agey guru of sorts. She's started a small commune for emotionally damaged women, on a remote strip of land in New Zealand.
Oklahoma quarterback Steve Davis, left, and coach Barry Switzer celebrate the team's No. 1 ranking after the Orange Bowl in 1976. Davis, 60, died Sunday in the crash of a small plane. Switzer called Davis a "great role model for young people."
One of the two men killed Sunday when a small plane crashed into a house near South Bend, Ind., was former University of Oklahoma star quarterback Steve Davis, the St. Joseph County (Ind.) coroner's office says.
Credit Photo illustration by Daniel M.N. Turner / NPR
A select group of synesthetes can truly "taste the rainbow."
Credit Photo illustration by Daniel M.N. Turner / NPR
For Jaime Smith, a synesthetic sommelier, a white wine like Nosiola has a "beautiful aquamarine, flowy, kind of wavy color to it."
Credit Dominic Davies / Courtesy of James Wannerton
James Wannerton worked with photographers Dominic Davies and Andrew Stellitano to create this conceptual image, which for him elicits the taste of a roast lamb dinner with all of the trimmings.
Originally published on Tue March 19, 2013 11:23 am
Plenty of us got our fill of green-colored food on St. Patrick's Day. (Green beer, anyone?) But for some people, associating taste with color is more than just a once-a-year experience.
Emily Rapp is also the author of Poster Child, about a congenital birth defect that led to the amputation of her leg when she was a child, and about how she subsequently became a poster child for the March of Dimes.
In January 2011, writer Emily Rapp was a happy new mother when she and her husband found themselves in a pediatric ophthalmologist's office with their 9-month-old son, Ronan. They were worried about Ronan's development and had gone to the eye doctor to rule out vision problems as the culprit. Checking Ronan's retinas, the doctor saw "cherry-red spots on the backs of his retinas," Rapp writes in her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World. Ronan's diagnosis that day was Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic and degenerative condition that is always fatal. There is no cure.
Ten years ago this week, U.S. troops invaded Iraq. NPR's David Gilkey was there and shares his memory of aphotograph he made that first night.
The photos that David Gilkey took the night of the Iraq invasion were among the first pictures of U.S. troops in combat to come out of Iraq. And among the images he captured was one of a soldier running through an abandoned Iraqi army post that had, just minutes before, been hit by U.S. rocket fire.
Those photos would not have been possible without a night vision optic for his camera.
NPR's business news starts with a new labor secretary.
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MONTAGNE: President Obama has chosen justice department lawyer Thomas Perez for the post. Perez is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. He ran the labor department in his home state of Maryland and he will add a high profile Latino voice to the cabinet. But, NPR's Carrie Johnson reports, his nomination is not without controversy.
As Syria's revolt enters a third year, Syria's political opposition is meeting in Istanbul this week to choose a rebel government, despite opposition from the Obama administration.
Twelve candidates are in the running to lead the efforts, including an economist, a former agriculture minister and an IT specialist who is overseeing the Syrian National Coalition's aid operation on the Turkish border.
