Search results for

Telemarketing agencies often invoke free speech in defending their right to call you just as you're picking up the dinner fork -- though earlier this year, at least one company promised to change its "cold calling" tactics. Commenator Tom Mabe makes a living turning the tables on telemarketers -- at least that's how he sees it. He waits for companies to call his number, then plays pranks on them. He then records his jokes and sells them on CD. Now that cold-calling is being phased out, he's worried.

During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project interviewed 2,000 former slaves as part of a larger overall effort to record the remarkable history of the diverse American population. Those interviews became the basis for a new HBO documentary, Unchained Memories.

Secretary of State Colin Powell prepares to share U.S. intelligence with the U.N. Security Council, in hopes of persuading members that Iraq is in defiance of U.N. weapons resolutions. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair urges European nations to support the U.S. position. NPR's Vicky O'Hara and NPR's Guy Raz report.

NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams reports on a new book by Harvard sociologist Katherine Newman about the lives of poor blacks and Hispanics in parts of Harlem. (A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife And Beyond in The Inner City, by Katherine Newman, is published by New Press: ISBN 156584615X)

Commentator Frank Deford delivers a "State of the Games" address in which no one is spared. He says traditional American sports have lost their charm amid a loss of ethics in the front office, and bad behavior by coaches, teams, umpires, players and fans.

Host Bob Edwards talks with NPR’s Jim Zarroli about the latest unemployment statistics, released today by the Labor department.

The disappearance of a mayor affiliated with Brazil's Workers Party alarms officials who feared a kidnapping. But it turned out to be a job for the vice squad.

At Sunday's NBA all-star game in Atlanta, the Western conference's starting center will be Yao Ming, the 7-foot, 5-inch Houston Rockets rookie from China. Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing that no Chinese athlete has ever reached such heights of fame or fortune.

As the United States moves closer to war with Iraq, educators are taking different approaches to teaching what it means to be a patriot. In the conclusion to Morning Edition's "Citizen Student" series on civics education, NPR's Margot Adler moderates a Justice Talking debate between scholars who disagree on how -- or if -- American schools should teach patriotism.

It's a grand old flag, it's a high-flying flag... and it's a loud flag. A man in Chesterfield, Mich., is at odds with neighbors and police. Why? The answer is blowing in the wind.