Search results for

When does a story about science become science fiction? Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss and theoretical physicist Brian Greene discuss how to spin a yarn about string theory or the Big Bang, without hyping the science. And novelist Ian McEwan, whose books touch on neurosurgery and quantum field theory, talks about what science offers to fiction.

Coal accounts for much of the world's energy supply, but the United States has seen a decline in coal production. The natural gas industry is booming in the U.S. and many in coal country fear for the future of their industry and their livelihood.

A year after Hurricane Sandy, recovery efforts are still ongoing, and questions remain about how to rebuild and prepare the coastlines for the next storm. A group of experts discusses rebuilding and protective options — from sea walls to "oyster-tecture" — and considers calls for a "managed retreat" from the shore.

Heat has killed hundreds of workers in the U.S., many in construction or agriculture, an investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations found. Federal standards might have prevented them.

New York Times' Charlie Savage visited the prison last month. He tells Fresh Air that it is decaying and exorbitantly expensive, but still holds 149 detainees who can't be sent anywhere else.

Twenty-three years after a brazen theft, the mystery still divides a tiny sect known as the Samaritans. Here's the story of the international hunt to bring the manuscripts home.

"Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness," he says. "But it does require us to act in our time."

DOGE recently gained high-level access to a database that controls government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the U.S.

After deadly 2009 wildfires, authorities offered to buy property to encourage people to move. Few accepted. The questions raised by Australia's experience are freshly urgent after its latest fires.

The Northwest is getting into the lucrative maple syrup industry. Farmers and researchers in Washington state are beginning to tap the sweet potential of the much-maligned bigleaf maple tree.