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JFK Assassination Reporter Tom Wicker Dies At 85

By Scott Simon

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

As a young reporter, Tom Wicker covered a beaver dam for the Sandhill, North Carolina Citizen. He went on to travel the world as a White House reporter and columnist for the New York Times and was in Dallas on November 22nd, 48 years ago this week when John F. Kennedy was shot. It was in a world before cell phones and text messages.

7:00 am

Sat November 26, 2011

Surviving Christmas Trees In Demand Down South

By editor

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This year's Christmas Grinch may be Mother Nature. The Associated Press reports that historic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma have killed thousands of evergreen trees in those states, including trees being grown for sale at Christmas. Karen Barfield joins us now. She runs the Tinsel Time Christmas Tree Farm with her husband in New Caney, Texas.

Mrs. Barfield, thanks for being with us.

KAREN BARFIELD: You're welcome.

SIMON: What's your farm look like now after the drought?

3:27 pm

Wed November 23, 2011

Singer-Songwriter Rosanne Cash Plays Not My Job

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It's tough to have a famous parent, really hard to go into the same business, and almost impossible to create a brilliant career in your own right ... but that's exactly what singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, has done.

3:24 pm

Wed November 23, 2011

'Style Rookie' Tavi Gevinson Plays Not My Job

Credit Courtesy Tavi Gevinson

By editor

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Tavi Gevinson's fashion blog, The Style Rookie, is a must-see Web destination. She's been invited to runway shows all over the world and has written for and been profiled in magazines like The New Yorker and French Vogue. Oh, and by the way, she started blogging at age 11 ... which was four years ago. Gevinson has now launched a new Web magazine, RookieMag.com.

3:21 pm

Wed November 23, 2011

Actor Jason Bateman Plays Not My Job

Credit Courtesy Jason Bateman

By editor

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Jason Bateman is that rarest of creatures: a former child star who seems sane and successful. He starred in many '70s and '80s sitcoms, and of course, the classic Teen Wolf Too. He went on to play the nice-guy lead in Arrested Development, and also appeared in the movies Hancock, Juno, Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up.

12:58 pm

Tue November 22, 2011

School Transforms Teens' Lives, One Pound At A Time

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Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Wellspring students do high steps on the tennis court. Exercise is paramount at Wellspring, and a little rain doesn't get in the way of outdoor activities.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Students do high steps on the tennis court. Exercise is paramount at Wellspring, and a little rain doesn't get in the way of outdoor activities.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Healthful dieting is more than half the battle. Every calorie and gram of fat is strictly monitored by the staff at Wellspring and carefully recorded by the students. Here, Savannah Davis finishes her dinner with broccoli.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Wellspring students wear pedometers and are required to take a minimum of 10,000 steps each day.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

A board in the cafeteria breaks down the calories and fat grams for each meal. A full salad bar is always offered.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Students aim to consume 1,200 to 1,400 calories per day, a dramatic change for most of them.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Jade Tapia, 14, cries as she says goodbye to her father just after arriving on the Wellspring campus in August. If students make enough progress in the first eight weeks, they earn the right to go home for the weekend or to go out to eat with their visiting families.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Academics are rigorous at Wellspring. Here, students sit in a math class on campus. With a maximum campus enrollment of 50 students, class size is generally very small.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Savannah Davis calculates her calorie and fat intake during a free moment.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Wellspring students go for a swim in the lake just before sunset.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Bethany Gomez (from left), Ana Pierdant, Rachel Fujiyoshi and Jessica Wiegel swap stories and paint fingernails in their dorm before lights out.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Savannah Davis (second from right) walks with her friends to the cafeteria. In the five years of its existence, Wellspring has earned a reputation for teaching overweight children to prefer healthful food and exercise.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Students walk through the scenic campus of Wellspring Academy, a boarding school for overweight children, located near Asheville, N.C. In addition to taking regular academic classes, students learn to control weight through a healthful diet, exercise and counseling.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Haley Humphrey, 15, of Athens, Ala., lost about 34 pounds at a Wellspring camp last summer.

Credit Travis Dove for NPR

Wellspring student Bethany Gomez, 16, arrived in August from her home in Galveston, Texas. She had already spent two months at Wellspring last year as well as six weeks at a Wellspring summer camp and had lost about 65 pounds. "I'm about halfway there," she says.

By Karen Grigsby Bates

Originally published on Wed August 1, 2012 6:04 pm

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First of two stories, which are part of an ongoing series on obesity in America. The first part begins in August as students start their weight-loss journey at Wellspring Academy, a boarding school in Brevard, N.C. The second checks in with the students a few months later.

6:00 am

Mon October 24, 2011

Bound Together: Breaking Those Toxic Family Ties

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Credit Pieter M. van Hattem

Amy Waldman was co-chief of the South Asia bureau of The New York Times. She is the author of the novel The Submission.

By Amy Waldman

I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee for its "restrained tenderness and laconic humor," which seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing.

I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I've recommended it again and again, and while I can't say it's entirely undiscovered — it won the 2010 IMPAC Dublin Award — no one I know ever seems to have heard of it.

8:51 am

Tue September 6, 2011

What's In Store: 3 Tales Of A Terrifying Future

Credit iStockphoto.com

By and

When I was a kid, I assumed that in the future things would get better and better until we were all driving flying cars and playing badminton with space aliens on top of 500-story buildings. Frankly, I kind of counted on this happening. But now I don't assume that we'll just keep going up anymore.

12:41 pm

Mon August 29, 2011

Furtwangler: A Complex German Operatic Composer

Credit Hulton Archive / Getty Images

German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwangler.

By Lloyd Schwartz

Wilhelm Furtwangler's name may be hard for Americans to pronounce, but the reason this great conductor is not so well-remembered here is that he chose to remain in Germany during the Second World War, though he was never a member of the Nazi Party, and he was completely exonerated by a postwar tribunal.

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