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Europe
5:01 am
Mon December 5, 2011

Merkel, Sarkozy Meet Ahead Of Brussels Summit

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Originally published on Mon December 5, 2011 1:04 pm

As European leaders prepare for yet another "last-ditch" effort to save the euro at a summit in Brussels, the leaders of the two eurozone powerhouses, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meet in Paris. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley talks about their meeting.

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Shots - Health Blog
4:16 am
Mon December 5, 2011

What's Behind A Temper Tantrum? Scientists Deconstruct The Screams

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Children's temper tantrums are widely seen as many things: the cause of profound helplessness among parents; a source of dread for airline passengers stuck next to a young family; a nightmare for teachers. But until recently, they had not been considered a legitimate subject for science.

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Author Interviews
3:56 am
Mon December 5, 2011

'Man Seeks God,' Finds Wayne Of Staten Island

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Eric Weiner is a former NPR correspondent and also the author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.
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By NPR Staff

In Eric Weiner's newest book, Man Seeks God, the former NPR foreign correspondent heads around the world on a humorous and thoughtful quest for spirituality.

It seems like a logical next step from his last book, the best-selling Geography of Bliss, an account of his hunt for happiness.

Weiner tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that he was inspired to up the ante this time and search for God after severe abdominal pains landed him in a hospital emergency room.

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Animals
3:54 am
Mon December 5, 2011

The Deep-Sea Find That Changed Biology

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Credit Courtesy of Kathy Crane
Beneath 8,200 feet of water, the Alvin submarine scopes out the Pacific's seafloor in the 1970s. The geologists aboard weren't searching for life — they were on the hunt for hot spots and undersea thermal vents.
Credit Photo by Emory Kristof / National Geographic/Getty Images
The Alvin, seen here in the 1970s nestled safely aboard its mother ship, Lulu, helped revolutionize ocean science. Built in 1964, the sub could dive nearly three miles deep, making it possible for humans to explore the seafloor. Dives were typically seven to nine hours long.
Credit Melissa Forsyth / NPR
Crane and her colleagues called the undersea vent and thriving ecosystem "Garden of Eden" — as she noted in her notebook. The deep sea holds incredibly diverse life forms, Crane says. On "probably every single submersible dive that goes into the ocean, the people in it are probably looking at species of life nobody's ever seen before," she says.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
The worms were initially preserved onboard the boat in vodka — it was the only preservative the scientists had, Crane says, because they weren't expecting to find life on the seafloor. Today, specimens of the worms are kept in jars of formaldehyde at the Smithsonian Institution near Washington, D.C.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Kristian Fauchald, the Smithsonian's curator of worms, says the way these worms lived — without light or much oxygen, feeding on chemicals and surviving underwater on the heat of the planet — might be one way the first creatures on Earth lived.
Credit Photo by Emory Kristof / National Geographic/Getty Images
In the mid-1970s, the deep sea was believed to be too barren to support life. Then scientists stumbled upon tangles of long, slender, red-tipped worms that rose from the rocks like a field of flowers.
Credit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Worms named Riftia pachyptila were brought up from the deep-sea ocean floor. Some of the wors were more than 6 feet long.
Credit Woods Hole Oceanographic Instution
Researchers named the area where they found the tubeworms the "Garden of Eden" because of the abundant life around the deep-sea vents.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 10:14 am

In 1977, a small crew of oceanographers traveled to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and stumbled across a brand new form of life. The discovery was so unusual, it turned biology on its head and brought into question much of what scientists thought they knew about where life can form and what it needs in order to survive.

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Food
3:51 am
Mon December 5, 2011

Party At Martha's: Stewart's Tips For 'Entertaining'

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In the early 1980s, Martha Stewart was working as a caterer and couldn't find a good book on entertaining — so she wrote her own. Entertaining, her first book, was published in 1982. Her 75th book, Martha's Entertaining, was released in October.
Credit Frederic Lagrange / Clarkson Potter/Random House
Stewart made this nativity scene during her 2004 incarceration at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.
Credit Frederic Lagrange / Clarkson Potter/Random House
The aftermath of Stewart's burgundy dinner is documented in Martha's Entertaining. Click here to see a Q&A about entertaining on The Martha Stewart Show.
Credit Anna Williams / Clarkson Potter/Random House
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Nearly 30 years ago — long before she had her own TV show or magazine or brand — Martha Stewart wrote her very first book, Entertaining.

"The first book really was kind of an entertaining textbook for the homemaker," Stewart tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "I couldn't find a good book about entertaining in 1982 and neither could my friend, so I decided to write it."

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