Month: July 2023

One of the most cutting-edge and controversial fields of biomedical research right now is the quest to create eggs and sperm in the lab for anyone with their own DNA. And now, private companies have jumped into the race to revolutionize the way humans reproduce.

In vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, would enable infertile women and men to have children with their own DNA instead of genes from the sperm and eggs of donors. It would also provide queer couples the opportunity to have children biologically related to both partners.

NPR health correspondent Rob Stein reports on the excitement and concerns this new technology has fueled.

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Carlos Alcaraz’s victory over Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final was the latest coronation of a tennis great from Spain.

NPR’s Rob Schmitz looks into how the country became such fertile ground for outstanding players.

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Since the 2024 Presidential election may ultimately be decided by a handful of votes in a handful of states, courting young voters will be key. Gen Z has been turning out in record numbers in recent midterms.

Often much of the political conversation focuses on young voters in and around big cities. But since young voters are so key for Democrats’ success, and rural voters are an essential bloc for Republicans, what young, rural voters think really matters.

Host Scott Detrow spoke with NPR’s Elena Moore and Xinema Bustillo, who talked to Gen Z voters in rural North Carolina.

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James Barber is scheduled to be executed on Thursday in Alabama, for the murder of Dorothy Epps in 2001. It’s the first execution since Governor Kay Ivey paused capital punishment in the state and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of death penalty protocols after the state failed to execute two inmates last year.

Host Scott Detrow speaks with The Atlantic’s Elizabeth Bruenig. She reported extensively on Alabama’s troubles with lethal injection last year. She says the state’s process is very opaque, and almost nothing of the review was made public.

Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert at Fordham Law School, says lethal injection problems are an issue all around the country.

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Six years ago when former Obama staffer Brian Wallach was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – ALS – a rare neurological disease that kills most people who contract it within a few years, he and his wife Sandra Abrevaya quickly got to work. They launched a non-profit advocacy group I am ALS and a battle to try and fight for increased funding and research that they hoped would lead to a cure for the disease.

Since then Wallach and Abrevaya have changed the face of medical advocacy in the country, helping secure legislation that President Biden signed in 2021 that funds $100 million worth of ALS initiatives each year.

NPR’s Juana Summers spent time with Wallach and Abrevaya to hear about their fight for a cure for ALS.

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As we confront the realities of a changing climate, a group of scientists says we’re living in a world of our very own making – a world altered by the burning of fossil fuels, the explosion of nuclear weapons, plastic pollution and environmental degradation. The scientists call it the Anthropocene. And they have identified a geological site in Canada they say best reflects this new epoch in Earth’s history.

We hear from NASA’s Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor Kate Calvin. Also, NPR’s Adrian Florido speaks with Francine McCarthy, a professor of Earth Sciences, who led a working group of scientists who identified Canada’s Crawford Lake as the best example of a place that demonstrates humanity’s impact on the planet.

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Baseball was once known for breaking racial barriers in the U.S. But now, Black representation in the major leagues is at its lowest level in decades.

This year, MLB did something to try and change that, by staging the first annual HBCU Swingman Classic. It’s an opportunity for players from historically Black colleges and universities to play in front of scouts and executives on a national stage.

NPR’s Juana Summers reports from Seattle on MLB’s efforts to reverse the decline and recruit Black American players.

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Since the war began, military aid from the US to Ukraine has largely received bipartisan report. But a new planned 800 million dollar package has split Democrats and also riled up Human Rights Groups because of one weapon included in the package — cluster bombs.

More than a hundred countries, including allies of the US, have banned use of the weapon, which releases a large number of bomblets over a wide area. Unexploded bomblets pose a danger to civilians. The Biden administration is defending the decision, citing Ukraine’s desperate need for ammunition.

To get a sense of the human cost of cluster bomb use during wartime, we take a look at Laos. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War. Host Mary Louise Kelly discusses this with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lewis Simons, who reported from Asia and the Middle East for decades.

The U.S. has the worst maternal mortality rate of high-income countries globally, and the numbers have only grown.

According to a new study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association – maternal death rates remain the highest among Black women, and those high rates have more than doubled over the last twenty years.

When compared to white women, Black women are more than twice as likely to experience severe pregnancy-related complications, and nearly three times as likely to die. And that increased rate of death has remained about the same since the U.S. began tracking maternal mortality rates nationally — in the 1930s.

We trace the roots of these health disparities back to the 18th century to examine how racism influenced science and medicine – and contributed to medical stereotypes about Black people that still exist today.

And NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Karen Sheffield-Abdullah, a nurse midwife and professor of nursing at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, about how to improve maternal health outcomes for Black women.

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Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Bettie Davis, Clark Gable. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, which existed roughly from the 1910s and 20’s into the early 1960s, these actors weren’t just stars…

They were in the words of NPR’s movie critic Bob Mondello “American royalty”.

But in an age of Disney and Marvel, the movie star appears to have been eclipsed by the franchises in which they appear.

NPR critics Mondello and Aisha Harris breakdown the decline and seemingly disappearance of the classic movie star and what that means for Hollywood.

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