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School board members across the country are being intimidated and threatened. Now the National School Boards Association wants the federal government to step in. The group said in a recent letter to President Biden that acts of school board harassment and confrontations seem to be coordinated.

The online newsletter Popular Information has written about national groups targeting school boards.

NPR Ed correspondent Anya Kamenetz travelled to Gwinnett County, Georgia, where school board members have been targeted with threats. Read more in her story, What it’s like to be on the front lines of the school board culture war.

NPR White House Correspondent Tamara Keith has also reported on why school board elections will be an early test of what issues motivate voters.

Anya and Tamara recently discussed their reporting on school boards on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

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This episode is from our friends at Wisdom From The Top.

From the creator of How I Built This, host Guy Raz invites you to listen in as he talks to leadership experts and the visionary leaders of some of the world’s biggest brands. Along the way, you’ll hear accounts of crisis, failure, turnaround, and triumph, as the leaders reveal their secrets on their way to the top. These are stories that didn’t make it into their company bios, and valuable lessons for anyone trying to make it in business.

In this episode: As a child growing up in Ibadan, Nigeria, Dara Treseder was often told to get her head out of the clouds. But her mother encouraged her to dream big and to follow her ambition if it would lead her to contentment. For Treseder, that meant moving across the world to attend both Harvard and Stanford, and chasing a deeply-held desire to make a positive impact on the world. Her career in marketing began with stints at Apple and Goldman Sachs, then, in 2020, she became SVP, Head of Global Marketing and Communications at Peloton. Today, she is one of the most influential marketing leaders of her generation.

Listen to more Wisdom From The Top via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

A record 4.3 million workers in America quit their jobs in August.

Anthony Klotz coined this ongoing phenomenon “The Great Resignation.”

Klotz is an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University.

In part, he says, the pandemic has made workers reevaluate what they are actually getting out of their jobs.

“During the pandemic, because there was a lot of death and illness and lockdowns, we really had the time and the motivation to sit back and say, do I like the trajectory of my life? Am I pursuing a life that brings me well-being?” Klotz said.

Employers are also having to rethink what their employees really need.

NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with Laszlo Bock, co-founder and CEO of the human resources company Humu, about the basic human need for respect.

“You know, in the pandemic, people have talked a lot about essential workers, but we actually treat them as essential jobs,” said Bock. “We treat the workers as quite replaceable.”

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Last week the White House announced a plan to help move the port of Los Angeles into 24/7 operating status. But that will only “open the gates” of the clogged global supply chain, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told NPR on the NPR Politics Podcast.

Another crucial supply chain link is the trucking industry, which is short tens of thousands of drivers. Bruce Basada, President of the Diesel Driving Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana, explains why.

The clogged supply chain is leading to delays and shortage on all kinds of products. NPR coverage in this episode includes excerpts from Scott Horsley‘s report on a shortage of glass bottles, Petra Mayer‘s story on the slowdown in book production, and Alina Selyukh‘s look at shipping delays for children’s toys. Special thanks to Scott, Petra, and Alina for editing help on this episode.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Since 2016, a number of U.S. diplomats and federal employees have reported symptoms of a mysterious illness, the so-called Havana Syndrome.

The list of symptoms include hearing loud sounds, nausea fatigue, and dizzying migraines, among others.

The cause of this mystery illness is a source of curiosity, but it remains unknown.

Last year the State Department commissioned a study by the National Academies of Sciences for researchers to investigate Havana Syndrome.

NPR’s Sarah McCammon spoke to Dr. David Relman, a Stanford professor who headed the investigation.

One possible cause their group came to was a form of microwave radiation that occurs in a pulsed or intermittent form.

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Colin Powell’s life was marked by public service, first as a soldier in Vietnam and then eventually as President George W. Bush’s secretary of state. By that time he had already held many prominent positions in government, including national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the first African American to hold each of these roles.

But Powell’s story will always be entwined with the Iraq War. Although he argued against the invasion in private White House meetings, he did see it through. And he famously defended the strategy on a national stage before the United Nations.

NPR National Correspondent Don Gonyea reports on Powell’s enormous and complicated legacy.

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One of the killings that sparked racial justice protests last year is again in the national spotlight, with a trial that begins this week in Brunswick, Ga. Three white men are accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man shot and killed as he was jogging down a residential street.

NPR correspondent Debbie Elliott reports on the defendants’ expected arguments and the evidence stacked against them in a trial that serves as yet another test case for racial justice.

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After the protests last year, we heard the phrase “racial reckoning” a lot, as some groups of people struggled to catch up with what’s just been reality for many others. On this episode of NPR’s new Book of the Day podcast, we’ve got two books that might help you reckon with that reckoning, in two different ways: Traci Todd and illustrator Christian Robinson’s bright and powerful picture book biography Nina: A Story of Nina Simone and poet Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation, in which she puts together poetry, essays and images to bring readers into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about race.

Listen to NPR’s Book of the Day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.

Large parts of the West have been hot and dry for so long that reservoirs are running low and some communities are mandating conservation. California is talking about a statewide mandate, too. Meanwhile, farmers are preparing to flood their fields to replenish aquifers, while ranchers are selling off parts of their herds and worried about feeding the rest.

NPR’s Dan Charles reports from California and NPR’s Kirk Siegler reports from North Dakota.

Also in this episode: water rights lawyer Christine Klein, who originally spoke to NPR’s daily economics podcast The Indicator from Planet Money, in one of a series of episodes on the drought and the economy. Listen to more of The Indicator via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

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Patricia Maginnis, who was 93 when she died on August 30, may have been the first person to publicly call for abortion to be completely decriminalized in America. Despite her insistence on direct action on abortion-rights at a time when many were uncomfortable even saying the word “abortion,” Maginnis is not a bold letter name of the movement. That may be because she didn’t seek the limelight and she cared more for action then self-presentation.

Guests include Lili Loofborow, who profiled Maginnis for Slate; Professor Leslie J. Regan, who wrote the book When Abortion Was a Crime; and the artist Andrea Bowers whose video piece, Letters to An Army of Three recreated the messages people would send Maginnis when they were desperate to access abortion services.

Special thanks to the Schlesinger Library, where the 1975 oral history of Pat Maginnis is housed.

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