Search results for

About 15 million Americans practice yoga, up nearly 30 percent in the last year, a new survey from Yoga Journal finds. Business booms for yoga-related studios and retail stores, including those selling sportswear, videotapes and accessories. Hear Rebecca Roberts.

Author Carol Shields has died at age 68 after a long battle with breast cancer. Shields was best known for her Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Stone Diaries. NPR's Neda Ulaby has a remembrance.

Baseball Hall-of-Famer Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, dies after a long illness. He was believed to be 79. Doby was named to seven straight All-Star teams in his 13-year career, most of it spent with the Cleveland Indians. He experienced discrimination both on and off the field, but in later years rarely displayed bitterness. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards.

Small ads in supermarket tabloids, comic books and magazines offered a chance at the big time in the music business. Thousands of would-be lyricists responded with their "song-poems" and their savings. NPR's Scott Simon reports on a new anthology of the results.

Representatives of a major donor to the Metropolitan Opera sue to recover millions of dollars they say the opera used against the philanthropist's wishes. At issue is a 2001 television broadcast of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde that featured a "nontraditional" set. Hear George Carpinello, a lawyer for the donor's estate.

Diana Abu-Jaber's book, Crescent, weaves fragrant cooking, romance and the horrors of Saddam Hussein into her novel of Middle-Eastern immigrants and exiles in Los Angeles. Read an excerpt from the novel.

Merriam-Webster releases the 11th edition of its Collegiate Dictionary, which includes new words such as "dot commer" and "headbanger." The Internet has made the biggest influence on the American language, both with the new words it has generated and the speed with which the public has adopted them. Hear John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster.

Bloggers -- or Web loggers -- have been sharing their most intimate thoughts and opinions on the Internet since the mid-1990s, mostly with text, links and photos. Now, increasingly they're adding their voices -- literally -- to their online diaries. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on the advent of audio blogs.

The Arabic-language television news network Al-Jazeera comes under fire from British and American military officials, as well as from some Arab viewers. Al-Jazeera is broadcasting graphic pictures of dead British and American soldiers and footage of American POWs being interrogated by Iraqis. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.

Paddy Keenan is an Irish musician descended from a long line of traveling pipers. In the 1970s, Keenan cofounded the influential group the Bothy Band. The group added driving rhythms to traditional Irish music. On the CD The Long Grazing Acre, Keenan plays the Irish bagpipes. Keenan discusses his music with NPR's Melissa Block.