On this Black Friday, Linda Wertheimer talks to branding expert Martin Lindstrom about the psychology of sales and the array of techniques retailers use to get people to shop.
NPR's Business News starts with rising computer prices. A component used to make computers has become more expensive. The reason why, is around the world in Southeast Asia. NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
A still from "I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!" which aired on ABC in 2001. Vince Guaraldi's rearrangements and originals for the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack became holiday perennials.
South African Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs, seen here in Johannesburg in 2009, resisted the impulse to take revenge on the bomber who cost him his right arm.
Sometimes in the life of a reporter, you meet a person so extraordinary, so interesting, that you want to share that experience with others. Such is the case with Albie Sachs, whom I met while on vacation in South Africa.
Sachs has led a remarkable life, moving from freedom fighter to founding father.
It wasn't long ago that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's rise to the top of the Republican field of presidential candidates was called "meteoric." In August, she won the Iowa straw poll. Now, she's polling in the single digits.
But Bachmann is plowing ahead with her campaign and this week she came out with a memoir, Core of Conviction. In it, she writes about her 28 children — five biological and 23 foster kids. She spent much of the 1990s as a stay-at-home mom.
Christine Eastus was a double major in English and chemistry with plans to go to medical school. Instead — to the chagrin of her parents — she became a teacher.
In the 1970s, she taught English at Greenhill School in Addison, Texas.
This weekend, Catholics may experience a little surprise when they attend Mass. The words and music are different, thanks to the first major change of the English-language Mass in more than 40 years.
For many practicing Catholics, this will be a major adjustment.
So on a recent Sunday, the Rev. Chester Snyder of St. Joseph's church in Mechanicsburg, Pa., did a trial run through the new liturgy with his parishioners.
T-shirts on display at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans in June. With the holidays approaching, campaigns and retailers are hawking plenty of political merchandise.
Credit cafepress.com
Retail website CafePress is tracking sales associated with the presidential candidates in its "election meter."
At NPR, we know a thing or two about promotional merchandise. After all, we invented the Nina Totin' Bag and the Carl Kasell Autograph Pillow. So, on this Black Friday, White House correspondent Scott Horsley presents the NPR guide to campaign swag.
Flies are attracted to glycerol, a chemical in beer produced during fermentation. Understanding more about the genes responsible for taste and smell in flies could help make powerful insect repellents.
Scientists in California think they've figure out why flies like beer. That may sound a bit trivial, but in fact it could lead to new ways of combating plant and animal pests.
That flies like beer is well known. "The attraction of flies to beer was first reported in the early 1920s," says Anupama Dahanukar. She's part of an inter-disciplinary program involving neuroscience and entomology at the University of California, Riverside. She's been studying how flies recognize chemicals, so answering the question of why flies like beer is actually quite relevant to her research.
Egyptian women join a mass protest in Cairo's Tahrir square on November 24, 2011, as members of Egypt's ruling military council rejected calls to step down immediately, saying it would amount to a 'betrayal' as anti-military protests entered their seventh day.
Egypt's military rulers rejected protester demands for them to step down immediately and said Thursday they would start the first round of parliamentary elections on time next week, despite serious unrest in Cairo and other cities.
The ruling military council insisted it is not the same as the old regime it replaced, but the generals appear to be on much the same path that doomed Hosni Mubarak nine months ago, responding to the current crisis by delivering speeches seen as arrogant, mixing concessions with threats and using brutal force.
