For many kids, middle school is a fraught time. Friendships are forged and broken; bodies begin to change in sometimes uncomfortable ways. For Zenobia July, starting middle school is far more complicated than it is for most of her peers.

For much of human history, human beings have waged war against each other. In the new novel by Marko Kloos, that tendency to wage war remains as strong as ever more than a thousand years into the future. Aftershocks is an adventure story as well as a portrait of a technologically-advanced civilization struggling to maintain the peace after a devastating war. Kloos spoke with NHPR’s Peter Biello.

Novelist Alex Myers came out as transgender in the mid-90s, when society's understanding of what it means to be transgender was less clear than it is today.

When New Hampshire author John Brighton was six years old, his family bought a lakeside farm in Washington, a small town in New Hampshire's Sullivan County.

When Cindy Copeland was in seventh grade in the early 1970s, an English teacher encouraged her to become a writer. Shortly after that, the Keene resident landed an internship as a “cub reporter” with a local journalist, following her to public meetings and learning how question people powerful people—most of them men. And Cindy did all this while navigating the tricky minefield of fraught friendships, cliques, and bullying that so often characterize life in junior high.

Alexandria Peary is New Hampshire’s new poet laureate, and she’s ramping up her work as the state’s official advocate for poetry and the literary arts more broadly. As part of her work as poet laureate, she’s been reading work sent to her by New Hampshire poets.

One day, while hiking in the Georgia mountains, a couple finds the bones of a human body buried many years ago. The discovery prompts a search for answers: why was this person killed? Who did it? And how many more bodies are hidden in these hills?

Prof. Howard Nusbaum explains audio phenomenon

Prof. W.J.T. Mitchell writes book on cultural depictions of dinosaurs

When the album was released he wrote: "Our perceptions of who we are as human beings, because of technology and machines, are falling apart. We're living at a breaking point, and a lot of the themes on the album are talking about these fault lines."

In 60 seconds, the commercial showcases a medley of horror film tropes, including a maniacal doll that presumably kills a group of young people whenever they play a catchy pop song.

Alarmed by the growing popularity of rap among Russian youth, President Vladimir Putin wants cultural leaders to devise a means of controlling, rather than banning, the popular music.

"O, Colored Earth" by Minnesota composer Steven Heitzeg was performed by the Minneapolis Youth Chorus during the inauguration ceremony Monday at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul.

He'll be playing a record release show Friday night at Icehouse in Minneapolis.

Anything can happen in live theater, and audience members seeing "Beautiful," the life story of Carole King, got a surprise when King appeared in the role of herself to celebrate the show's fifth anniversary on Broadway.

"'The Beautiful Ones' is the deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know: the real-time story of a kid absorbing the world around him and creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and the fame that would come to define him," Random House announced.

The Prince estate has announced plans to release Originals, another album of previously unreleased tracks -- many of which were hits for other artists -- he recorded between 1981 and 1991.

Eleven members of the Minnesota Orchestra will join 25 young U.S. musicians in Cuba for the inaugural tour of an organization inspired by the 2015 Minnesota Orchestra visit to Havana.

Yes, music can help Alzheimer's patients; but it can help the rest of us, too.

An Atlanta rapper's take on country music has inspired a mostly nonverbal Minnesota boy with autism to sing.

Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, nicknamed "The Mother Church of Country Music," has never hosted a hip-hop show. After 125 years, Wu-Tang Clan will be the first rap act to headline at the venue.

Shut Up and Take My Money created a rather self-explanatory Dogs Pooping in Beautiful Places" 2025 calendar.

Since the start of the #MeToo movement, many accused abusers have filed defamation charges against their accusers in retaliation, advocates say. Law professor Victoria Burke wants to change that.

Black and Latino voters moved toward Republican Donald Trump in this year's presidential election, and some of the biggest shifts were among men under age 45, and that helped expand his margin over Democrat Kamala Harris. 

Recounts are expected in two Minnesota House races. The election results could determine control of that legislative body. The upcoming recounts are expected soon and come after initial ballot totals changed when election officials discovered technical glitches.

It's auction day for Alex Jones' Infowars. The Infowars studio and most other assets of the conspiracy theorist's company are expected to be sold off Wednesday. 

In her final appearance, Laura Knoy is on the other side of The Exchange mic, as Peter Biello interviews her about her 25 years as host. We discuss the show's origins, moments that have stood out over the years, and hear her observations on how New Hampshire has changed.

The Exchange presents a special broadcast of Writers on a New England Stage with economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

State set to gauge budget impact of virus

City officials said the $40 million program will help alleviate medical costs for debt-strapped residents.

Muslim vigilante groups are working with federal authorities to lure young people into sharing blasphemous content on social media in order to put them behind bars, according to an investigation by Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights

The Africa Mission Association is on a mission to help churches in Africa establish mission associations in all 54 countries from the current seven in the continent.

Fulani herdsmen killed six Christians on Friday and Saturday in Benue state, Nigeria, after slaughtering 15 Christians in a nearby village two days earlier, sources said.

Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service claims that the murder of an American missionary was orchestrated by his wife in a plot involving an alleged illicit romance and financial promises. Authorities say that Jackie Shroyer, 44, enlisted the help of three Angolan men to kill her husband, Beau Shroyer, in a remote part of the country.

A British man has been found guilty of sexual assault and other crimes for tricking a pregnant woman into drinking a liquid that contained abortion drugs to induce a miscarriage, unbeknownst to the victim.

Tongues-talking movie-mogul Tyler Perry, whose Christian values have been criticized by fans over the years, has come under scrutiny again after he was caught on video raining fake money on a stripper at R&B singer Usher’s Past Present Future Tour in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday.

Grammy Award-winning artist Lauren Daigle has written and recorded a powerful end-title track for the new film “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” declaring obedience to God’s calling, even in the face of death. 

Dallas Jenkins, creator of "The Chosen," shares how his new film, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," brings the Gospel story to a mainstream audience.

We focus on environmental news on this edition of the Weekly New Hampshire News Roundup. We talk about climate issues on the 2020 campaign trail after the departure of Jay Inslee, and compare the climate plans offered by other Democratic candidates. Following protests at the statehouse over the Merrimack Station coal plant, we discuss the future of fossil fuel generators in the state. Plus, the latest environmental vetoes and bill signings from Governor Chris Sununu. Annie Ropeik, NHPR's environment and energy reporter, is guest host. GUESTS: Sam Evans-Brown - host of NHPR's, Outside/In, our show about the natural world and how we use it. We discuss the 2020 candidates and their climate plans with Leah Stokes , Assistant Professor of Climate Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lila Kohrman-Glaser , co-director of 350 NH Action, joins us to talk about protesting the 440-megawatt Merrimack Station at the statehouse. Bay Road in Newmarket is currently closed for

To kick off NHPR's new reporting project By Degrees , we're unpacking the basics of how climate change is already affecting life in New Hampshire, and how the state is contributing to and responding to the problem. Rachel Cleetus is the policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, based in Massachusetts.

Peanut the squirrel’s seizure and euthanization by New York officials has sparked blowback from President Donald Trump’s running mate and various public figures, with the deceased pet now serving as the inspiration for a new law intended to improve animal rights. 

Pastor John-Paul Miller is expected to appear in a Myrtle Beach court Thursday for a bond hearing after he was arrested and charged a day earlier with third-degree assault months after the suicide of his wife, Mica Miller.

A GoFundMe campaign seeking to help the family of murdered missionary Beau Shroyer is hoping to raise at least $15,000 to repatriate his body to the U.S. and help his five children navigate “unimaginable loss and uncertainty” as his wife, Jackie Shroyer, faces charges in Angola for allegedly masterminding a murder plot. 

Pastor and bestselling author Voddie T. Baucham announced Monday that he and his family will be returning to his native United States after a decade living abroad in Lusaka, Zambia.

The U.S. State Department reportedly offered a therapy session and mental health services for employees distressed by President-elect Donald Trump's recent electoral victory last week, including what one source described as a "cry session."

Cecily Nicholson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at University of British Columbia. Nicholson is the author of four poetry books, Triage, From the Poplars, Wayside Sang, and Harrowings, and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (2015) and the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry (2018). She is the first honouree of the Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading award from the Poetry in Canada Society (2023) and 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley.Ana María Ochoa Gautier is Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, and faculty member at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. Her recent book, Aurality, Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Duke University Press, 2014) was awarded the Alan Merriam Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology. She is also the author of Músicas locales en tiempos de globalización (Buenos Aires: Norma 2003) and Entre los Deseos y los Derechos: Un Ensayo Crítico sobre Políticas Culturales (Bogotá: Ministerio de cultura, 2003). She writes on music and cultural policy, forced silence and armed conflict, and genealogies of listening and sound in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current projects explore the bioacoustics of life and death in colonial histories of the Americas. She has been a Distinguished Greenleaf Scholar in Residence at Tulane University (2016) and a Guggenheim Fellow (2007-2008). She has served on the advisory boards of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, the Démos project at the Cité de la Musique - Philharmonie de Paris, and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She will be a visiting professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Music in Spring 2025.Tom McEnaney is Associate Professor in the departments of Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese, and the Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media. His research concerns the intersection of literature, sound technology, and politics. He is the author of many articles and the book Acoustic Properties: Radio, Narrative, and the New Neighborhood of the Americas. His new book, with Judith Peraino, will be out in August and is titled We’re Having Much More Fun: Punk Archives for the Present from CBGB to Gilman and Beyond. The 2024/25 series includes: Rizvana Bradley (Film & Media), Asma Kazmi (Art Practice/BCNM), Tehmina Khan (College Writing Program), Roshanak Kheshti (TDPS), SanSan Kwan (TDPS), Fae Myenne Ng (Ethnic Studies), Cecily Nicholson (English), Ana María Ochoa Gautier (Music), Andy Shanken (Architecture/Art History), and Stephanie Syjuco (Art Practice).

Max Abner and Dahlia Nayar, Ph.D. candidates in performance studies, will present their in-progress dissertation research.Max Abner is a PhD candidate, musician, and curator who hails from Louisville, KY, has deep roots in Chicago, and is currently based in Oakland. Working from an anti-colonial settler positionality, he draws together discourses from sound studies, Indigenous studies, and critical theory to approach what he calls settler sound, a concept that accounts for the ways in which contested relations to colonized land play out in aural aesthetics. His dissertation attends to settler sound in the Bay Area experimental music/sound art scene. He has essays set for publication in Revealing Posthuman Encounters in Performance (Routledge) and Power in Listening: The Sound Out! Reader (NYU Press), his recorded curations can be heard on his music label Pontac Publications, and his live performance curations can be experienced at Beauty Supply Arts in Oakland. Dahlia Nayar’s project studies embodied manifestations of Quiet in multiple mediums of minoritarian performance. Her study curates a constellation of contemporary artists working in dance, theater, sound, and visual art with an attention to how Quiet emerges through bodies in relation to layered contexts and multiple subjectivities. She proposes that, as a minoritarian aesthetic, Quiet activates an ephemeral commons through resonance and attunement that allows expansive possibilities of relationality. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dahlia toured nationally and internationally as a choreographer, performer, and multimedia artist. She is a recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Choreography, and the National Dance Project Touring Award.

The Department of Music holds an annual concerto audition in the fall semester, open to current members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and to music majors performing on non-orchestral instruments (i.e. piano, voice, instruments from other cultures). Free and open to the publicInformation for Applicants: The deadline to submit application forms is Wednesday, November 6, 4pm in the Music Department office, 104 Morrison Hall. The application form can be found here(PDF file). Copies of the form are also available in 104 Morrison Hall. The audition jury is made up of Music Department faculty and outside professionals. Winner/s will be chosen to perform their concerto with the symphony, usually by the end of the next calendar school year.General audition rules:Applicants performing on standard orchestral instruments must be current members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. The auditions are also open to Music majors who perform on non-orchestral instruments including piano, voice, guitar, instruments from other cultures, etc. Applicants must currently be studying privately with department faculty. Concerti for single and multiple soloists, arias, concert songs, song cycles are all permitted. Repertoire must be suitable for the normal symphony orchestra, otherwise there is no restriction on style, length or period. The normal audition duration is 10-12 minutes at the jury panel’s discretion. Applicants are required to arrange for their own piano accompanist to play the orchestral reductions at the audition; the accompanist’s name must be included in the application. In cases of difficulty finding or affording an accompanist, the music department will provide one – this service includes ONE rehearsal the week of the audition and possible additional time for warm-up on the day of the audition. Applicants may present excerpts of their choice (which should be representative of the whole work), but must be prepared to play any part of the entire work if asked to do so by the panel. Memorization is preferred but not mandatory. Lengthy extended orchestral tuttis should be omitted during the audition. The jury panel reserves the right to choose several winners or none. Winner(s) must be prepared to attend all rehearsals and performances as arranged with the conductor. Safety The UC Berkeley Department of Music is committed to the health and safety of our students, staff, and patrons. Measures to protect concertgoers and musicians will be informed by state, local, and UC Berkeley Public Health policies and are subject to change.Accessibility If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact the Hertz Hall Manager at 510-642-4864 or HertzHallMgr@berkeley.edu. with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event. Facebook: @ucbmusicdept Instagram: @ucberkeleymusic  Twitter/X: @ucbmusicdept Youtube: Berkeley Music YouTube channel

The woman who journalistically captured a burgeoning epidemic of self-harm among teen girls suddenly identifying as transgender has confronted yet another colossal behemoth: the mental health industry.

Marianne Williamson has written six New York Times best sellers, including The Age Of Miracles and A Return To Love. Known in some circles as Hollywood's favorite self-help guru, we just had to find out what the process for a spiritual author entails. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices