Search results for

John McCarthy, the computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, died Monday at age 84. Weekend Edition's math guy Keith Devlin has this remembrance.

Halloween has become big business, earning at least $7 billion annually for those who make their living trying to scare us. Haunted houses, of course, are one of the biggest players, and NPR's Allison Keyes reports on the challenges of competing for our souls.

Phil Pressel designed film cameras for a U.S. spy satellite program that was declassified last month after 46 years. His cameras captured Soviet missile sites and enabled President Nixon to sign an arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.

A suicide bomb in Kabul Saturday killed a dozen Americans, making this the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan's capital since the war began a decade ago. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz gets the latest from reporter Rod Nordland of the New York Times.

The Congressional Budget Office released a study this week that revealed a huge shift in the nation's wealth distribution. The top 1 percent of the country's earners more than doubled their take of the nation's wealth in just 30 years. James Fallows, national correspondent with The Atlantic, joins weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz to discuss that story and others from the past week.

NPR has been reporting on the country's tough economic times for years, but in November, two reporters take the story on the road. Starting this week, correspondents Debbie Elliott and Richard Gonzales begin reporting for the NPR series Hard Times: A Journey Across America..

Herman Cain's tax plan has helped boost him to the top of the Republican presidential field. But talking taxes in New Hampshire — the first state on the primary calendar and one with no sales or income tax — has long been considered taboo.

European leaders have a big task ahead of them. They have to begin fleshing out that big debt plan unveiled to so much fanfare in Brussels this week. The plan represents the most comprehensive effort so far to resolve Europe's grinding debt problems, but some issues may require a global effort to solve.

The New York Times' pay wall was seen as a risky move at the time, but the Gray Lady's third-quarter profit reports are in, and the results are better than expected. The paper's profits are up, and the Times has seen a boost in digital subscribers.

Two weeks ago, Kenya sent forces across the border to chase down al-Shabaab militants. The rising hostilities come as the region is dealing with a crippling drought and famine. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton joins host Audie Cornish to talk about the situation on the Horn of Africa.