All Things Considered

Nearly 12 percent of Americans claim some Irish ancestry. Even President Obama has a little Irish in him. But we've got nothing on polar bears.

According to a study in the journal Current Biology, every polar bear alive today can trace its ancestry to one mama bear that lived in Ireland during the last Ice Age. And what's more, she wasn't even a polar bear: She was a brown bear.

In the 1930s, L. Ron Hubbard was a pulp fiction writer, best known for his fantasy and science fiction stories. But after an attempt at Hollywood screenwriting, Hubbard decided to go a different route.

In 1950, he published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, a self-help book that became a bestseller and launched a new religion.

That religion was Scientology, and six decades since it began, much is still unclear about the church, its history and its current leader, David Miscavige, who took over shortly after Hubbard's death.

The news may bring us stories of bankrupt symphony orchestras, floundering opera companies and shuttered record stores, but musicians keep making excellent recordings, often releasing them on small labels. That's the thread running through the broad range of classical albums that NPR Music's Tom Huizenga spins for Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. The independent, Paris-based Zig Zag Territories label has released a sparkling new recording of Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos with the innovative original instruments band Anima Eterna.

Although House Speaker John Boehner walked away from debt ceiling negotiations with President Obama Friday night, the two sat down with other congressional leaders again Saturday in another attempt to work out a plan to raise the debt limit. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with host Guy Raz from the White House about how much progress they did, or didn't, make.

The No. 1 song in America right now is "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO. It's also hit No. 1 in Denmark, New Zealand, Mexico, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Brazil, the UK ... you get the idea. The duo behind LMFAO — the aformentioned party rockers — are Stefan and Skyler Gordy. Respectively, they are the son and grandson of the legendary Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records. (For the record: The two are uncle and nephew, not father and son.)

Michele Norris talks to Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, about the breakdown of the debt talks.

Update, July 26: This story from Planet Money's Alex Blumberg and NPR's Laura Sydell aired this weekend on This American Life. (Check out TAL's "Ways to Listen" page to find how you can hear the story.) A shorter version of the piece is also airing today on All Things Considered. Here's the story.

Michele Norris talks to NPR's Scott Horsley and David Welna about President Obama's announcement that Republican House Speaker John Boehner withdrew from the debt talks.

Michele Norris speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of the New York Times.

Michele Norris talks to NPR's David Welna and Ron Elving.

President Obama announced that Republican House Speaker John Boehner is walking away from talks to raise the debt ceiling. Michele Norris talks to NPR's Ari Shapiro for more.

Michele Norris talks to NPR's Ron Elving about President Obama's announcement.

The secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell will not harm military readiness. That's a crucial step that will lead to the end of the law that barred homosexuals from serving openly in the United States military. Michele Norris talks to NPR's Rachel Martin, who has the latest from the Pentagon.

At 13, Joss Stone already sounded like a veteran soul singer. Now 24, Stone actually is a veteran of the music business — and for the first time, she's taken control of her sound.

It may be an unassuming piece of fabric, but it has woven itself prominently into American life.

If you've seen a photo of a newborn baby recently, you've probably laid eyes on it.

We're talking about a white flannel blanket with pink and blue stripes that is used in hospital delivery rooms across the country. It's one of the first things to touch the skin of countless babies every year.

Robert Siegel and Michele Norris read letters from listeners about a discussion with NFL star Michael Vick.

The new film Another Earth stars Brit Marling as a woman who watches a duplicate planet hover beside ours as she struggles to escape from her own devastating past. But Marling doesn't only star in (and, some say, steal) the film — she also co-wrote and co-produced it with director Mike Cahill.

Po Bronson is the co-author of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.

I'm not sure why my friend Todd had genuine AMF white bowling pins at his apartment. But I know the yellow metal Tonka dumpster was a present from him for my newborn son, Luke, something to grow into in a year or so.

NFL team owners have approved a tentative deal that would end the lockout of the players. Michele Norris talks with NPR's Mike Pesca.

When Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published her novel The Yearling in 1938, it was an almost instant success, winning her a legion of readers as well as the Pulitzer Prize. MGM bought the film rights to the movie, and its executives agreed with Rawlings that the movie had to be filmed on location — in a densely wooded and sparsely populated part of Florida known as the "Big Scrub."

Michele Norris talks about an interview that President Obama did with NPR's Michel Martin.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton talks with Michele Norris from the town of Dadaab on the Kenya-Somali border, which is the destination point for thousands of Somali refugees fleeing famine.

Michele Norris speaks with Dorien Schroeder, a team leader with Ocean's Research, who lived a Jaws-like moment when a great white jumped on deck of her team's research boat after they threw fish into the water to lure sharks closer. This all happened off the coast of South Africa.

Schroeder says the shark was three meters and it managed to curl up in the back part of the board, seemingly unharmed.

The research team released the shark back in the water and it swam away.

Imagine not being allowed to go outside, have a shower or drink cold water for an entire month. It might sound like a kind of house arrest. But every year tens of millions of Chinese women submit to this willingly. This is the traditional Chinese practice of confinement during the month after childbirth, with some modern twists.

Baby Momo and his mother, Wu Lili, haven't left the three rooms of an apartment in Beijing for 29 days now. It's the last day of their traditional 30-day confinement period.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Commentator Andrei Codrescu has been reading some biographies this summer and he is not happy.

Mr. ANDREI CODRESCU (Author, "Whatever Gets You through the Night"): I picked up a biography of Kay Boyle by Joan Mellen. I met Kay in San Francisco in the '70s, a formidable grand dame with her regal presence and a radical temperament.

Michele Norris speaks with Kim Kristensen, a nurse at Independent Living in Madison, Wis., about looking after the elderly in the heat. In the Midwest, a "heat dome" has settled over the area. It started three days ago and is slowly moving eastward.

Transcript

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Michele Bachmann is feeling both the glow and the heat of the national spotlight this week. The GOP candidate is surging in national polls, gaining on frontrunner Mitt Romney. But that good news has been overshadowed to some degree by a series of reports about chronic migraine attacks that are so severe that they have lead to hospitalization.

President Obama is meeting with the eight top leaders of the two parties in Congress, making the White House the focus of negotiations one day after six senators made a stab at a bipartisan "grand bargain." Michele Norris talks to NPR's Mara Liasson.

Robert Siegel talks with William Wheaton, a professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the home mortgage interest deduction. It's one of the tax breaks being considered for reform under a budget plan proposed by a bipartisan group of senators known as the "Gang of Six."

A plan put forth by a group of senators known as the "Gang of Six" looks like it could be a solution to solving the nation's impending debt ceiling problem. Among the ideas in the plan is trimming the deficit by changing how the country calculates inflation through using something called a "chained consumer price index." Michele Norris speaks with Robert Greenstein, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy about how this change will work.