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In this latest installment of our series, Lost and Found Sound, producer Brent Runyon recalls leaning how his father taught him how to make a loon call, with tape of the teaching session. In Brent's family, his father could do the call, his grandfather knew how to, Brent's brother can do it, but Brent can't and he doesn't know why. He is the only man in his family who can't make the call. Sometimes he sits alone in his apartment and practices, but hasn't nailed the call of the loon yet. (5:30)Find out more at: http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/001229.stories.html.

John Burnett looks at the worst natural disaster in U.S. history: a hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900, killing 6,000 people in the city alone.

Farmers at Smarter by Nature are tending to their community and their crops to cultivate their business. By maintaining a social media presence, the couple has been able to increase their profit during a global economic and health crisis.

NPR's Deborah George tells us the story of pioneering radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was among the first to take her preaching to the radio, bringing innovative ideas to the airwaves. In the first half of this century she was a celebrity of the first order, listened to by movie stars and common folk. She was a striking stage presence who used humor and song to make her message heard. In the first of these two segments, we hear from the movie actor Anthony Quinn who played saxophone at her rallies as a boy in East Los Angeles. He tells us he learned a lot of his stage presence from her -- using pauses and staring at the audience to get attention. We learn how scandal rocked her life. McPherson vanished at Venice Beach and turned up a month later in a Mexican border town with a strange story that few believed. There were rumors she had been seen in a love nest with a married man in California. This shadow over her Godliness was compounded during the stock market crash of 1929 by money woes and family arguments over money. She died in 1944 at age 54, long after her heyday ended.

Eighty-five-year-old Don Hunter plays us a few of his acoustic "trophies" from a lifetime of recording the sounds of his Pacific Northwest. The Eugene, Oregon man has been making stereo recordings of his region since the late 1950s -- and has been interested in sound since he was a boy. We hear a "planer," fog horns and a Douglas Fir being cut down.

Starting in 1935, Don Hunter made a sonic scrapbook of the Pacific northwest. The 85-year-old Hunter still works out of his basement studio in Eugene, Oregon, where he keeps his discs and tapes as trophies. He shares some of those prize recordings with us.

Eric Holder faced scrutiny from the Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee on Thursday regarding the "Fast and Furious" initiative meant to keep guns from reaching Mexican cartels. Holder denied misleading Congress when hundreds of weapons were found at border town crime scenes.

The U.S. Air Force is accused of dumping the remains of at least 274 troops in a Virginia landfill. The practice, reportedly stopped in 2008, is now being investigated by the military and a special counsel.

The former House speaker, who cheated on his first two wives and was fined by Congress for ethical violations, is outperforming family man Mitt Romney among evangelical Republicans in key states. Says one influential Iowa conservative: "The centerpiece of our faith is forgiveness."

President Obama held a brief but wide-ranging news conference Thursday. He began with a brief statement criticizing Senate Republicans for blocking his nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also responded to questions talked about Iran, Plan B, a proposed extension of unemployment insurance benefits and Osama bin Laden.

Scientists have found what they say is the world's oldest bed: a 77,000-year-old grass and leaf mattress in a cave in South Africa. And the people who made it were crafty: Atop layers of sedge grass were leaves from a plant known to repel insects — key for living in buggy, dank caves.

For the first time, a government study has tied contamination in drinking water to an advanced drilling technique commonly known as "fracking." EPA scientists found high levels of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing in the ground water of a small Wyoming town.

In Nicky & Vera, Peter Sís chronicles the work of Nicholas Winton, who helped hundreds of kids escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939.

The different statements issued by Moscow and Washington after Tuesday's call between Presidents Biden and Vladimir Putin showed where the two can cooperate and where they will likely clash.

Researchers throughout the years have studied the use of curse words and according to some, dropping a well-placed expletive can be a sign of honesty or an indication of a high pain tolerance.

Los Angeles voters elected a progressive reformer to be county district attorney. George Gascón has moved quickly to upend how the nation's largest local prosecutor's office administers justice.

The former home run leader died last week at age 86, and was remembered as a caring — the kind person who cared as much for his community as he did for his sport. The funeral is Wednesday.

During a statewide phone call, Department of Health Secretary Scott Rivkees told hospitals they cannot use “second dose” vaccine supplies to give initial vaccinations to more people.

Since his death 30 years ago, NPR's Susan Stamberg hadn't heard her father's voice. She knew it was on a record somewhere in her home, so she went searching for it & found a reminder of her childhood.

Susan Stamberg marks Fathers Day by dusting off 78 rpm home recordings made in 1940 and later by her father. He's been dead three decades. She never had the heart to listen before, feeling his loss was still too near to deal with.

NPR's Rachel Martin talks with Jonah Goldberg, conservative columnist and editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, about former President Trump's lingering populist influence on Republican lawmakers.

President Biden nominated Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The U.S. faces an eviction and housing affordability crisis — made worse by the pandemic.

NPR poet-in-residence Kwame Alexander's latest community poem started with a request to consider what follows after the words "I dream a world."

European countries put more restrictive measures in place to control the spread of COVID-19. France has a strict overnight curfew, but the government says that's not enough to slow the virus down.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he has raised $1.8 million from merchandise featuring the image of him wearing his mittens on Inauguration Day. The proceeds are going to charitable organizations.