1A

By NPR

What's 1A about?

1A is home to the national conversation. Joshua Johnson hosts with great guests and frames the best debate in ways to make you think, share and engage.

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Where The House Hearing Int...

07.29.2021

It wasn't without controversy, but the House managed to put together a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. And this week, Capitol police officers who were present for the insurrection testified before the committee, detailing their ...

1A episodes:

07.29.2021 Where The House Hearing Into The Insurrection Goes From Here It wasn't without controversy, but the House managed to put together a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. And this week, Capitol police officers who were present for the insurrection testified before the committee, detailing their ...
07.28.2021 How One Chicago Neighborhood Is Coping With The Toll Of Gun Violence More than 30,000 people have been shot in Chicago over the past decade. Of them, five out of six survived. A new series from The Trace investigates the impact of gun violence on survivors and communities, specifically in the Roseland ...
07.27.2021 The Epidemic Inside The Pandemic As the pandemic rages worldwide, opioid overdose deaths in the US rose, with deaths up 29 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. The 93,000 deaths are attributed to isolation, disruption of addiction services, and other consequences of the pandemic. At ...
07.26.2021 Baby Bust: Explaining The Declining U.S. Birth Rate According to the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. birthrate fell by 4 percent in 2020 — hitting a record low. People are having fewer children than the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. That's been true for years ...
07.23.2021 The News Roundup for July 23, 2021 The Delta variant is ripping its way through the United States, where it now accounts for 83 percent of new U.S. Covid-19 cases. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two Republican selections for the bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 ...
07.22.2021 As Extreme Weather Becomes Common, Can We Adapt? Extreme weather has dominated headlines for most of 2021. Fires, floods, droughts, and record-shattering heatwaves have swept over the U.S. and the world. The United States has already spent $29 billion fighting extreme weather events in the first six months ...
07.21.2021 The Rise Of The Four-Day Work Week In early 2021, the CEO of the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, Aziz Hasan, announced that the company will be piloting a four-day work week in 2022. The schedule consists of 32 working hours per week rather than 40. But a growing ...
07.20.2021 Branson, Bezos, And The Billionaires: The Future Of Space Tourism Jeff Bezos successfully completed Blue Origins' first ride to the edge of space. It's a clear milestone in the Amazon founder's long-held desire to reach the final frontier. It's just about a week after British billionaire Richard Branson did the ...
07.19.2021 How The Expanded Child Tax Credit Could Cut Childhood Poverty In Half In early 2021, Congress voted to temporarily expand the child tax credit, opting to send monthly payments to more families. The first payments rolled out last week. Families received between $250 to $300 per child, depending on that child's age. ...
07.16.2021 The News Roundup for July 16, 2021 Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and Ron Wyden drafted legislation this week to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Laws permitting either medical or recreational marijuana use have become increasingly common at the state level in recent years. In ...
07.15.2021 Birth Control: Future It's been 60 years since the birth control pill hit the market in the U.S. The pill transformed lives, but when it comes to contraceptive options, it's no longer the end-all, be-all. Scientists continue to have breakthroughs, including in the ...
07.14.2021 Birth Control: Present It's been 60 years since the birth control pill became available on the market. Since then, the array of contraceptive options available to the public has grown substantially (the shot, the patch, and IUDs). But with more options come more ...
07.13.2021 A Look Back on Birth Control It's been over 60 years since the Food and Drug Administration first approved the birth control pill. The pill provided more control over fertility and reproductive health for generations of people. But its history is troubled. The pill was first ...
07.12.2021 What's Driving Millions Of Americans To Quit Their Jobs? A record 4 million people quit their jobs in April alone, according to the U.S. Labor Department. It's all part of a larger uptick that economists are calling "The Great Resignation." And the reasons why workers are leaving will likely ...
07.09.2021 The News Roundup for July 9, 2021 According to the Centers for Disease Control, The Delta variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain in the U.S. Studies suggest the approved vaccines protect against it. However, the Biden administration is working to find new strategies to reach ...
07.08.2021 The Power Of Plants To Heal And Harm Michael Pollan's latest work looks at your mind on plants — specifically, three psychoactive plants. In the follow-up to his 2018 bestseller, How to Change Your Mind — What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, ...
07.07.2021 Danny Trejo's Road From Prison To Hollywood Trejo has become one of Hollywood's go-to badasses and bad guys. He's got over 380 acting credits to his name. Growing up, he was in and out of the most notorious prisons in California, enmeshed in crime and struggling with ...
07.06.2021 How Taxes Keep American Wealth White Building wealth has never been easy, and the racial wealth gap makes that obvious. As recently as 2016, the median wealth of a white household was $171,000 dollars. That's eight times the median $20,600 of Hispanic households. For Black households? ...
07.05.2021 Red, White And The Blues The blues grew out of the Black experience in the American South. It generated jazz, R&B;, rock and roll, rap – virtually every piece of modern music. We're spotlighting blues recordings selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in ...
07.02.2021 The News Roundup for July 2, 2021 In the midst of a historic heatwave, President Joe Biden met with governors in affected states, cabinet officials, and private sector partners about the droughts and wildfires. The administration also announced it will move to increase pay for federal firefighters. ...
07.01.2021 From Twitter to Hollywood: Zola Hits The Big Screen In 2015, Aziah "Zola" Wells fired off a thread of 148 tweets. It was later known by its hashtag — #TheStory— and went viral. The thread has now been adapted into a feature film from director Janicza Bravo and screenwriter ...
06.30.2021 Doomsday Prepping Goes Mainstream Doomsday prepping is no longer a fringe obsession. The survivalist movement is evolving. While prepping has its roots in American individualism and self-reliance, it's also big business. Prepping companies like Judy sell survival kits (known by preppers as "bug out ...
06.29.2021 Uncovering The 'Unspoken Traumas' Of Native American Boarding Schools Last week, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school, just one month after more than 200 unmarked graves were found at another school in British Columbia. For generations, indigenous ...
06.28.2021 An Englishman's American Dream As a young scouser in Liverpool, in the 80's, Roger Bennett dreamed of one day living in the U.S. He's made that dream a reality. Bennet is now a naturalized American citizen. His new book, "Reborn in the USA," is ...
06.25.2021 The News Roundup for June 25, 2021 President Joe Biden has unveiled a strategy to combat a spike in violent crime. The strategy includes using coronavirus relief funding to hire more police officers. And a report commissioned by the Michigan GOP on the results of the 2020 ...
06.24.2021 Doorbell Cameras Are Saving Footage To The Cloud. What Happens Next? The popularity of home security surveillance systems like Amazon's Ring and Google Nest is rising. The devices are easy to use and they save footage from users' homes to the cloud. But is that all they're capturing? Some are also ...
06.23.2021 From Rapping, To Writing, To Podcasting, Dessa's Resume Is Getting Longer While the pandemic meant a major touring hiatus for a lot of musical artists, writer, rapper, and singer Dessa kept creating content. She hosts a new BBC podcast called Deeply Human and has a radio drama in the works. In ...
06.22.2021 How One Reporter Wants To Change The Way We Pay For Health Care Medical debt soared during the pandemic as people lost jobs, lost health insurance, and spent weeks in hospitals recovering from COVID-19. ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen spent years investigating high healthcare costs. Now he wants to convince everyone they do have ...
06.21.2021 Local Spotlight: Returning Ancestral Land To Native Hawaiians For this installment of our Local Spotlight series, we talk to two reporters who investigated the Hawaiian homesteading program that aimed to return Native Hawaiians to their homeland. The program was established in 1921 when Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole successfully ...
06.18.2021 The News Roundup for June 18, 2021 Democrats look to pass the Biden administration's American Jobs and Family Plan through the Senate via a simple majority vote in July. Nine years from the passage of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (or DACA), the Biden administration's will ...
06.17.2021 Chronicling Capitalism: America's Relationship With The Free Market The NPR podcast "Throughline" looks at the history behind headlines. In their upcoming series, hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei look at capitalism. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, Millenials and Gen Z are evenly split when it comes to ...
06.16.2021 Putting The B In LGBTQ A recent Gallup poll found that a growing number of adults identify as LGBT. One in six Gen Z adults identified as LGBT compared to the around one in 10 millennials. The survey also found that more than half of ...
06.15.2021 The State Of Voting Rights In America West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced he'd vote against the For The People Act, dealing a blow to Democrats in the fight over voting rights. The bill promised to expand voting rights and combat the onslaught of restrictive voting laws ...
06.14.2021 Colson Whitehead And Barry Jenkins On Making 'The Underground Railroad' When the novel The Underground Railroad was published in 2016, it caught the world's attention for its stark portrayal of slavery in America. The story reimagines the metaphorical underground railroad as an actual underground railroad, with train tracks and stations. ...
06.11.2021 The News Roundup for June 11, 2021 Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna say they expect their COVID-19 vaccines to be available to children as young as 6 months by the fall. COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen in states with low vaccination rates. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and Vice ...
06.10.2021 The Writers' Room: Young Adult Fiction And Social Media Young Adult fiction is a genre can range from high fantasy to contemporary. The subject matter can be as heavy as books written for older readers. And while its characters are usually teenagers, those popular enough are often read and ...
06.09.2021 The FDA Just Approved A Major Alzheimer's Drug. Now What? The FDA has approved a new medication for treating Alzheimer's, called aducanumab. It's the first new drug for the disease in almost 20 years, but the FDA's approval comes despite an intense debate over the drug's efficacy and associated side ...
06.08.2021 Teaching Race And History In America's Schools The latest culture war is being fought in the classroom, with several states banning Critical Race Theory. The theory is an academic pursuit examining how race intersects with history. While many may not know the fundamentals of the theory, Republican-led ...
06.07.2021 Head Out Of The Game: Athletes, The Press, And Mental Health Naomi Osaka, the No. 2 female tennis player in the world, withdrew from the French Open citing her struggles with depression and anxiety. Her withdrawal came after she announced she wouldn't be speaking to the press, a requirement for professional ...
06.04.2021 The News Roundup For June 4, 2021 In America's fight against COVID-19, President Joe Biden has set his sights on getting partial vaccination rates in the U.S. up to 70 percent by July 4. In Texas, Democrats and Republicans continue to go back and forth on voting ...
06.03.2021 Paula Stone Williams On 'Power, Sex, And The Patriarchy' Rev. Paula Stone Williams led a conservative evangelical church for over two decades. Then, in 2013, she came out as a transgender woman. Now, she fights for gender equity and LGBTQ rights. We talk to Williams about her new memoir ...
06.02.2021 The Hit List Podcast Special Pop culture recommendations abound in the summer: beach reads, bingeable television shows, songs of the summer, and – of course – podcasts. So we chatted with some podcast experts, and here are some of our recommendations for what to listen ...
06.01.2021 The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which most Americans have never heard of. In 1921, white Tulsa residents destroyed the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, OK, in two days of bloodshed, fire, and violence. Anywhere from ...
05.28.2021 The News Roundup For May 28, 2021 New York City May Bill de Blasio announced that his city is planning a full reopening of its public school system this fall. There will be no option for remote learning. The source of COVID-19 is under new scrutiny as ...
05.27.2021 How COVID-19 Is Changing Celebrity Culture The pandemic has shaken our relationships with celebrities. From the backlash to the "Imagine" video to the Kardashians private island getaway, the tide has been seemingly turning against the rich and famous. Ellen compared her mansion to jail and Madonna ...
05.26.2021 When The Police Investigate The Police While the results of internal affairs police investigations are often kept confidential, a new podcast from KQED and NPR examines how police investigate police when they thought nobody would be watching. Want to support 1A? Give to your local public ...
05.25.2021 How Taxes Keep American Wealth White Building wealth has never been easy, and the racial wealth gap makes that obvious. As recently as 2016, the median wealth of a white household was $171,000 dollars. That's eight times the median $20,600 of Hispanic households. For Black households? ...
05.24.2021 Why Is It So Hard To Talk About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? How America talks about one of its closest allies is starting to change — at least, on the left. But U.S. policy toward Israel remains the same. What's different about the conversation this time? And why has it been so ...
05.22.2021 Talking, Laughing And Cringing With Ziwe Comedian Ziwe Fumudoh is a master at managing discomfort. During the pandemic she pivoted from a YouTube series to Instagram Live, unflinchingly challenging her guests about their own biases, while making viewers simultaneously laugh and cringe. Now, with a show ...
05.21.2021 The News Roundup For May 21, 2021 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out this week in opposition to a House proposal to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The House voted to pass the bill. Several states reached the ...

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1A

What's 1A about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

1A episodes:

Where The House Hearing Into The Insurrection Goes From Here

How One Chicago Neighborhood Is Coping With The Toll Of Gun Violence

The Epidemic Inside The Pandemic

Baby Bust: Explaining The Declining U.S. Birth Rate

The News Roundup for July 23, 2021

As Extreme Weather Becomes Common, Can We Adapt?

The Rise Of The Four-Day Work Week

Branson, Bezos, And The Billionaires: The Future Of Space Tourism

How The Expanded Child Tax Credit Could Cut Childhood Poverty In Half

The News Roundup for July 16, 2021

Birth Control: Future

Birth Control: Present

A Look Back on Birth Control

What's Driving Millions Of Americans To Quit Their Jobs?

The News Roundup for July 9, 2021

The Power Of Plants To Heal And Harm

Danny Trejo's Road From Prison To Hollywood

How Taxes Keep American Wealth White

Red, White And The Blues

The News Roundup for July 2, 2021

From Twitter to Hollywood: Zola Hits The Big Screen

Doomsday Prepping Goes Mainstream

Uncovering The 'Unspoken Traumas' Of Native American Boarding Schools

An Englishman's American Dream

The News Roundup for June 25, 2021

Doorbell Cameras Are Saving Footage To The Cloud. What Happens Next?

From Rapping, To Writing, To Podcasting, Dessa's Resume Is Getting Longer

How One Reporter Wants To Change The Way We Pay For Health Care

Local Spotlight: Returning Ancestral Land To Native Hawaiians

The News Roundup for June 18, 2021

Chronicling Capitalism: America's Relationship With The Free Market

Putting The B In LGBTQ

The State Of Voting Rights In America

Colson Whitehead And Barry Jenkins On Making 'The Underground Railroad'

The News Roundup for June 11, 2021

The Writers' Room: Young Adult Fiction And Social Media

The FDA Just Approved A Major Alzheimer's Drug. Now What?

Teaching Race And History In America's Schools

Head Out Of The Game: Athletes, The Press, And Mental Health

The News Roundup For June 4, 2021

Paula Stone Williams On 'Power, Sex, And The Patriarchy'

The Hit List Podcast Special

The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later

The News Roundup For May 28, 2021

How COVID-19 Is Changing Celebrity Culture

When The Police Investigate The Police

How Taxes Keep American Wealth White

Why Is It So Hard To Talk About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

Talking, Laughing And Cringing With Ziwe

The News Roundup For May 21, 2021

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