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John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath brought widespread attention to the hardships of Dust Bowl farmers struggling to find work in California during the Great Depression. On Morning Edition, Brian Naylor reports on the classic epic's origins as part of NPR's Present at the Creation series.

John talks with NPR's Ketzel Levine about plants that do well in offices. While many plants will shrivel under fluorescent light, plants that are suited to irregular care and indirect light can thrive. Listeners can follow along on Ketzel's web site, Talking Plants. (6:30)

At Roosevelt High School in Seattle, teachers are using a new science curriculum called the Inquiry Method to teach biology. It's supposed to inspire curiosity -- sometimes at the expense of memorization of facts. NPR's Robert Smith is spending a whole year following the teachers and students at Roosevelt, and has this report. (6:15)

His Broadway musicals include Bye, Bye Birdie, Annie, Applause, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, and Golden Boy, which originally opened on Broadway in 1964 and starred Sammy Davis Jr. The show will be revived later this month by City Center Encores in New York. Strouse also composed music for film and TV, including "Those Were the Days," the theme song for TV's All in the Family.

U.S. government investigators are working overtime screening potential federal employees at what could be the most unique office space in America: deep inside a Pennsylvania mountain, in the caverns of an abandoned mine. For All Things Considered, NPR's Pam Fessler gets a rare glimpse inside Iron Mountain..

Rodney Brooks, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). His new book is called Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us. Brooks offers a vision of the future of humans and robots. He is also Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Brooks is the chairman and chief technological officer of iRobot Corporation. He was one of the subjects of Errol Morris' 1997 documentary, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.

Last year, we broadcast a story about a North Dakota high school basketball championship back in l968. NPR's John Ydstie played in that game. After hearing the piece, a listener named Ted Sherarts, took a car trip through the small towns of North Dakota. He sent us his travel diary, and we hear excerpts from that trip. (7:30)

Sipping whiskey and flashing arm tattoos, R&B singer Toni Price performs at a small club in Austin in a weekly ritual called Hippie Hour. NPR's John Burnett has Price's story.

Forty years ago John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, getting the U.S. space program moving with a vengeance and helping spark a new commitment to TV news. Legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite reported the event to a live television audience on that day in 1962, and he offers his reflections. (NPR aired the following correction to this story on air on Feb. 21, 2002:"I'm crushed. The once most trusted man America has let me down." This is from Hilton Evans in Randolph, Massachusetts. "Mine will likely be only one of dozens if not hundreds of e-mails correcting Walter Cronkite's assertion that Velcro was one of many spinoffs of the U.S. space program. Velcro was not invented by NASA. It wasn't even invented in the United States. Velcro was invented by Swiss inventor and hiker George de Mestral who noticed how flower burrs stuck to his pants. Upon examining the burrs with a microscope, he noticed each burr was covered with tiny fur grabbing hooks. Mestral realized he could use this natural design to create an alternative to the zipper. Mestral's idea was patented in 1955 after he perfected a process for creating the microhooks in nylon.")

A lot of people are talking these days about how religiously diverse the United States is becoming. Commentator Gustav Niebhur says the U.S. has always been religiously diverse.