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As part of the "Present at the Creation" series, Stephen Wade traces the roots of "John Henry." The song tells the story about a legendary black construction laborer of mythic strength, brawn and heroism. He's been the stuff of American legends, art, and scholarship for over a century. The song remains one of the most enduring in American folk music although the historic figure's background remains murky.

Outside of Philadelphia is a little museum, The Museum of Mourning Arts, dedicated to the history and the culture of grief and the symbolic forms with which it has been expressed over the centuries. Love and loss is a theme often explored in art, but this museum focuses on intensely personal objects, such as mourning wear and Victorian memento moris. Neda Ulaby reports.

Buying a home has become a lot more expensive. Democrats are trying to balance multiple global crises ahead of fall's midterm elections. The drive to unionize Starbucks stores is gaining ground.

Cloning animals, like the Jersey cow at left, has proved to be very difficult. Cloning humans is turning out to be even harder. Despite claims that two maverick groups may have succeeded, the scientific world is skeptical. If a claim is made, scientists will be on the hunt for fakes. NPR's Joe Palca reports for All Things Considered.

The district attorney of Manhattan Alvin Braggs is forcefully denying speculation that his office has ended a criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump over his business practices.

In the 1990s, the militia movement attracted thousands of followers, spurred on by federal law enforcement blunders at Ruby Ridge and Waco. But after Timothy McVeigh -- who identified with the militia movement -- bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, the movement began to decline. Robert Siegel travels to Montana to take the pulse of the militia movement after Sept. 11.

A new survey by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government finds the country evenly divided on the tradeoff between civil liberties and security. But poll results also show a small, though statistically significant number of Americans moving toward the civil liberties side of the issue. Get a detailed analysis of the survey and view the poll results.

For the first time in 20 years, an official representative of the Dalai Lama has been allowed into Tibet. Lodi Gyari's visit and his talks in Beijing earlier this week are the latest indications that China may be easing its policy toward Tibet — while still insisting that it is an integral part of China. Beijing conducted a major policy review on Tibet last year and has released six Tibetan political prisoners since then. NPR's Rob Gifford talks with NPR's Jacki Lyden from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

New York-based writer Paul Auster is the author of 10 novels. His latest is The Book of Illusions. For a year beginning in October 1999, Auster gathered stories sent to him by men and women across the United States. The stories were all true, short and personal. As part of NPR's National Story Project, Auster read them over the air. Those stories were collected in the book, I Thought My Father Was God. Auster also wrote the screenplays for Smoke and Blue in the Face.

History's unmentionables come out of the closet in a new calendar from the Costume Society of America called Underwear: Beneath Historic Fashions. On Weekend Edition Saturday, a talk with the editor of the calendar that depicts undergarments from the early 18th century to the 1960s.