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American consumers still talk a lot on their smart phones, but one key function consistently falls short — voice quality. Recent studies by Consumer Reports and others find that it hasn't kept pace with advances in screen display, Web browsing and battery life.

For readers in search of tales that step outside familiar viewpoints, these authors unravel conflict, religion, race and love — from new and different angles. In these novels, a child from the slums, an executed zealot, a reluctant immigrant, a guilty survivor and a suffering mother take center stage.

Critic Alan Cheuse believes that summer — with its long, hot, drowsy days — may be the best season for reading poetry. His recommendations include works by Poets Laureate Robert Pinsky and W.S. Merwin, and a novel in verse by the late essayist David Rakoff.

NPR's Scott Simon asks writer Calvin Trillin about his new collection of reporting on reporters. It's called "The Lede: Dispatches from a Life in the Press."

Engineers left these drawings as a way to sign their work. Many are puns that made them chuckle to themselves. Now social media has rediscovered them and hobbyists try to keep that history alive.

Susan Monarez is the first director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to require Senate confirmation. She's also the first director without a medical degree in more than 70 years.

The federal courts say they have taken "extensive" steps to protect workers from abuse, discrimination and harassment since the rise of the #MeToo movement, but critics say many workers don't trust the internal system for reporting complaints.

Scott Simon talks with Maria Ressa of the investigative website Rappler in the Philippines about being named one of Time's Persons of the Year, and the mortal dangers some journalists faced this year.

President Joe Biden became the first president to publicly apologize to Native Americans for the federal government’s Indian Boarding School system and policies.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Jennifer Erickson, senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists, about the organ transplant system and how eligible donated organs wind up in the trash.