When Lisa Rentz decided she'd had enough of birth control pills, she walked into her local drug store and picked up something different: a vaginal contraceptive film that contains the spermicide nonoxynol-9, or n-9.
Access to emergency contraception has swirled at the center of a recent flurry of debate over insurance coverage. It's a pill women can take if their birth control fails or they forget to use it.
The most popular brand of emergency contraception is called "Plan B One-Step." You might better know it as the morning-after pill. Today, about 10 percent of sexually active women say they've used it.
When he was laid off in 2008., Nathan Bussey had been working for Hewlett-Packard for just under 10 years. He's now hoping to advance in his new job at a call center.
StateImpact Idaho's Molly Messick reports on two people coping with the lingering effects of an economic downturn.
Before the recession, Idaho had one of the fastest growing economies in the country. But last year, its jobless rate peaked at nearly 10 percent. That number has begun to creep downward – but many workers in the state are still struggling to replace the jobs they've lost.
Yale University student Marina Keegan received an email last May from Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds, offering her $100 if she said why she didn't apply for a summer internship.
Keegan, an English major, decided to take Bridgewater up on its offer.
"It was only sort of once I was inside the room when I realized ... maybe I'm helping them perfect their recruiting machine, which is exactly what we were doing," Keegan tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is probably best known for her 1995 hit single, "I Kissed a Girl." These days, she's taking on a new musical project: the gender-bending play by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yentl.
Barbra Streisand turned Singer's play into her 1984 hit movie musical of the same name. Although Sobule's version features music, it's a little more Singer and a little less Streisand.
"She changed the ending and made it kind of Funny Girl coming to America. ... We keep to the word," Sobule tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
Colleagues of Renee Royak-Schaler at the University of Maryland School of Medicine paid for and conducted an autopsy that revealed that cancer had ravaged her body. Today, autopsies are conducted on just 5 percent of patients.
Credit Jenna Isaacson Pfueller / ProPublica
Jeffrey Schaler addresses family and friends gathered to remember his late wife, Renee Royak-Schaler. "There's a sense of peace" in knowing why she died, he says.
A half-century ago, autopsies — sometimes called the ultimate medical audit — were an integral part of American health care, performed on roughly half of all patients who died in hospitals. But today, autopsies are conducted on roughly 5 percent of such patients, and experts say that is a troubling trend.
These 1984 file photos originally released by the FBI show New England organized crime figure James "Whitey" Bulger.
Credit Courtesy of the Boston Globe/George Rizer/Landov
The body of informant John McIntyre being recovered in 2000. Whitey Bulger is alleged to have killed McIntyre in 1984 after being tipped off that McIntyre was informing on him.
Credit Forge Books
Robert Fitzpatrick, pictured at the McIntyre crime scene, spent more than 20 years as an FBI agent.
When Whitey Bulger was captured last year, he'd spent close to 20 years on the run — and on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
Bulger was the head of an Irish gang terrorizing the streets of South Boston. The Massachusetts State Police wanted him gone, but curiously couldn't touch him.
Why? Bulger was a confidential FBI informant, and the bureau shielded him for years.
Robert Fitzpatrick, the author of Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down, says Bulger was widely known to be an unsavory character.
