Radio Pictures

The Solovetsky Islands, less than 100 miles from the Arctic Circle, have become a popular destination. Their history is dramatic -- and that drama is still being played out.

A decade ago, there were fewer than 50 grass-fed-cattle operations in the U.S. Now there are thousands. Clearly people are eating this meat. Trendiness aside, is grass-fed beef more nutritious than standard, corn-fed beef?

The Belington Clinic in Belington, W.Va., sees over 6,000 patients a year in a town of about 1,600 people. With the passage of the stimulus bill, the clinic was awarded over $1 million.

The YouthBuild program in Washington, D.C., gives young people the chance to earn a high school equivalency degree, or GED, while learning construction and life skills. The Recovery Act will support 70 students over three years.

Renewable energy is one of the cornerstones of the Recovery Act. But despite loan guarantees, Clipper Windpower's assembly plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, laid off workers in 2009 as orders for new turbines were pushed back.

In the 1950s, photography was hardly considered art. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a photographer, you snapped mountains and models — not your neighbors. It also helped to be white. But Roy DeCarava, who died Oct. 27 at the age of 89, turned all of that on its head.

As a nurse-midwife with the Family Health and Birth Center in Washington, D.C., Lisa Uncles provides care in a community with some of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. Most of her patients are on Medicaid. Still, mothers under the center's care fare much better than the city's average: far fewer premature births, low birth weights, and cesarean sections. Achieving those results in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, Uncles says, proves the caregivers are doing something right.

When Domonique Taylor showed up for his job interview at Target wearing a suit, heads turned. "You wore a suit?" he remembers people saying. He got the job, working at night while the store is closed. The shift allows him to spend days searching for a more meaningful career. After spending seven years in prison for drug trafficking, he's anxious to get something going. His dream: to start a non-profit organization to record music written by prison inmates.

Derek Hopkins first heard the rhythmic, rapid-fire chant of the auctioneer when his grandfather took him to at a 4-H livestock sale near his home in rural Maryland. He knew then that he'd found his career. At 12, he began helping out at auctions. Later, he'd attend the Missouri Auction School, known as the "Harvard of Auctioneering." Today, he's a freelancer working for different auction companies across the region. Every summer, he returns to the 4-H livestock sale of his youth, now as the auctioneer.)

What do the actors who play SpongeBob, Sandy and Squidward look like without the animation? Tom Kenney and fellow voice actors take us behind the scenes.

The band Blind Pilot literally rode a pair of bicycles to success. The folk-pop outfit, formed by singer-guitarist Israel Nebeker and drummer Ryan Dobrowski, has taken two bike tours, playing its music all along the West Coast. Watch them perform the song 'The Story I Heard' in NPR's DC recording studio.

The Mexican electronic rock band Kinky performs from its latest album Barracuda. The Band has managed to win over a devoted international following despite little commercial radio airplay.

Most everything about Israel's West Bank barrier is disputed; Israelis and Palestinians disagree on its name, its route and its impact. Israelis call it the "security barrier" or "the good fence." Many Palestinians call it "the apartheid wall" or the "racist fence." NPR's Eric Westervelt and David Gilkey traveled the length of the barrier to explore how it has affected the lives of people on both sides.

Most everything about Israel's West Bank barrier is disputed; Israelis and Palestinians disagree on its name, its route and its impact. Israelis call it the "security barrier" or "the good fence." Many Palestinians call it "the apartheid wall" or the "racist fence." NPR's Eric Westervelt and David Gilkey traveled the length of the barrier to explore how it has affected the lives of people on both sides.

For only a few weeks each spring, the nation's capital blushes white and pink with flowering cherry blossom trees. From sunrise to sundown, NPR video producer John Poole gathered footage of this transient, vernal beauty.