Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim, has died. She was 80. Children in all sixty seven counties of Alabama were able to get books for free through Parton’s “Imagination Library.”
We are honored to feature exclusive artwork by Huntsville artist Guadalupe Lanning Robinson—whose work bridges her Mexican heritage with Southern roots—on the latest APR collectors mug. Donate $15/month or $180 one-time at APR.org between Sept 9–18 to secure yours while supplies last!
News & Commentaries From APR
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August is International Cat Month, a time to celebrate cats, to raise awareness about their welfare, and to encourage responsible cat ownership!
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This weekend Cam Marston watched 130 girls squeal with joy on Auburn's quad. Here's why his mind went straight to the ones who didn't get the call.
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Blame Alabama and Georgia. Point fingers at Auburn, Florida, LSU, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, too. The Southeastern Conference, once the most dominant league in the land, lost its stranglehold on college football over the last three years.
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Former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears won his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. Multiple published reports, including the Times, says a jury awarded the walk on athlete of over $9 million dollars following a trial in the aftermath of the murder of a Birmingham woman.
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Alabama isn’t considered a good place to be if you’re a dog or cat. A 2024 report by the Animal Legal Defense Fund ranks our state 48th nationally for laws to protect pets.The group notes that social workers in Alabama don’t have to report signs of animal abuse despite evidence linking mistreatment of pets and domestic violence. One other trend was found regarding dogs and cats around the University of Alabama campus.
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The Crimson Tide look to make back-to-back appearances in the College Football Playoff under third-year coach Kalen DeBoer and potentially end the Southeastern Conference’s three-year national championship drought. The powerhouse league hasn’t even made the title game since Georgia won consecutive championships in 2022-23.
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Earlier this year, after broadcasting our episode with Dr. Jason Bara about microplastics, we got an email from a listener named Hank asking if we would consider doing an episode on forever chemicals. Turns out, these two things are often brought up together in conversation—they’re both pollutants, both a bit of a headache to get rid of, and both are indicative of the advancements of technology. As Dr. Bara said in our microplastics episode, there may never be a world where we completely stop the use of plastics. As it turns out, that may also be true for these forever chemicals, or PFAS. Non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothes, cosmetics, the carpet industry, even foam used by firefighters all have these pesky chemicals roaming about.
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Back-to-school season looks a little different for Gannon McNees this year. Instead of heading back to class at the University of North Alabama, he's jamming out on the world stage! The tuba player is the first UNA student to win a spot in the U.S. Navy Fleet Bands. In this episode of Quick-Fire Quips, Gannon talks about how his sister influenced his big brass dreams, the beauty of tuning out the world with cave crawls and why bringing out-of-state ideas can help Alabama’s rhythm move forward.
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UAB athletic director Mark Ingram is leaving after 11 years, with his departure announced Tuesday by the university as an agreement to “part ways.” Andy Kennedy, the men's basketball coach, will be UAB's interim athletic director during the search for Ingram's replacement.
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Explosions rocked an Ohio industrial recycling business, sparking a large fire that drew a swarm of emergency responders. Two workers were unaccounted for and a few others had minor injuries, officials said. The owner of the facility is based in Brent, Alabama
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Civil rights advocates on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a potential new test of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms. This could have an impact in Alabama, where the state passed a similar measure back in April, which was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey.
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Ohio State and Oregon are 1-2 in the AP Top 25, giving the Big Ten Conference the top two teams in the preseason rankings for just the second time ever. Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas round out the top 5. The bitter pill for Alabama is its slot at number thirteen. The last time the Crimson Tide failed to make the top ten in the AP preseason was 2008, one year after legendary coach Nick Saban moved to Tuscaloosa.
Latest News From NPR
- South Carolina U.S. senate runoff election will test Trump's endorsement
- Dolly Parton, one of country music's most singular performers, has died at age 80
- DHS acknowledges the noncitizen numbers it touted on voter rolls were inflated
- Squeeze in one last summer read: Here are 3 suspense thrillers to choose from
- Canada hits back at the U.S. with tariffs as the countries' trade fight escalates
"Simplified" is an interview-style show where Morning Edition host Lacey Alexander takes complex topics and breaks them down so that everyone can better understand them. She enlists a new academic in the state of Alabama every week to simplify a big idea-- whether it's science, economics, media or anything in between.
Sports Minded podcast with host Brittany Young features interviews with coaches, athletes and sports personnel. Insight, commentary and analysis on professional, collegiate and high school sports can be heard here.
Speaking of Pets with host Mindy Norton is a commentary for people who care about pets and want to celebrate that special relationship between humans and animal companions.
Quick-Fire Quips is centered around people who stand out in Alabama. Host Baillee Majors presents guests with a questionnaire of playful personal questions and questions about the Yellowhammer State.
Alabama is known for football and white barbecue sauce. But we’re also making our mark in science, literature and the arts—and we helped put astronauts on the moon! Join APR news director Pat Duggins as he takes up topics like this with interviews on APR Notebook.
Dr. Don Noble, specializing in Southern and American literature, gives his weekly review on the work of Alabama’s finest authors.
StoryCorps episodes show a candid, unscripted conversation between two people about love, loss, family, friendship and everything else in between. These stories are from Selma, where APR recently hosted the Airstream portable studio.
Host Cam Marston brings fun weekly commentaries on generational and demographic trends to provide new ways to interpret the changing world around us.
Coffee & History brings you weekly conversations with fascinating figures in the historical community. Each Sunday morning, Rebecca Todd Minder, Susan E. Reynolds and Caroline Gazzara-McKenzie, explore and share the stories that shape Alabama.
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This week, Don reviews A Family Place: A Man Returns to the Center of His Life by Charles Gaines.
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Multiple published reports say The Las Vegas Raiders are hiring an Alabama assistant wide receivers coach as a quality control coach. The move comes within three weeks of the Crimson Tide’s season opener against East Carolina on Saban Field at Bryant Denny Stadium. That ted departure isn’t the only jolt to Alabama’s running backs unit.
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This weekend's temperatures may hit record highs, which can make it difficult for our furry friends to stay comfortable (or safe)!
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The U.S. Army temporarily halted all Apache helicopter training missions Friday after a fatal crash in Texas earlier this week killed two soldiers. No cause of the Wednesday crash has been released because the investigation has just begun. A safety investigation team from the Army Combat Readiness Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama, is trying to determine what happened, the Army said.
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On this week's Keepin' It Real, It's August in Alabama, which means two things: the air conditioner is running non-stop, and somewhere in a house near you, a married couple is fighting over the thermostat. Cam is losing that fight.
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Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a motel maid in 1985 and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death for killing a 5-year-old girl he had offered to pay her mother to abuse.
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A former Southern Poverty Law Center official has been charged in the Department of Justice’s broader criminal case against the Alabama-based civil rights group, a frequent target of conservative critics who claim the nonprofit is politically biased. Heidi Beirich, a political extremism expert who left the law center about six years ago, was named in an indictment unsealed Wednesday.
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There’s more than Spiderman and the Odyssey at the movies this month. And, The Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama hopes the message gets through. A theater in Daphne premiered a new documentary titled “Cookie Queens.” It focuses on the eight hundred million dollars in Girl Scout cookies that are sold every year.
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Three men in Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma are scheduled for lethal injection Thursday in a rare convergence of executions on the same day in the U.S. A man in Tennessee faces execution for killing a motel maid. An Oklahoma man is scheduled to die for killing his girlfriend. And an Alabama man will be put to death after dropping all his appeals in the killing of a 5-year-old girl he paid her mother to abuse.
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Democratic U.S. House member Shomari Figures will face a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump in his fight for reelection to an Alabama congressional seat the GOP redrew as part of a larger effort to help the party keep control of the U.S. House. He will be running against state Rep. Rhett Marques, who won the GOP nomination for the 2nd Congressional District in Tuesday's special primary election. Figures was unopposed.