Margot Adler
Margot Adler died on July 28, 2014 at her home in New York City. She was 68 and had been battling cancer. Listen to NPR Correspondent David Folkenflik's retrospective on her life and career
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Margot Adler is a NPR correspondent based in NPR's New York Bureau. Her reports can be heard regularly on All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition.
In addition to covering New York City, Adler reports include in-depth features exploring the interface of politics and culture. Most recently she has been reporting on the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. Other recent pieces have focused on the effect of budget cuts on education, flood relief efforts by the Pakistani community in the United States, the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, and the battles over the September 11th memorial as well as the continuing human story in New York City in the years since the attacks. Her reporting has included topics such as the death penalty, affirmative action and the culture wars.
Adler did the first American radio interview with J.K. Rowling and has charted the Harry Potter phenomenon ever since. Her reporting ranges across issues including children and technology, the fad of the Percy Jackson books and the popularity of vampires. She occasionally reviews books, covers plays, art exhibitions and auctions, among other reports for NPR's Arts desk.
From 1999-2008, Adler was the host of NPR's Justice Talking, a weekly show exploring constitutional controversies in the nation's courts.
Adler joined the NPR staff as a general assignment reporter in 1979, after spending a year as an NPR freelance reporter covering New York City. In 1980, she documented the confrontation between radicals and the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1984, she reported and produced an acclaimed documentary on AIDS counselors in San Francisco. She covered the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988 and in Sarajevo in 1984. She has reported on homeless people living in the subways, on the state of the middle class and on the last remaining American hospital for treating leprosy, which was located in Louisiana.
From 1972 to 1990, Adler created and hosted live talk shows on WBAI-FM/New York City. One of those shows, Hour of the Wolf, hosted by Jim Freund, continues as a science fiction show to this day. She is the author of the book, Drawing Down the Moon, a study of contemporary nature religions, and a 1960's memoir, Heretic's Heart. She co-produced an award-winning radio drama, War Day, and is a lecturer and workshop leader. She is currently working on a book on why vampires have such traction in our culture.
With a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, Adler went on to earn a Master of Science degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York in 1970. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1982.
The granddaughter of Alfred Adler, the renowned Viennese psychiatrist, Adler was born in Little Rock, Ark., and grew up in New York City. She loves birding and science fiction.
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Wal-Mart, one of the country's largest corporations, is selling Occupy Wall Street posters online. The company has itself been the target of demonstrations advocating for higher wages. On sale are large, panoramic posters of protesters camped out at Zuccotti Park in New York City, where the movement started in 2011.
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Transportation officials are investigating what caused a Metro-North Railroad passenger train to derail along the Hudson River in New York on Sunday morning. The crash left four dead and injured dozens more.
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For two weeks, a huge translucent tent has stood on Canal Street in New York City. The tent is a place for New Yorkers to go and talk about what they want the next mayor to do. They can make videos, post videos and enter their concerns on 48 iPad terminals. There are concerts, panels on everything from parks to education. And they can even buy coffee and beer.
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ZenoRadio hooks up more than 1 million listeners to radio stations around the world by making a call to a U.S. phone number. The company founder came up with the idea when he realized that most U.S. cellphone plans have unlimited calling, and many immigrants have cellphones but no on-the-job Internet connection. -
The company recently bought the Teavana chain and has opened its first tea bar in New York City. Some say the beverage giant's move into tea could hurt small tea shops; others say they'll be in a good position to compete the way independent coffee shops compete with Starbucks. -
Man With Opera Hat is being raffled off to raise money for Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city in Lebanon. At $135, tickets don't come cheap, but your chances of winning are much better than the megalotteries a lot of people enter, and it's still the closest many will come to owning one of Pablo Picasso's works. -
The former congressman's exploits have been turned into an off-off-Broadway play, The Weiner Monologues.The production uses only found text — articles, talk-show jokes, Weiner's own words, and so on — in its script. -
"Starting a conversation about capitalism is like walking up to a stranger and asking, 'Can I talk to you about Jesus?'" says artist Steve Lambert. The best way to talk about the C-word, he says, is to make it personal. His giant art installation in New York challenges passers-by to weigh in. -
After 16 years at Louis Vuitton, Mark Jacobs is expected to focus on an eventual IPO for his own brand, which could come within three years. Investors are interested, partly because the designer Michael Kors had a public offering in 2011, and since then shares have tripled in value.
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In a secret location, revealed minutes before the event, thousands came all dressed in white. They brought white tables and chairs, elegant china, wine and food, and they set up in a park in New York City. These elegant pop-up "white garb" dinners, called Diner en Blanc, are happening all over the world.
