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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One family's holiday tradition -- hanging marzipan pringles on the Christmas tree -- was briefly imperiled by the closing of a Manhattan candy store. Then despair was followed by a decision to get baking.
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The New York City Health Board holds a public hearing on its plan to ban anything more than tiny amounts of trans fats at the city's 20,000 restaurants. New York would become the first large American city to strictly limit trans fats, although Chicago is considering a smaller plan. The final New York board vote is in December.
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Earlier this year, protests erupted worldwide after a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. In the wake of the furor, experts debate the question of whether the freedom of expression must include the license to offend. -
Mourners around the country commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with moments of silence, pauses in routine -- and with large events at New York City's Ground Zero; in Shanksville Pa., where Flight 93 crashed; and at the Pentagon. In New York, loved ones read aloud the names of 2,749 victims to a crowd that began assembling before dawn.
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Tapes of more than 1,600 phone calls to New York police and firefighters on Sept. 11 are released under court order. Most are brief conversations from firefighters to emergency responders. The release -- the second this year -- follows a long court battle pitting the city against some Sept. 11 families and the New York Times.
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"A train plays" are created on NYC's longest subway line. Performers, writers, composers and directors have about a day to take a production from the first line on paper to its first performance. -
Perhaps the headline in the New York Post said it all: "DC's Stupid Scrooges Slash NYC Terror Aid and Splurge on the Sticks." On the other hand, New Yorkers seem to be taking in stride the news that the city's federal anti-terrorism funding will be cut about 40 percent.
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A New York City staircase has been listed as one of America's most endangered historic sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Patty Clark, left, and Kayla Bergeron escaped from the collapsing World Trade Center through these steps, now known as the "survivor" staircase. -
Some people still write with fountain pens. Some still love their old manual and electric typewriters. But typewriter repairmen are a vanishing breed. Up on the eighth floor of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, Paul Schweitzer has been fixing and cleaning typewriters for 40 years. -
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a former Yale University chaplain known for his anti-war and peace activism, dies at the age of 81. Coffin questioned authority throughout his career, using civil disobedience to fight for civil rights and against war.
