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PIMCO founder and legendary investor Bill Gross was known as the “Bond King.” People all over the finance world listened to his market calls. He helped change a sleepy bond market into the highly competitive and profitable world we know today. His story is also the story of how American financial markets work, how people game them, and what happens when they implode.

NPR’s Mary Childs wrote about Gross in her book, The Bond King: How One Man Made A Market, Built An Empire And Lost It All. She reported an episode about Gross for NPR’s Planet Money.

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School districts across the country are struggling to fill vacancies among their teaching staff. In addition to stepping up their recruitment efforts, some districts are looking to turn more of their existing staff into teachers.

NPR’s Cory Turner reports on the Mississippi Teacher Residency program, and on the impact it is having in the state’s capital, Jackson.

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The Cherokee Nation has been hit hard by opioid addiction and fentanyl-related overdose deaths. But the tribe has a plan to heal.

Like many communities around the country, the Cherokee Nation received settlement money from big drug companies and pharmacy chains accused of fueling the opioid crisis. The tribe is investing that $100 million in programs to support treatment, harm reduction and a fight against stigma.

Tribal leaders say the funds will save lives and save families.

NPR’s addiction correspondent Brian Mann traveled to Oklahoma to see how the Cherokee Nation is fighting the opioid crisis.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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On March 20, 2003, the United States launched its invasion of Iraq. We recall how the war started, and the trauma it left behind.

NPR’s Eric Westervelt was embedded with the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division as it pushed north from Kuwait. He describes what he saw in the first days of the war.

We also hear reporting from NPR’s Ruth Sherlock, who spoke to young Iraqis who grew up in the years since the invasion and are still trying to realize a better future for their country.

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Today, when we hear the word pandemic, most people think of COVID-19. But by 2003, while rates of HIV infections and deaths from AIDS had stabilized and fallen in the US, in sub-Saharan Africa, the rates were at epidemic proportions.

In his State of the Union address that January, President George W. Bush announced a massive investment in the global fight against HIV –The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

In the twenty years since, the program has dedicated billions of dollars to HIV prevention and treatment across Africa and other regions, saving tens of millions of lives.

NPR’s Pien Huang speaks with Ambassador Dr. John Nkengasong, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, and Dr. Helene Gayle, an epidemiologist and president of Spelman College, who spent 20 years at the CDC focused on HIV treatment and prevention and global healthcare.

When it comes to TV ratings, women’s college basketball is trending upward – even as the men’s game is losing viewers. When it comes to resources and media coverage? There’s still a wide gap between the men and women.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Chantel Jennings, senior writer covering women’s basketball for The Athletic, about the factors that contribute to that gap and how the women’s game could overcome them.

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President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that he says can keep more guns out of the hands of dangerous people by increasing the number of buyers who have to submit background checks.

The White House says that’s the closest the U.S. can get to universal background checks without additional legislation from Congress, where Democrats and Republicans remain divided on any new actions aimed at reducing gun violence.

NPR’s Deepa Shivaram reports on the order, which Biden announced during a visit to Monterey Park, California, where a gunman killed 11 people and injured nine more in January, one of over 110 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year.

And NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice about the order’s potential impact and where gun legislation goes from here.

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A group of volunteers is braving artillery barrages to evacuate residents from Bakhmut, the epicenter of fighting in eastern Ukraine.

NPR’s Frank Langfitt profiles one of them, a 29-year-old who used to work as a journalist in Poland.

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A new documentary called Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic has gained attention at screenings hosted by universities, police departments and even the Pentagon. But many of the claims made in the film are poorly supported and overhyped.

The film warns parents about the dangers of sexually coercive crimes online and suggests that strangers are targeting potentially millions of minors – pressuring them into sharing revealing content and, often, extorting them for money.

But NPR has found the documentary could leave viewers with an incomplete and exaggerated sense of the risk by relying upon statistics that lack context. Experts fear it could hinder harm reduction efforts by skewing public perception.

NPR’s Lisa Hagen, who covers how false and misleading information spreads, shares her reporting into the documentary and its filmmakers.

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The Biden administration took extraordinary measures to protect the accounts of customers at two banks that failed over the past few days: Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Federal regulators said Sunday that they were taking the emergency measures to prevent contagion at other small and regional banks in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion.

NPR’s David Gura reports that, despite those measures, many bank stocks plunged on Monday.

And former Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat who sponsored new banking regulations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, explains what he thinks went wrong at the banks. Frank more recently also served on the board of Signature Bank.

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