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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Fans in Los Angeles, New York and even Tel Aviv are protesting the imminent demise of Star Trek: Enterprise. UPN plans to cancel it at the end of the season.
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Workers are preparing New York's Central Park for an ambitious art project. The artists Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude are planning to install 7,500 gates -- free-hanging colored panels -- along 23 miles of paths. But they will remain up for only 16 days.
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There are 3 million children receiving special services for learning disabilities in American public schools. With a possible 10 to 15 percent of children have serious learning issues, pediatrician Mel Levine is challenging many assumptions about learning.
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As millions of dollars flow into aid organizations helping the victims of the tsunami, newspapers and Web sites continue to list mostly the largest and most reputable relief organizations. But some people have begun to suggest donations to smaller, indigenous grassroots organizations. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
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New York City's most famous evicted red-tailed hawks, Pale Male and Lola, have gotten their nest back -- or at least a new steel-cradle structure and the spikes to anchor it. Now they can return to their home atop a Fifth Avenue co-op building. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
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Amid the buy, buy, buy of this holiday season, another concept has taken hold: give, give, give. Increasingly, popular catalogs and some retail stores allow people to donate practical gifts such as a dairy goat or a water buffalo to countries in need, in honor of friends and family. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
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The winter solstice occurs this Tuesday. For the past 25 years, musician Paul Winter has celebrated the event with a series of concerts. This year, the event took place at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine in New York City. NPR's Margot Adler spoke with Winter as he prepared for the concerts.
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A week after two renowned red-tailed hawks were evicted from their perch on a co-op building above Fifth Avenue, the co-op is allowing them to come back, if they choose. The co-op worked out an agreement with representatives from the city's parks department and the Audubon Society. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
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For more than a decade, the rare site of red-tailed hawks nesting among New York high-rises has mesmerized hordes of onlookers. Perhaps none of the birdwatchers understood the majestic creatures better than Charles Kennedy, an amateur naturalist who died recently at age 67. NPR's Margot Adler has a remembrance.
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The notion that beauty could inspire civic virtue informed the construction of the New York subway a century ago. Now a city program spreads beautiful mosaics, sculptures and other hidden treasures underground. NPR's Margot Adler reports.