Jefferson Public Radio

In September 2025, the electro-pop duo Sylvan Esso made headlines with the announcement that it was removing its catalog from Spotify. The world's most popular music streamer wasn't new to criticism, having faced years of scrutiny for its payment structure and boycotts from the likes of Neil Young, who in 2022 accused the service of platforming misinformation.

Giddens sings and plays music throughout this interview. Click the audio link above to get the full experience. Musician Rhiannon Giddens describes herself as "a folkie to the bone." "There's times I'm playing the banjo and I just feel the ancestors. Like, I feel the spirits come through," she says.

The fall equinox brings shorter days, and the change of seasons. In some U.S. cities, it's also a chance to witness the striking alignment between the sun and Earth, as sunrises and sunsets align with city streets running east and west. It's a modern version of ancient observances of a celestial shift, like sunrise at Stonehenge.

Many consumers responded to this summer's record foodborne illness numbers by buying more produce from farmers markets or growing their own at home. A third of Americans— 44 million households — grow some type of fruits or vegetables, up about 4% every year for the past five years, according to the National Gardening Association. But is buying from small farms or growing your own safer?

Updated September 21, 2026 at 2:01 AM PDT A person convicted of a felony usually loses a host of rights, including owning a gun. Normally, getting that right back is nearly impossible without a presidential pardon, according to clemency experts. But now, the Justice Department, through its Office of the Pardon Attorney, is reviving a path to restore gun rights. It's the first time since a similar program administered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ended in the 1990s.

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery may move forward with a merger under the conditions that they boost film production, support displaced workers and preserve competition among cable channels over the next five years, 12 Democratic-led states and the attorneys representing the companies agreed in a court settlement Monday.

Jesús Eduardo Olimpo Gutiérrez Toral was injured while fighting the Austin Fire in Clackamas County on Sept. 9. He died from his injuries at a nearby hospital. He was 25. In a statement, Kotek said Gutiérrez Toral worked as a sawyer and wildland firefighter in both Oregon and Washington, and that he had family in Springfield, Oregon, and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, México.

As the newest top federal prosecutor in Oregon under the Trump administration, Scott Bradford has forged alliances with some of Oregon’s top local prosecutors, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Portland Police Chief Bob Day. He has also taken aim at one of the state’s signature first-in-the-nation policies which those law enforcement officials must uphold.

WASHINGTON — The federal agency in charge of air traffic control is turning to artificial intelligence to help manage the nation's airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration officially launched its ambitious $875-million-dollar software overhaul on Monday, announcing the rollout would begin at three major airports that serve the Washington, D.C. region. The new system is known as Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART for short.

BERLIN — On Sunday night, Friedrich Merz should have been on his way to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Instead he was at his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party's headquarters in Berlin from where he broke the stunned silence as exit polls for two state elections showed its worst result since World War II. State elections for parliament seats, which in turn elect a government and a governor, were held in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in the city of Berlin.