NPR Topics: Story of the Day Podcast

When food passes its sell-by date, it's swept from the supermarket shelf. But that doesn't mean it's not safe to eat. Taste and smell are usually better indicators of a food's safety. And some items, like canned foods, can even last years or decades after their expiration date.

The Keystone pipeline is supposed to carry tar sands oil from Canada to Texas — a route that runs right through David Daniel's land. To try to save his woods from bulldozers, Daniel built tree houses 80 feet in the air and protesters climbed up into them.

Maya Thompson's son Ronan died of cancer three days before his fourth birthday. During his illness, she began a raw and sometimes angry blog that drew millions of readers. Thompson has since started a foundation and is funding clinical trials to find a cure for childhood cancer.

Family or career — it's a dilemma that many working mothers face. Though women outnumber men in the workforce, the gender gap at the top is still wide. How much of that is by choice?

A massive analysis of some 350,000 students in 53 countries has uncovered a paradox: Students in many countries that are mediocre at science have an inflated sense of good they are.

"The Maya never, ever, said anything about the world ending at any time — much less this year," says an archaeologist who helped translate the ancient culture's hieroglyphs. Still, David Stuart says, he often gets emails from people who want more details about the end of days.

Known as a charming and witty man in private, Bork, who died Wednesday, was dour and humorless in his Senate confirmation hearings, and his answers seemed to play into the stereotype liberals painted of a man who cared little for the public. His Senate rejection changed the way future nominees have testified.

Many airports send their discarded french fries, burgers and Cinnabons to the landfill. But Charlotte Douglas International plans to transform that garbage into fertilizer for flower beds. All it needed was a couple of million red wiggler worms.

The combination of a powerful gun owners' lobby and a loss of public support for gun control has stymied efforts in recent years to tighten gun laws. But there are signs the Newtown massacre may prompt change on Capitol Hill.

Her name was Emilie Parker. Six years old. Long, flowing blond hair, piercing blue eyes and a sweet smile. Emilie was one of the 20 children killed on Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As we learn the names of the victims, we're also learning their stories.

Newtown, Conn., is the kind of place where the biggest thing that happens is the Labor Day parade. Now, that peace has been shattered and residents are trying to make sense of what happened after a gunman opened fire in an elementary school, killing at least 20 children and six adults.

Mariner 2's 1962 mission to Venus was the first time any spacecraft had gone to another planet. Before the mission, very little was known about the planets, and much of what was believed to be true turned out to be wrong.

Legos often cost twice as much as similar blocks from a rival toymaker. So why are Legos so much more popular than other brands?

Eden Full dropped out of Princeton to found a startup company that brings the solar panel technology she invented to developing countries as part of a fellowship. The unusual program, funded by tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, gives young people $100,000 to skip college and focus on their work and research instead.

For years, shoppers in Manhattan's Fifth Avenue have lined up in front the store everyday before it opens. The question is why.