For more than 30 years, Richard Miles and Reg Mead scoured the fields of their native Jersey with metal detectors, hoping to one day come across an ancient coin or two. Earlier this week, the detector beeped and they found the world's largest-ever stash of Celtic coins. Host Scott Simon speaks with Reg Mead about their find.
Now, to our occasional WEEKEND EDITION series Taste of Summer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME")
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE: (Singing) Hot fun in the summertime.
SIMON: A few weeks ago, Alton Brown shared some grilling secrets with us. Today, it'll be ice cream. Whether plain old standard vanilla, or artisanal organic squash blossom rhubarb poblano crunch - a flavor I just made up, by the way - summer is the season of ice cream. And so today, we head to the Pumphouse Creamery in Minneapolis.
A spectator cools off with a spray mist during first round play Friday at the AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.
Credit Jim Mone / AP
Chicago White Sox' Eduardo Escobar closes his eyes as trainer Herm Schneider sprays him with cool water during a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Credit Sitthixay Ditthavong / AP
From left, construction workers Santiago Gomez, Jorge Moreno and Abel Lozano take a break from the extreme heat during a road construction project in downtown Chicago, Thursday. Little relief from the heat is expected in the next few days.
Credit Nam Y. Huh / AP
Jason Gerald (left) and Adam Hoffman jump into the Lake Michigan at Montrose Beach in Chicago on Thursday.
Credit Jim Schulz / AP
In this photo provided by the Chicago Zoological Society, Honey, a 2-year-old American Guinea hog at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Ill., cools off.
Credit Gerry Broome / AP
Doug Jones, owner of Piedmont Biofarm in Pittsboro, N.C., waters vegetables Friday as temperatures in the South soar. Triple-digit temperatures are expected for several days in North Carolina.
Credit Bruce Schreiner / AP
Children cool off from the intense heat at a waterfront park in downtown Louisville, Ky., on Friday.
Credit Chuck Burton / AP
Aletta, a rough-legged hawk, flaps her wings as she gets a cooling shower from a hose at the Carolina Raptor Center in Charlotte, N.C., on Friday.
Credit Gerry Broome / AP
Doug Jones, owner of Piedmont Biofarm in Pittsboro, N.C., waters vegetables as temperatures in the South soar, Friday, June 29. Triple-digit temperatures are expected for several days in North Carolina.
It's been hot. Like sweat-rolling, thirst-inducing, hack-a-fire-hydrant hot. The heat cooked up storms that lashed the Eastern U.S. overnight, and more than 2 million homes lost power.
College students surrounded President Obama earlier this month when he called on Congress to stop student loan interest rates from doubling. Congress agreed on a deal to prevent the hike on Friday.
It came down to the wire, but finally, Republicans and Democrats agreed on a deal that keeps the interest rate on government-backed student loans from doubling. It will save the average borrower about $1,000 a year, but the compromise is likely to cost students a lot more than that over the long term.
The agreement that lawmakers passed Friday will keep interest rates at 3.4 percent for another year. Anthony DeLaRosa, a 23-year-old University of Colorado graduate, says it's a big victory.
More than 10,000 athletes are headed to London this summer to run, swim, cycle, shoot, fence and compete in the events of the Olympic Games. Each of them has a story — what they've won, what they've lost and what they've sacrificed just to get their chance to get there.
Chris Cleave's latest novel, Gold, tells the stories of three world-ranked cyclists — Zoe, Jack and Kate — who are training for their last chance at Olympic gold. Zoe and Kate are friends as well as rivals; Jack and Kate are raising an 8-year-old who suffers from leukemia.
A man walks past a campaign sign for Enrique Pena Nieto, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party. Mexicans vote for their next president on Sunday.
Credit Alfredo Estrella / AFP/Getty Images
Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto is heavily favored in Sunday's election.
As Mexicans prepare to elect a new president Sunday, the clear front-runner is Enrique Pena Nieto, who is seeking to return his PRI party to power after 12 years.
The PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party, ruled Mexico for more than 70 years before being ousted in 2000. Most polls show Pena Nieto with a comfortable double-digit lead in the race.
An image grab taken from Egypt's Nile TV shows Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (center) taking the oath of office during the official swearing-in ceremony at the Constitutional Court in Cairo on Saturday.
Credit AFP/Getty Images
In this handout picture made available by the Egyptian presidency, Egypt's Islamist president-elect Mohamed Morsi addresses tens of thousands of Egyptians in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Friday.
Egypt swore in its first civilian president today. The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi took the oath before the Constitutional Court.
Before the official oath, however, Morsi preempted the swearing-in ceremony by appearing before thousands of supporters in Tahrir Square on Friday and taking a symbolic one.
Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:
Friday's record-setting heat and brutal storms left much of the Midwest and Eastern U.S. cleaning up damage and waiting for crews to restore power on Saturday.
The AP reports 13 people dead and more than 3 million without power after a day where temperatures in cities from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., hit triple-digits.
In Madea's Witness Protection, George Needleman (Eugene Levy, center) is put in witness protection with Madea (Tyler Perry, right) after he discovers he's the fall man for a Ponzi scheme.
Credit Photofest
Levy (left) with some of the noted comedians that were part of Second City in Toronto: (from left, after Levy) Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Rosemary Radcliffe and John Candy.
Credit The Kobal Collection
Eugene Levy with Jason Biggs and the now-infamous defaced pie in one of his most popular recurring roles as Jim's dad in AmericanPie.
George Needleman is the chief bean counter of an investment bank who, in Madea's Witness Protection, is too consumed with family problems to realize he's being set up to take the fall for a Ponzi scheme. When he grasps what's going on, he's placed in witness protection — at Madea's house.
Tyler Perry, who wrote and directed the movie, plays Madea, as well as most other members of her family. Needleman, the latest fussy, funny, bushy-eyebrowed, precise and put-upon man, is portrayed by Eugene Levy.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said that one of its panels reviewed the evidence against Lance Armstrong and decided to formally charge the seven-time Tour de France winner with doping.
The AP reports if Armstrong fights the charges, the case goes to an arbitration panel, which will decide the merits.
Joy Reynolds of San Diego, Calif., looks over Friday's front pages on display at the Newseum in Washington, the day after the Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law.
This summer, Weekend Edition Saturday is listening to the sounds of music al fresco. Today, we present an audio postcard of a trumpeter we recently heard blowing "The Star-Spangled Banner" just down the street from NPR.
The U.S. Supreme Court justices — (first row, from left) Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (back row) Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan — pose at the Supreme Court in 2010.
It's a bit less likely now than a week ago that you'll hear people accuse the Supreme Court of being politicized.
That's because this week, the court ended its session with two controversial decisions — neither one of which was decided on the usual and predictable split between the five justices appointed by Republican presidents and the four appointed by Democrats.
But that doesn't make the court any less of a political animal.
