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Camps in nature can be great for kids, but they can also expose campers to floods, wildfires and heat. Here are the top questions experts say people should ask camps about safety.

Much of the Midwest was once a great swath of prairie and oak savanna before it was transformed by farms, patchy forests and small towns.

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy offer a pessimistic view of human nature in Westworld, HBO's futuristic TV series about a theme park that allows tourists to act out their Wild West fantasies.

Research shows that teenagers' brains are not fully insulated, which means that signals move slowly. Frances Jensen, who wrote The Teenage Brain, explains. Originally broadcast Jan. 28, 2015.

With just over a week until the Iowa caucuses, organizers for various candidates are trying to make sure their troops will show up in force for one of the most important early contests for the presidential nomination. NPR's Laura Ziegler reports that for many people in Iowa, the up-close-and-personal nature of the caucus process offers them a chance to meet the candidates and for many, it is the closest encounter they have with representative democracy.

Host David Wright talks with ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D, about his new book Medicine Quest. Plotkin has done extensive research throughout the rainforests of South America to explore the healing secrets of the natural world. Plotkin says we have a lot to learn from the biodiversity of the rainforest, especially from unlikely sources such as spiders, snakes and tree bark.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that environmentalists in Russia are going to court over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's restructuring of the country's environmental protection system. Activists fear that the new system is really a cover for a plan to open up long protected nature reserves to commercial usage, to bring in badly needed cash to the central overnment. Kelemen visited a reserve in southern Siberia where rangers are worried about their future and the protection of the reserve.

The Imperial Sand Dunes is a 40-mile-long corridor of wind-swept desert in the southeast corner of California -- a place treasured by off-road vehicle enthusiasts and nature lovers alike. But a proposed plan to manage the dunes is making both groups unhappy. Erik Anderson reports for Weekend All Things Considered.

NPR's David Baron profiles a community where a woman was killed by a mountain lion. There have been several lion sightings in the Sierra Nevada foothills recently, even in some of the new subdivisions. Yet for many who've moved there from cities, it's part of living close to nature. Newcomers are more worried about a proposed new Wal-Mart than being attacked.

Rivian's announcement that it plans to hire 1,800 workers at its electric vehicle plant in Normal by the end of the year has real estate agents and…