This week, NPR welcomes a seasoned journalist into its newsroom: Edith Chapin. Joining NPR as the senior supervising editor of the NPR News Foreign Desk, Edith brings with her nearly 25 years of experience covering game changing national and international news events and serving as a leader among her fellow reporters.

During her fourth day on the job, Edith took a break from tracking down her team of foreign correspondents stationed overseas to talk with us about her transition to radio, her vision for NPR's international coverage and her personal experiences from life as a reporter.

What drew you to NPR?

I'm in love with news. NPR is one of barely a handful of news organizations that does serious journalism and is not completely driven by breaking news. Having the time to give context and explain the "whys" instead of just the "whats" is fantastic.

Will you miss the visuals of television journalism?

I'm actually excited. In TV you are a slave to the pictures, for better or worse. But radio is pure storytelling. Radio reporting can paint a picture. It's so intimate. The journalists really take you there and you make the movie.

What will be your focus in this role?

I'm looking forward to giving a fresh perspective from the outside. To be an editor and ask questions. I hope by asking new, different questions NPR's coverage can be made better. And to collaborate across the newsroom to provide the best journalism.

How does good international news coverage benefit Americans?

It should take away some fear. It's human nature to feel fear. But if we explain and make connections the world seems smaller and more interdependent.

In your role, you are often required to send journalists into very dangerous places. What goes through your mind during those times?

No story is worthy dying for. But many stories are important and need to be told. We just need to find the right mix of allowing reporters to tell these important stories but not to be targets because of their reporting on a story.

I will have sleepless nights every night our reporters are in dangerous situations. I don't take it lightly. I've done enough reporting in war zones to be able to appreciate how hard it is for those reporters and that it's worth doing.

You were in New York on 9/11.

It was breathtaking in the most literal sense of the word. The magnitude of it took a couple of hours to sink in. When I finally left work the next day, I had to cross a check point to get to my home in Manhattan. It was only then did I realize that something really different had happened.

Professionally you can never prepare for something like this. I realized that [journalism] was really a special profession. This is why we do journalism, to tell this story.

You've been to NPR for four days now, what have you noticed so far?

It's a really friendly place. Everyone is very welcoming. And they are passionate about their jobs and also having fun.

What's the favorite place you've ever lived?

I lived in Brazil for six years as a child, very formative years. It's is a sentimental place for me, very special. Something about Brazil has just stuck with me.

What are three things you always pack in your suitcase?

Wash and dry, power plug adapters, and a spare outfit.

NPR's Fresh Air celebrated its 25^th anniversary as a national program on May 11, and continues to show why its so valued by listeners:

— The Philadelphia Daily News paid tribute to the locally produced show's history, as well as its host, in an interview with Terry Gross last week.

— The Hollywood Reporter, Vulture and Gawker were among the many outlets which picked up on Terry's conversation with Girls creator Lena Dunham, who addressed recent backlash against the show.

— When beloved children's book author Maurice Sendak passed away last week, many outlets, including the LA Times and Paper Magazine, turned to Fresh Air's many interviews with the notably reserved writer in paying tribute to his life and work.

— And, after more than 30 years behind the mic, Terry took on the big screen, starring in Mike Birbiglia's short film "Fresh Air 2: 2 Fresh, 2 Furious." The video originally debuted as part of This American Life LIVE, and is now an internet sensation.

In other news, NPR audio is now available on Flipboard. TechCrunch, TIME and Mashable were among the media outlets which picked up on the popular mobile app's announcement about its new audio content features.

TED Radio Hour host Alison Stewart was interviewed by the Washington Post for a Q&A posted on their ideas@innovations blog.

Do you know madman Don Draper's favorite drink? Ask Me Another and Esquire teamed up for a cocktail quiz. See how many you can answer!

Kelly McEvers joined PBS NewsHour from Beirut last week to discuss the fallout of a deadly suicide bombing in the heart of Syria's capital. Watch the video segment below:

In 2006, Irish singer Glen Hansard and Czech pianist Marketa Irglova released an album together called The Swell Season. A longtime fan of Hansard's band The Frames, NPR's Stephen Thompson quickly fell for the song "Falling Slowly" and ran it as an NPR Music Song of the Day. A year later, a version of the song ended up on the soundtrack for the film Once, then won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The Song of the Day feature has been a staple on the NPR site for six years now, and while not every song is going to end up on the Top 40 charts or played throughout NPR Music's office as a communal favorite, each is selected because it will resonate with someone the way "Falling Slowly" did with Stephen. Any given week, the selected artists can range widely, from familiar voices to seemingly nameless artists, but these songs aren't picked at random from the hundreds of albums mailed to NPR Music each week.

So, what does it take to be picked? Song of the Day's curator and NPR Music writer-editor Stephen Thompson has one basic rule:

"Love the song."

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean Stephen loves the song. He works with a team of about three dozen NPR staffers and freelancers. Each contributor is held to the "love the song" standard with every song pitched. Whether NPR's Lars Gotrich selects a recent discovery in what he calls "outersound" or John Murph delves into jazz, the diversity of voices allows the series to maintain a variety of musical perspectives. It may seem straightforward, but Stephen's challenge as curator is to distinguish Song of the Day music from other outlets of discovery, at NPR.org and elsewhere.

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Today marks the 25th year that Fresh Air has been heard by audiences nationwide. The Peabody Award-winning interview program, which came on air to the greater Philadelphia area in 1975, has been showered with positive reviews over the years from national and local media across the country. And for the greater part of its history, Fresh Air has been defined by the voice of its Host and Executive Producer Terry Gross. After winning the 2003 Edward R. Murrow Award for 25 years of promoting and strengthening public radio, the Philadelphia Inquirer said of Terry:

"Here's the life-centric bonus: Gross celebrates the art of conversation. There's a cacophony of white noise in the world today that drowns out the pleasure of listening to plain old, good talkin'. For that, she deserves more than her award. She deserves our ear."

Its her unique ability to facilitate honest, compelling conversation with many noted "Boo Radleys" of our time and her earnest interest in letting interviewees tell their stories that has established both Terry and Fresh Air as singular in the category of interview-based programs, an accolade which it continues to receive today. In an interview just this week, the creator and star of HBO's new series Girls, Lena Dunham, responded to a recent backlash against the show in an interview with Terry.

In honor of is this landmark day for Fresh Air, we've compiled a slideshow of some exciting moments from the show's history. Tune in to Fresh Air on your local station today for a special 25^th Anniversary show featuring highlights from exclusive Fresh Air performances and chats recorded since 1987.

Congratulations Fresh Air! And thank you Terry and WHYY for bringing us one of public radio's most beloved programs for the past 25 years and the many more to come.

Just four months ago, a group of wide-eyed interns arrived at NPR Headquarters. The 2012 spring intern class came from across the world, with diverse ages, experiences and passions. All the interns, however, harbored a deep interest in NPR and the shared desire to make their mark on the NPR legacy.

In Intern Edition, a thirty minute multimedia show produced exclusively by interns, we found the opportunity, and challenge, to draw upon the talents of our intern class and create our own piece of NPR history.

Over the past four months, we've worked relentlessly to create an engaging multimedia experience that showcases the greater themes of life—morality, identity, the power of one—through the lens of everyday events. On Wednesday, we presented the final project, Intern Edition: Life In Turn, to the NPR Staff, and today, we present it to the online community on the Intern Edition website.

"Life in Turn" encompasses characters and stories as diverse as our intern class: Washington's own Willy Wonka, a community of online hackers aiming to save the world and a teenager girl confronting her father's PTSD. Each premiere story is accompanied by engaging visuals—a first for Intern Edition.

If our premiere has left you craving more NPR intern productions, read our Life in Turn blog, where you'll find videos from our Deskless Concerts, interviews with NPR personalities and other eclectic internal musings. Our Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr also bring you behind-the-scenes of the NPR Intern Experience.

As we gather our NPR swag and tearfully move forward into the next phase of life, we would like to give a huge thank you to the NPR staff, who has served as a constant source of guidance, support and inspiration to us this semester. Our experiences at NPR have greatly shaped not only the premiere, but our future aspirations as well.

We hope you enjoy the premiere, and keep your eyes—and ears—open for our aspiring public media superstars!

NPR's new quiz show, Ask Me Another, premieres tomorrow. Host Ophira Eisenberg, a cast of puzzlers and a live audience together work through puzzles, word games and brainteasers in each episode.

To get your brains warmed up for Friday's debut, give this custom NPR puzzle a whirl. The game is "Not Particularly Relevant" and was written by the puzzlemasters behind Ask Me Another. To play, just read each clue below and answer with phrases and names that have the initials NPR. Answers follow each clue by clicking "Continue."

Ask Me Another is available to NPR member stations beginning tomorrow. Among the first stations to air Ask Me Another this weekend and into the later part of May are: WHYY, WBUR, KRCU and WCPN. Contact your local station for varied carriage and broadcast plans.

Public Radio Music Month came to a close the week, and the outpouring of support from stations, musicians and local communities throughout April was quite inspiring.

Artists came forward on Twitter, touting their favorite stations...

Hey, it's Public Radio Month! http://publicradiomusicmonth.org/ Be sure to support your local stations - we do! @WNYC @pubradiomusic
- @The_National

Joining other artists in support of public radio...

Dear Public Radio, Thank you for taking chances: http://publicradiomusicmonth.org/ ...Happy Public Radio Music Month! #PRMM @pubradiomusic
- @treyanastasio

And taking time to talk about their appreciation on air:

This is a public service announcement with guitars! @SGossard this Monday - 11a EST - on 91.9 @WFPK! http://tinyurl.com/c8sr4xn #PearlJam #PJ21
- @PearlJamOnLine

Others, like Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament, showed support for PRMM in a Facebook post and asked his fans to share their own favorite station:

"I start every day with tea, the Seattle Times and an hour of KEXP, KGBA, or KCRW. With local record stores disappearing daily, it's more important than ever for DJs that we trust to introduce us to new music. Rock and roll is dead, long live public radio!"
- Jeff Ament

Nate Query, Patrick Hallahan, Joe Henry, Nicole Brodeur and Nellie McKay all wrote op-eds on the value of public radio to the music industry and local culture, each describing personal and professional experiences with stations across the country.

You may have seen this Love Letter to public radio stations floating around online, which more than 130 artists and independent record labels signed throughout the month. Rolling Stone, MTV Newsroom, Jambands.com and other music outlets shared the note with their readers.

Other artists have come forward to speak on behalf of Public Radio Music Month. Chris Walla of the Decemberists and Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard spoke to Billboard about the platform public radio provides for artists who "'fall between a couple cracks' in the radio spectrum," and All Access Music Group profiled WFUV Music Director Rita Houston about the station's role in celebrating the month and her career in the music industry.

Much more Public Radio Music Month content can be found online at publicradiomusicmonth.org.

Inside NPR, the short bits of music that you hear often between stories on Morning Edition or Tell Me More or any of the other NPR programs are called music buttons.

Generally you'll hear no more than 10 seconds of music, but these audio clips fasten each story to another like buttons on a shirt. The end result is an hour or two of often dramatically different stories pieced together perfectly into a complete program.

If selected correctly, a music button played at the end of a piece is a perfect pairing. Sometimes the music button you hear is also an integral part of the piece itself. And some days it takes a little searching to find a story's musical complement.

This is the behind-the-scenes story of how one song was selected.

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All this month we've been enjoying the celebration of music discovery and public radio over at PublicRadioMusicMonth.org with artists, record labels, public radio stations and fans.

On the site you can see how individual stations are celebrating this month. For example, WFUV's produced a three-part series chronicling the process the band Everest took developing an exclusive song for the station. KUT in Austin gathered artist video testimonials including one from Matt Drenik of the Portland-based group Battleme. Philadelphia's WXPN created a site dedicated to music, called The Key and a special PRMM Key Studio Video Session.

WUMB, a music station in Boston, pulled from their archives the first radio interview with Tracy Chapman. Here's their story.

It took WUMB 14 years to gain FCC approval to broadcast its 600 watt signal through Boston. But when the station finally went on the air in 1982, the staff knew it didn't want to sound like every other station out there.

"We were committed to doing something unique," says General Manager Pat Monteith. "So we looked around to find out what was missing and one thing struck us: there were no folk, singer-songwriter stations."

With a commitment to the local community, NPR Member Station WUMB has been seeking out the local musicians and music for 30 years and now has about 250-300 artists in studio every year for interviews and live performances.

"At this point they are knocking on our door. We probably have more live music in studio and on the air than anyone else in New England," Monteith says.

With just a handful of staff, WUMB sifts through many songs and albums to find the best of the rising starts as well as the well-known artists asking to come back to the station.

In 1985, Richard Reinert was hosting WUMB's Circles in the Stream, a program where he interviewed musicians and then invited them to play from their repertoire. Sometimes he found those artists at music festivals and sometimes just on the street corners.

One singer-songwriter Reinert discovered at a folk festival and interviewed that year was Tracy Chapman, now a Grammy Award-winning artist known for singles such as "Fast Car" and "Give Me One Reason."

Barely into her 20s, and about three years before her first album would be released, Chapman caught Reinert's ear, and he invited her to come on his show, which turned out to be Chapman's first ever radio interview.

"I didn't remember any of the details of the interview," Reinert said after listening to his interview with Chapman recently. "Except for her music."

It's not surprising that Reinert's strongest memory of his interview with Chapman is her music. Even after nearly three decades, her voice remains powerful. It's emotional. Listening to her then gives you the sense that she's really been that great all along and was only waiting for the world to wake up and realize her talent.

Occasionally over the years, Monteith thought about the Chapman interview but never got around to listening to it again even when the station digitized the audio several years ago.

Then when she was thinking about how WUMB could participate in Public Radio Music Month, Monteith knew the Chapman interview needed to be resurfaced for a new generation of public radio and music lovers to experience.

So, Monteith got up from her desk, and in five minutes was able to pull the audio of the Chapman interview from the station's archives.

It might sound like a simple task, but finding such a gem among 3,000 pieces of audio in the station's archives in such a short amount of time would have been impossible for Monteith just a few years ago.

WUMB received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of the American Archive Inventory Project. The funds allowed the station to hire someone to inventory all their reels of audio and properly archive and preserve them in cold storage.

"If it wasn't for this project and this grant, I certainly wouldn't have been able to find this audio so quickly," Monteith says. "I really have to credit CPB for helping us take care of our archives."

Even before Monteith played the Chapman interview again, she says she could sense she was holding a bit of history in her hands.

"To hear musicians in their own words, it's an emotional connection you can hear in their voice," she says of the anticipation. "It's so powerful and meaningful."

It's the live interview and live music that Monteith loves so much.

"You can never capture again the uniqueness of a live interview or live music. Unless you record it," Monteith says. "Radio gives us a chance to hear a one of a kind experience."

Today, April 30, WUMB posted Reinert's interview with Chapman on their website so many more people can listen to the beginnings of this very talented artist.

In the process of asking Chapman for approval to re-broadcast her interview, Chapman called Monteith personally.

"I told her how great I thought the interview was and how she seemed so self-aware and a very young age," she said. "She seemed genuinely appreciated and humbled by the kind words."

"It was a conversation I'll never forget," Monteith said.

Much like Chapman's first radio interview in 1985.