NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-04-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

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What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. A memorial service honoring the life of former President Jimmy Carter was held in Atlanta tonight. His funeral motorcade arrived in the Capitol after making a stop in Carter's hometown of Plains earlier today.

The late president's son Chip spoke on behalf of his father. Because Dad's legacy from Georgia and his governor's office and from the presidency was a little bit rough at the end of it because of our opposition and the way they framed us, which was probably somewhat true and somewhat not. Carter's body will lie in repose in Atlanta until Tuesday. The motorcade will then travel to Washington, D.C., where Carter's body will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Businesses in New Orleans are hoping visitors will start returning to the city after this week's deadly attack on Bourbon Street. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports it's a crucial time of year for the French Quarter. At NOLA Gifts to Go on Bourbon Street, Cindy Dacula says the store stocked up on colorful bead necklaces for the teams in this week's Sugar Bowl. This only the time that we making money because we always run out of the beads. But this time we stuck. Stuck with a lot of unsold beads, she says.

A few blocks up, an iconic restaurant had no line for its normally in demand lunch. One woman who sells tour tickets worries people will just go someplace else for a while. Many say the attack should not be a bad mark for the city. It could have happened anywhere, and they hope crowds return soon for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras. Jennifer Levin, NPR News, New Orleans. A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post resigned after the editorial page editor killed her sketch depicting tech and media titans bowing

before President-elect Donald Trump. NPR's David Falkenfleck reports, among those people depicted, was the Post's owner, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. The backdrop for all this is Bezos' decision back in October to kill the paper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the neck-and-neck election. About 300,000 people canceled digital subscriptions between revelation of his decision and election night.

Telnez tells NPR that she's used to editing but has never had an editor say she cannot address a particular subject at the post. Editorial page editor David Shipley says he values her contributions, but that two colleagues had written columns on the same subject. Too much repetition. Telnez says media magnates have an obligation to protect the free press, and that cartoonists need those protections too. David Falkenflich, NPR News.

You're listening to NPR News from Washington. President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a White House ceremony today. For the final time as president, I have the honor of bestowing the Medal of Freedom on our nation's highest civilian honor on a group of extraordinary, truly extraordinary people who gave their sacred effort, their sacred effort to shape the culture and the cause of America. The Medal of Freedom was awarded to 19 people, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, actor Michael J. Fox,

and philanthropist George Soros. A team of researchers in southern England have uncovered more than 200 Jurassic footprints. Rebecca Rossman reports they were discovered on a so-called dinosaur highway. The discovery started last June when a worker at a limestone quarry in Oxfordshire spotted unusual bumps as he was digging up clay. Now, a team of over 100 people has confirmed those bumps are in fact dinosaur footprints dating back to the Middle Jurassic period, roughly 166 million years ago. They uncovered five trackways, four made by long-necked herbivores called sauropods and one believed to have been made by a carnivorous megalosaurus. In one area sauropod and megalosaurus tracks overlap, sparking questions about possible interactions between the species. Tracks were first found in the area nearly 30 years ago, leading the British government

to designate the quarry as one of the world's most significant dinosaur track sites. Rebecca Ransman, NPR News. This is NPR. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes and home prices, the S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever, follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR.