Here are the top stories of 2023

2023 has been a wild year, and with it we’ve had some truly wild stories. We’ve learned the truth about Fireball, survived some TikTok trends, seen a woman saved by a dead rabbit, honored incredible lives and learned more about aliens.
The news cycle feels more frenetic than ever, which can make it hard to remember everything that’s happened this year.
Here’s a look back at the top stories that captured readers’ attention in 2023 from NPR.org and across the NPR Network.
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How do you sell mini bottles in places that don’t sell liquor? Don’t put liquor in the bottle.

In his final show, Carlson wished viewers the “best weekend,” saying he’d be back on Monday.

Massive amounts of data and 715,000 still images bring the most detailed view yet of the 1912 wreck.
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). A visitor from Hawaii was apparently trying to help the newborn animal rejoin its mother.

The prehistoric animals have strikingly blue blood. Since the 1960s, companies have been using it to detect bacterial toxins.

A back-and-forth with Congress members offers titillating details about unexplained phenomena.

To this day, no woman has run the 100 meters as fast as the U.S. track star. But she didn’t live to be 40.

As an expert told NPR, “It’s an exciting opportunity to give these birds names that celebrate them.”

Bubba Copeland was an effective city leader and a pastor. Then a news site turned his life upside down.

Beyond her handwritten notes, her neighbors knew little about the woman who lived in Manhattan’s theater district.
is made up of over 200 local newsrooms at
across the country sharing local reporting with their communities. In an increasingly interconnected world, sometimes a story that starts close to home can captivate people all over the world.
Here are the stories that did just that this year.
As KBBI reports, when 29-year old Kelsey Haas, an experienced adventurer, fell through a patch of thin ice last winter while skating in Homer, Alaska, she had to get creative to survive.
Without running the furnace? Or even having a furnace? As Maine Public explains, this family in Hope, Maine, is doing just that.
As she explains in her piece for WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog, the comfort of dying at home could cost you a fortune.
As KERA in Dallas reports, Erythritol can be found in artificial sweeteners like Equal, Stevia and Truvia.
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A few weeks later, Kouri Richins was charged with her husband’s murder. The wild story from KPCW in Park City, Utah, got national attention as we soon learned Richins had been cut out of her late husband’s will
she
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The explosive chemical went missing during a train ride somewhere between Cheyenne, Wyo., and the Mojave Desert, KQED reported earlier this year.

Aleta Ayo told Colorado Public Radio caring for residents in an assisted living facility was hard but rewarding work, where she was the lone employee expected to staff the facility 24/7.

Bright red and 5 inches long, as WBEZ Chicago shared in August, the red swamp crayfish look like mini lobsters, and scientists want them gone.
WFSU in Florida found over half a million cars in the Sunshine State need their software updated.
These stories were published in years past, but found new resonance in 2023:
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Back in 2010, NPR aired the full audio of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Each January, the transcript we shared of his remarks attracts renewed attention.
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An ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough childhood. Back in 2015, the
shared a test to allow you to calculate your individual score.
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When this piece was first published, issues of equality and acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people — along with challenges to their rights
had become a major topic in the headlines. Throughout 2023, it attracted renewed attention as many of those challenges have persisted.