Bringing The World Home To You

© 2025 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862

Donate

Play Live Radio

Next Up:

0:00

0:00 0:00

Available On Air Stations

Already a Sustainer? Click here to increase now →

Woodpeckers and tennis players share similarities when preparing to strike

By Christopher Intagliata,

Marc Rivers

Published November 7, 2025 at 3:52 PM EST

Scientists have investigated how woodpeckers use their muscles and their breathing to prepare to strike wood -- and they liken it to the way tennis players prepare to smack a ball.

Christopher Intagliata

Christopher Intagliata is an editor at All Things Considered, where he writes news and edits interviews with politicians, musicians, restaurant owners, scientists and many of the other voices heard on the air.

See stories by Christopher Intagliata

Marc Rivers

Stories From This Author

'She was fearless from the start,' says Nancy Pelosi biographer

Christopher Intagliata

NPR's Juana Summers talks with Susan Page, the author of Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power about Pelosi's legacy, following the congresswoman's decision not to seek reelection.
A new study expands on all the roads that led to Rome

Daniel Ofman

Researchers have created a new road map of the Roman world that could help historians study how religion, migration, trade, and even pandemics spread across the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
The federal shutdown has forced some Head Start migrant childcare centers to close

Jonaki Mehta

Head Start centers in Florida provide childcare and education for the kids of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The government shutdown has forced these centers to shutter, at least temporarily.