Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.
NPR's Pien Huang takes a journey to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to hear from youth voices about how they're telling the story of America on the 4th of July.