Lifestyle
Photos: See what Election Day looked like across the country
Iris and Burt Foster take a selfie after voting Dr. Henry A. Wise, Jr., High School in Upper Marlboro, Md.
Beth LaBerge/KQED
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Beth LaBerge/KQED
The final day of election season is coming to an end as polling stations around the U.S. close. The race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris remains statistically close.
NPR’s final national NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly leads former President Donald Trump among likely voters, fueled by white, college-educated voters, Black voters and Latinos.
Some of NPR’s member station photographers spent the day documenting Americans casting their votes in what could be a historic election.
Members of the Staten Island Republican Party hold signage in support of Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for drivers passing by in Staten Island, NY.
José A. Alvarado Jr./José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR
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José A. Alvarado Jr./José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR
A line forms outside of the Ruiz Branch of the Austin Public Library to vote in Austin, Texas.
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Michael Minasi/KUT News
Voters drop off their ballots on Election Day at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif.
Beth LaBerge/KQED
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Beth LaBerge/KQED
Carmen Lopez prepares to fill out her ballot on Election Day at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif.
Beth LaBerge/KQED
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Beth LaBerge/KQED
Voters cast their ballot at VFW Post 738 with the state Capitol building in view in Des Moines, Iowa.
Madeleine Charis King/IPR
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Madeleine Charis King/IPR
St. Louis County voting stickers are laid out for voters at Holy Name Community Center in Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo.
Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
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Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
At Waterbury City Hall, Joanna Dvorchak (left) and Rosemary Delano (right) hand count ballots that didn’t read in the tabulator machine the evening of Election Day in Waterbury, Conn.
Dave Wurtzel/Connecticut Public
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Dave Wurtzel/Connecticut Public
Voters arrive at Calhoun Community Center on Election Day morning to cast their ballots, with poll workers assisting with check-in and directions in Richmond, Va.
Carlos Bernate for VPM News
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Carlos Bernate for VPM News
Patti Gorman, dressed as lady liberty, talks with her former Seattle Central student, Afrikaan Sahra, right, as voters cast their ballots outside of Seattle Central College in Capitol Hill. Sahra is voting for the first time after receiving U.S. citizenship.
Megan Farmer/KUOW
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Megan Farmer/KUOW
Voters check in and head to voting booths at the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club in Charlestown, Mass.
Jesse Costa/WBUR
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Jesse Costa/WBUR
Iris and Burt Foster take a selfie after voting Dr. Henry A. Wise, Jr., High School in Upper Marlboro, Md.
Tyrone Turner/WAMU
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Tyrone Turner/WAMU
Adam Powell, 45, casts his ballot during the General Election at Holy Name Community Center in Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. A power outage at the polling site caused staff to run off of lanterns and generators.
Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
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Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
Voters wait in a long line down a spiral staircase before the polls open at 7 a.m. at the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club in Boston, Mass.
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Attendees react as a race is predicted for Trump during the Travis County Democratic Party’s Election Night watch party in Austin, Texas.
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Michael Minasi/KUT News
Ballots move through a signature verification system at the Multnomah County Elections Division office in Portland, Ore.
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Kristyna Wentz-Graff/OPB
Scanner printouts from every ballot scanner in every precinct in Fulton County are displayed at the election hub in Atlanta, Ga.
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Matthew Pearson/WABE
Voters cast their ballots at Robious Elementary School in Chesterfield County, Va.
Ryan M. Kelly/VPM News
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Richmond residents cast their votes at Fire Station #15 during the morning hours on Tuesday in Richmond, Va.
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Residents of the Jackson Heights neighborhood anxiously look on for the evening’s election results during an election night watch party in Terraza 7 in Queens in New York City.
José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR
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José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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