Pat Duggins
News DirectorPat Duggins is APR’s news director. As a kid, he watched the Apollo manned moon launches along Florida’s space coast. Pat later spent 14 years covering NASA for NPR. After re-organizing the APR newsroom, he and the team were honored with over 150 awards for excellence in journalism. That includes APR being the first radio newsroom to receive RFK Human Rights’ “Seigenthaler Prize for Courage in Journalism.” Pat holds a master’s degree from the University of Alabama and has published two books on NASA. When he’s not at APR, he enjoys cooking with Lucia, and tending his beloved fig tree.
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Alabama rallied from a 17-point deficit once in the College Football Playoff against Oklahoma, but there would not be a repeat performance against No. 1 Indiana in a quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl. The Crimson Tide tried everything possible to stage a historic comeback on the site of so many memorable moments for the program. -
An estimated half million Alabamians could see the cost of their healthcare jump by up to twenty five percent as soon as today. The Kaiser Family Foundation website says that’s how many Alabamians are covered by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and by how much the cost of that coverage may increase with the expiration of federal subsidies. That apparently doesn’t include the number of state residents who will lose their health insurance altogether. -
A judge has ordered a new trial for an Alabama woman who was sentenced to 18 years in prison following a stillbirth that her attorneys argued was caused by an infection rather than drug use. -
Sportswriters have no end of Rose Bowl story lines as the Crimson Tide prepares to face Indiana (for the first time ever—one more angle.) Observers didn’t know that when Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe was stopped on a fourth down in overtime by Michigan in 2023 that Nick Saban had coached his final game for Alabama. -
New Year’s Eve is tomorrow night. The Alabama Triple-A is still expecting big crowds even though 2026 begins at midnight going into Thursday. The automobile service predicted that over one hundred and twenty two million people would hit the road between Christmas and New Year’s. Triple-A spokesman Clay Ingram says everyone should expect busy roads even though New Year’s Eve falls midweek. -
Alabama is gearing up to play Indiana in the Rose Bowl this Thursday in the CFP quarterfinals. For fans of the Crimson Tide, the game represents one hundred years since Alabama beat the Washington Huskies in 1926, in the same venue, to win its first national championship. Sportswriters still debate some of the the subsequent titles. -
Charity groups and municipal agencies in Jefferson County and Decatur are announcing that they will have warming stations open ahead of Monday night’s forecast with lows in the lower twenties along the Tennessee Valley. Below freezing overnight conditions are expected to continue until Thursday. -
The shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Cook, the federal budget shutdown, and the selection of American Robert Prevost as Pope Leo the fourteenth back in May were among the Associated Press’ biggest stories of 2025, in Alabama and around the nation. -
Graphite mines in the United States largely closed down seven decades ago. Mining the ubiquitous mineral found in everything from nuclear reactors to pencils seemed to make little sense when it could be imported inexpensively from other nations, especially China.That view is changing now. And, Alabama is among the states taking part. -
Last weekend's first round of the College Football Playoff averaged 9.9 million viewers on ABC, ESPN, TNT, TBS and truTV, according to ESPN and Nielson. That is a 7% drop from last year. Alabama's win over Oklahoma was the exception.
