Arts & Life

Books
Arts

'Barbara' Is Imperfect, Defiant And Wonderfully Human

7:45pm July 30, 2015

by Michael Schaub

The characters in Lauren Holmes' debut story collection are more than words on a page, says reviewer Michael Schaub. They're fully, exasperatingly real, portrayed with charm but without pretension.

Arts

'Listen To Me Marlon' Explores Brando's Life In His Own Words

6:24pm July 30, 2015

The documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, tells the story of legendary actor Marlon Brando through hours of personal audio recordings. NPR's Melissa Block talks to director Stevan Riley about the film.

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Arts

'The End of the Tour' Offers A Hint Of David Foster Wallace's Inner Struggle

5:20pm July 30, 2015

by David Edelstein

A new film revisits a five-day interview that took place between writer David Foster Wallace and a reporter for Rolling Stone in 1996. Critic David Edelstein calls it a "very good movie."

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Even if you don't speak their language, you can likely communicate with these musicians through song and dance: Men from Papua New Guinea; Wiz Khalifa at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards; and Japanese dancers at the Daihanya Festival in Kagoshima City.

From Pygmy Hunting Songs To Taylor Swift, What Makes Music Universal

2:29pm July 30, 2015

by Michaeleen Doucleff

Can you hear what's similar about a Palestinian line dance and Swift's "Shake It Off"? Or The Sound of Music's "Do-Re-Mi" and a Pygmy song? Scientists have finally decoded the language of music.

An illustration from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, published in 1897. Between the 1860s and 1920, when Prohibition went into effect, American bartending came into its own.

The Golden Age Of Cocktails: When Americans Learned To Love Mixed Drinks

2:16pm July 30, 2015

by Nadia Whitehead

The Manhattan, the daiquiri, the martini. These classic cocktails were all born between the 1860s and Prohibition, an era when American bartending got inventive — and theatrical.

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Books
Arts

'Baby' Is A Pretty Feat Of Misdirection

1:34pm July 30, 2015

by Bethanne Patrick

Mary Kubica's new thriller follows a woman who takes in a runaway and her baby daughter. Reviewer Bethanne Patrick says it's a perfect setup — but the twists you expect aren't the ones that arrive.

Books
Arts

Women's Comics Are Surfing The Crowd

12:04pm July 30, 2015

by Etelka Lehoczky

It's no secret that women are getting more prominent in the world of comics. But some women are tired of waiting for mainstream attention: They're turning to crowdfunding to get their projects done.

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist Magazine.

A Sense Of Self: What Happens When Your Brain Says You Don't Exist

8:49am July 30, 2015

In his new book, The Man Who Wasn't There, Anil Ananthaswamy examines the ways people think of themselves — and how those perceptions can be distorted by certain brain conditions.

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Arts

Totally Rad Sayings

12:24am July 30, 2015

We're celebrating all things '80s in this show, and why not start with the decade's unmistakable slang? We'll thesaurus-ize some '80s phrases, and you have to give us the original saying.

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Arts

The Tin Age Of Television

12:24am July 30, 2015

In this game, guess whether TV show descriptions are of actual short-lived '80s shows, or if we made them up.

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