Culture : NPR

Shacochis Spans Generations In 'The Woman Who Lost Her Soul'

August 31, 2013 • In his new book, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Bob Shacochis returns to Haiti, but also takes the reader across continents and generations. The 700-page book has been compared to the work of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Norman Mailer.

Shacochis Spans Generations In 'The Woman Who Lost Her Soul'

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Welcome To 'Night Vale' — Watch Out For The Tarantulas

Welcome to Night Vale is the number one most downloaded podcast on iTunes. Jeffrey Cranor & Joseph Fink hide caption

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Jeffrey Cranor & Joseph Fink

Welcome To 'Night Vale' — Watch Out For The Tarantulas

August 31, 2013 • The popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast imagines a creepy desert town where conspiracies are real. From the hooded figures lurking in the closed-up dog park to the mysterious lights above the Arby's, Night Vale is a standard small American town that's just not quite right.

Welcome To 'Night Vale' — Watch Out For The Tarantulas

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The Rise And Fall Of Slackers

August 31, 2013 • As we pause this Labor Day weekend to celebrate the Great American Worker, we can't help but wonder: Where have all the do-nothings gone? Like pay phones and video parlors, slackers seem to have disappeared.

This Pork Loin Sandwich Starts With Happy Pigs

Matt Jennings' pork loin sandwich. Catherine Welch/NPR hide caption

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Catherine Welch/NPR

This Pork Loin Sandwich Starts With Happy Pigs

August 31, 2013 • One Rhode Island chef collects all of the ingredients for his sandwich, including the meat, at the local farmer's market. It's piled high with herb-marinaded slaw and greens for a picnic lunch that requires plenty of napkins.

This Pork Loin Sandwich Starts With Happy Pigs

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Questions For Hugh Howey, Author Of 'WOOL'

Hugh Howey self-published the original WOOL novella in 2011. It has since grown to become a best-selling phenomenon. Amber Lyda hide caption

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Amber Lyda

Questions For Hugh Howey, Author Of 'WOOL'

August 31, 2013 • Hugh Howey is the author of the dystopian WOOL series, about a future in which the remains of humanity are living underground in giant self-sustaining silos. The first volume of WOOL was a self-publishing sensation; the latest volume, Dust, has just been released.

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Don't Panic! Your Questions On (Not) Washing Raw Chickens

August 31, 2013 • Our story on the food safety risks posed by rinsing raw birds — a step advocated by many chefs and cookbooks — inflamed passions and prompted many questions. Here, we tackle some of your most frequently raised concerns.

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Call Me, Haiti? One Man's Quest To Skype Around The World

August 31, 2013 • Mark Malkoff has lived inside of an IKEA store, consumed beverages at 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in less than 24 hours and proved that his kid's Big Wheel bike could beat a New York City bus. Now, the comedian has video chatted with people in 162 different countries — including North Korea.

Call Me, Haiti? One Man's Quest To Skype Around The World

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Lisa Marie Mazzucco/Emanuel Ax

Not My Job: Pianist Emanuel Ax Takes A Quiz On Axe Body Spray

August 30, 2013 • The classical pianist has won seven Grammy awards and recorded with the world's greatest orchestras. We've invited him to play a game called "You make men irresistible to women!"

Not My Job: Pianist Emanuel Ax Takes A Quiz On Axe Body Spray

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How Do You Say ...? For Some Words, There's No Easy Translation

August 30, 2013 • The feeling of solitude in the woods ... the sunlight that filters through trees ... someone who tells a joke so badly that you have to laugh. In English, these things require a whole string of words. Not so in German, Japanese and Indonesian, respectively.

How Do You Say ...? For Some Words, There's No Easy Translation

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Heaney's Poems — Great, Dangerous, Healing — Live On

Poet Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1995, is seen here in a file photo from 1991, when he was a professor at Harvard. Heaney has died at age 74. Joe Wrinn/AP hide caption

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Joe Wrinn/AP

The Two-Way

Heaney's Poems — Great, Dangerous, Healing — Live On

August 30, 2013 • The Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney died this morning in Dublin at the age of 74. In a remembrance, poet and critic Craig Morgan Teicher writes that Heaney had mastered sound and nuance, crafting poems you can taste and feel, alive and powerful, as you speak them aloud.

Ask Me Another

Really Hard Edition: Part 3

August 30, 2013 • Hear chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley play a game about the quirks of fellow chess players, plus an interview with NPR puzzlemaster Will Shortz and a diabolical anagram of Shortz' own devising.

Really Hard Edition: Part 3

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Ask Me Another

Really Hard Edition: Part 1

August 30, 2013 • Hear "The Philosopher's Comedy Club," which imagines that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were actually hacky comedians, and "Presidential Middle Names," a mash-up round that may melt your brain.

Really Hard Edition: Part 1

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Ask Me Another

Really Hard Edition: Part 2

August 30, 2013 • Play along with notorious stumpers like spelling game "Top Row," mix pop music with mental math in "Algebraic Music," and make puns of world leaders' names in "Imperial Pets."

Really Hard Edition: Part 2

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