Arts + Life

Here at NPR, we're always game for a good public radio spoof. And yesterday, the terrifyingly funny folks from Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! (@waitwait) started their own public radio, shall we say, spook.

It all started with this tweet (which was clearly dying for a response):

It makes all the sense in the world to cover new things — the movies opening this weekend, the TV shows premiering right now, the books that have just been released — to the degree people are asking the questions (1) What's interesting about this new thing? (2) Is this new thing good? and (3) What new things are there? Those are important parts of cultural coverage, and they always will be.

Many people might know Condola Rashad as the daughter of actress Phylicia Rashad, who played Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, and NFL sportscaster Ahmad Rashad. The 26-year-old got Tony Award nominations for her performances in Stick Fly and The Trip to Bountiful. Now she takes on her first lead role on Broadway in the new production of Romeo & Juliet. Her Romeo is Orlando Bloom of Lord of the Rings fame.

Condola Rashad spoke with Tell Me More guest host Celeste Headlee about making the iconic role her own.

Barbara Allen and Bill Sabo from Columbus Unscripted tell me about how they got infected with the improv bug and why just the mention of a city, a color of paint, and a fruit can set them off into improv-ing. Be careful, listeners, the improv bug is spreading in Columbus, especially at the Second Annual Columbus Unscripted Improv Festival on October 24-27.

NPR's Steve Inskeep has a confession to make. In order to remain composed as the host of Morning Edition, he sometimes has to turn the volume down in the studio when the StoryCorps segment airs on Fridays.

"I just wait for the clock to run down so I know when to talk at the end because otherwise I know I'm going to lose it if I listen to that story," Inskeep tells StoryCorps founder Dave Isay. "It's deeply moving."

  October 18 Six String Concerts performer Nels Andrews tells Craft host Doug Dangler about his chauffeuring job with "The Countess of Glamor" and the "deep emotional pining" necessary to write his songs.

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe in life after death. Even so, many people choose to discuss the topic only within fairly tight circles of family, friends, clergy and others who share their faith.

So this week, All Things Considered is discussing the concept of an afterlife with leaders from several different schools of thought, including an evangelical Protestant pastor, an imam, a nun, a rabbi and a moral and political philosopher.

Awards shows aren't easy. That's partly because they're fundamentally unsympathetic affairs in which rich pretty people give each other trophies, and partly because there are only a few real things on which they can be judged: the opening by the host, the montages and features, the speeches, the assorted intangibles and — oh, right — who wins.

By almost any of these measures, Sunday night's Emmy Awards were not only merely bad but really most sincerely bad, or at best (particularly in the case of winners) a bag that's very much mixed.

Sesame Street kicked off its new season this week, and it's putting a special focus on Hispanic heritage. There's also a new character on the block: Armando (also known as Mando). He's played by actor Ismael Cruz Cordova, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He earned a bachelor's in fine arts from New York University and has appeared in several films and the CBS drama The Good Wife. He's currently performing off-Broadway.

When Dan Miller was growing up, his family lived about a mile away from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisc. He had eight siblings and the family was poor. His father, Robert, supported them by working at Consolidated Papers Inc.

I cannot understand how I missed the news that Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones are about to open as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, but this charming list of past pairings makes me want to watch the play ... a lot. (David Tennant and Catherine Tate!

"It could have been me. It could have been me."

These were the words uttered by painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was deeply shaken after he heard the story of a black graffiti artist who was beaten to death by New York City police. Seeing his own life reflected in the death of a fellow artist, Basquiat went on to create Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), not only to commemorate the young man's death, but also to challenge the state-sanctioned brutality that men of color could face for pursuing their art in public spaces.