Going Through A Midlife Crisis? 'Summerlong' Is No Escape
Dean Bakopoulos' darkly humorous novel Summerlong features a cast of Midwestern suburbanites suffocating from adulthood.
Arts
Make Lava, Not War
A sculptor and a geologist are melting hundreds of pounds of rock in a giant cauldron to create realistic lava flows. Cool! NPR reporter Adam Cole pays a visit to learn more about lava's allure.
Do Try This At Home: Hacking Chicken Sous Vide
Sous-vide makes meat moist and flavorful, but can take up to 96 hours, not to mention a $500 machine. Chef Christina Tosi shares a technique she uses to cheat in her home kitchen: the "Bird in a Bag."
'Keepers' Isn't One: A Critic's Highlight Reel Lacks Spark
Longtime film writer Richard Schickel's unsatisfying collection of movie musings deems pleasure and intellectualism mutually exclusive.
It's A Snap
This game has attitude — each answer is a word or phrase containing the word "snap." But extra coordination is required: substitute an actual *snap* of your fingers where it appears in the answer.
Celebrity Wedding Announcements
How do you make a celebrity marriage work? We think it's all in the name. Imagine nuptials between two celebs whose paired surnames create a phrase: Keith Urban plus John Legend = Urban-Legend!
Lake Street Dive: My Beautiful Balloon
The soul-pop quartet behind Bad Self Portraits reveals its extraordinary talent of covering pop songs using, yes, party balloons. Can you guess the titles of these squeaky melodies?
Presidential Keywords
U.S. Presidents spend years in office, but their tenure is often remembered in the mind of the public by a singular moment or trait. Given a keyword, you tell us which President it describes.
IQ Test
These words, names, and phrases contain the letters "IQ" consecutively somewhere inside of them. Does this somewhat oblique game pique your interest?
Very Confused TV Guide
Have you ever been perplexed by the on-screen guide descriptions of your favorite TV shows? Us too. We serve up descriptions of shows, whose titles have been taken perhaps a bit too literally.