Arts

    

Meg Wolitzer's novel is about lifelong friendship tinged with jealousy. It begins at a summer camp in 1974 and follows a group of friends through middle age. Wolitzer says her teen years were a rehearsal for her adult life and that today she is "different" but "in the same shell."

On Monday night, Jimmy Fallon paid homage to 60 years of Tonight Show history while claiming his own place in line. "I just want to do the best I can and take care of the show for a while," he said. "If you guys let me stick around long enough maybe I'll get the hang of it."

On Sunday, the London Philharmonic debuted a new piece of music based on Roald Dahl's Dirty Beasts. With Matilda playing to sold-out crowds on Broadway and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory running in London's West End, this is just the latest work by the author to get a musical soundtrack.

A new biography reveals that young Thoreau took quite a few detours on his path to Walden. A gossipy young man who loved eating popcorn, ice skating and listening to his music box, schoolmates and neighbors found him standoffish and regarded his fascination with plants and Indian relics as downright odd.

The Carolina Winter Music Festival presents “Brass Under the Big Top”, music and magic of the circus for the whole family this Saturday morning, February 22, at 11:00 AM in the Milton Rhodes Center. The unique performance features the acclaimed Giannini Brass with Special Guest Dikki Ellis, from New York's Big Apple Circus. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Dikki's performance “terrific”, and the N.Y. Post's Clive Barnes said: "One also had to admire the actual circus feats of a very deft Dikki Ellis...".

An app that helps researchers measure happiness? It's here! NPR's Guy Raz from the Ted Radio Hour speaks with social scientist Matt Killingsworth, who has developed the Happy App.

At an age when David Ford's big obsession was where to find the next wiffle ball game, Petr Ginz was inventing secret codes, making watercolors, and writing novels—five of them by the age of 14! Petr was murdered by the Nazis two years later, but his amazing life and the many lives he touched in and out of the concentration camps are remembered and celebrated in the Wake Forest University production of Embers and Stars: The Story of Petr Ginz. It's Valentine's Day, and film scholar Mary Dalton takes us Behind the Scenes to answer that nagging question: what exactly makes a movie Romantic. Winston-Salem Forsyth County Arts Council President and CEO Jim Sparrow's got an artistic vision that'll rock—jazz, classical and folk—your world. And then we're off to the dance at High Point University. Cara Hagan is here with a choreographer's keen eye for storytelling. We wrap things up with Touring Theatre of NC actor Camilla Millican and a Valentine's Day Card that'll take you Over the Edge.

Scientists have made some attempts to link mollusks to increased libido. There's even evidence that consuming heavy doses of an amino acid found in oysters can increase sperm count – in rabbits. But do any of these findings actually prove that oysters can — ahem — amp up arousal? Not so much.