Arts & Life

Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis during a guest appearance on ABC's The Chew last fall. She can cook rich foods and keep her trim figure, but new research suggests that's a difficult feat for amateur cooks watching along at home.

Do TV Cooking Shows Make Us Fat?

1:37pm March 18, 2015

by Allison Aubrey

Women who cooked the meals they saw prepared on television weighed more, on average, than those who simply watched, a study shows. The findings challenge the notion that home cooking is always best.

Queue Listen Now

Idris Elba stars as an African warlord in the forthcoming film Beasts of No Nation. Netflix recently purchased distribution rights for the film for nearly $12 million.

Arts

Movie Chains Balk At Netflix's Plan For Simultaneous Release

12:58pm March 18, 2015

by Mandalit del Barco

The streaming service plans to release Beasts Of No Nation, starring Idris Elba, in theaters and online at the same time. But at least four major movie theater chains won't be showing it.

Queue Listen Now

Robert Durst was the subject of the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx.

Arts

'The Jinx' And The Challenges of Public Curiosity

12:36pm March 18, 2015

by Linda Holmes

One of the lessons documentarians are learning is that the more people like your work, the more they ask questions about it.

Books
Arts

25 Years After Art Heist, Empty Frames Still Hang In Boston's Gardner Museum

12:23pm March 18, 2015

by NPR Staff

On March 18, 1990, robbers stole $500 million in art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Author Stephen Kurkjian explains why anyone would bother to steal work so priceless it couldn't be sold.

Queue Listen Now

A team of archaeologists and anthropologists work on identifying remains at the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid. They believe they've found the 400-year-old grave of the author of Don Quixote.

Books
Arts

Cervantes' Remains Have Been Found In Madrid, Scientists Say

8:31pm March 17, 2015

by Jasmine Garsd

Almost 400 years after his death, researchers have found bone fragments that seem to match what they know about the celebrated author's burial.

The Last Flight of Poxl West cover detail.

Books
Arts

WWII Novel-Memoir Explores The Blurry Line Between Fact And Fiction

6:33pm March 17, 2015

In Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West, a Jewish refugee tells his heroic World War II story in a best-selling — and partly fabricated — memoir.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

'Escape' Is A Searing Indictment Of Nation-Building

3:07pm March 17, 2015

by Daniel José Older

Saad Hossain's new novel is a wild ride through war, tyranny and the supernatural, set in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. Critic Daniel José Older praises the book's "poetic and brutal precision."

Mai Tai Sing dances with her husband, Wilbur Tai Sing, in 1942.

Books
Arts

These Nightclub Entertainers Paved The Way For Asian-Americans In Showbiz

2:27pm March 17, 2015

by Heidi Chang

Forbidden City was part of a Chinese-American nightclub scene that flourished in 1940s and '50s San Francisco. But between racial taunts and scandalized parents, its performers didn't have it easy.

Queue Listen Now

Mas Masumoto grew up on his family farm southeast of Fresno, Calif. His 1987 essay "Epitaph for A Peach," in which he bemoaned the loss of heirloom flavors, captured his changing philosophy as a farmer. It also helped turn his farm into a landmark in the

The Family Peach Farm That Became A Symbol Of The Food Revolution

1:50pm March 17, 2015

by Dan Charles

Heirloom peach trees, and an essay about them, turned one California farm into a landmark of local food. It's now the scene of another unconventional choice: a daughter's return to take the helm.

Queue Listen Now

Looks Matter: A Century Of Iconic Food Packaging

1:49pm March 17, 2015

by Tove Danovich

Many of the boxes, bags and bottles that contain our edibles were once groundbreaking — both in their design and in how they changed our perception of what's inside. Designers tell us their favorites.