Arts & Life

An Inside Look That Strips The Face Paint Off The NFL

8:44pm November 23, 2013

by Mike Pesca

Writer Nicholas Dawidoff spent a year living with the New York Jets and came away with a respect for players and coaches that not all fans will like. NPR's Mike Pesca says Dawidoff's new book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football, demystifies the game as it entrances.

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Lyndon B. Johnson delivers a speech 28 July 1965 in the White House in Washington, D.C.

Books
Arts

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Senate

7:21pm November 22, 2013

With the invocation of the so-called "nuclear option," Senate Democrats moved to limit the power of the filibuster and dramatically change the nature of the institution. Many — on both sides — point to the maneuver as a sign of the system's failure. Writers Drew Toal and Kate Tuttle suggest books that might offer hope for us yet.

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During JFK's funeral, live TV coverage helped make John-John Kennedy's salute an indelible image of American history.

Arts

How Live TV Helped America Mourn The Loss Of JFK

2:50pm November 22, 2013

by David Bianculli

Critic David Bianculli remembers watching the original news coverage of Kennedy's assassination — four days of unprecedented television — when he was 10 years old. He recalls how from that point on, TV, not radio, was the dominant medium for breaking news.

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Books
Arts

Introducing 'Miss Anne,' The White Women Of A Black Renaissance

12:16pm November 22, 2013

by Maureen Corrigan

That's the collective nickname Harlem-ites used for them: white women who risked family exile and social ostracism to be part of the movement. They were philanthropists and thrill seekers,educators and artists, hostesses and lovers. Carla Kaplan tells their stories in Miss Anne in Harlem.

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The walls of 5Pointz were once covered in graffiti. Artists worldwide came to New York to paint the warehouse surface.

Arts

Remembering 5Pointz: A Five-Story Building That Told Plenty More

6:54pm November 21, 2013

by Bruce Wallace

The walls of the warehouse complex in Queens were once covered with ever-evolving spray-painted art. But the graffiti museum (of sorts) has been painted over in preparation for demolition, and artists are mourning the loss.

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Beef cattle stand in a barn on the Larson Farms feedlot in Maple Park, Ill.

Inside The Beef Industry's Battle Over Growth-Promotion Drugs

4:39pm November 21, 2013

by Dan Charles

Beta agonists, a class of drugs widely fed to cattle and hogs to make them put on weight faster, are coming under increasing scrutiny. Reports suggest animals fed these drugs can seem reluctant to move — lethargic, unable to walk properly — and may die more often, too.

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In a new memoir, Anjelica Huston recounts her childhood in Ireland, her teen years in London and her coming of age in New York.

Books
Arts

Anjelica Huston Tells Her 'Story' Of Growing Up With A Director Dad

2:40pm November 20, 2013

The actor's new memoir, A Story Lately Told, ends just as her Hollywood career is taking off. It covers her early life growing up in Ireland, the daughter of Maltese Falcon director John Huston. The two first collaborated on 1969's Walk With Love And Death, a project that proved disastrous for their relationship.

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Keegan-Michael Key (left) and Jordan Peele both started their careers at Second City, Peele in Chicago and Key in Detroit.

Arts

For Key And Peele, Biracial Roots Bestow Special Comedic 'Power'

2:19pm November 20, 2013

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele each have a white mother and black father, and a lot of the jokes on their Comedy Central show are about race. Peele tells Fresh Air that their backgrounds allow them to do characters others would feel uncomfortable doing.

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Toni Servillo plays a jaded journalist and perpetual partier in The Great Beauty, Italy's submission for the best foreign language film Oscar.

Arts

'Great Beauty,' 'Narco Cultura': Excess, Succeeding Wildly

3:36pm November 19, 2013

by John Powers

Critic John Powers says Italy's submission for the best foreign language film Oscar and a documentary about the Mexican drug war got him thinking about a William Blake proverb: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

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Books
Arts

Fresh Air Remembers 'Golden Notebook' Author Doris Lessing

1:24pm November 19, 2013

Lessing's 1962 book was regarded as among the most important feminist novels of its time. She died Sunday. Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewed Lessing in 1988 and 1992.

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