Arts & Life

Firearms designer John Browning submitted this design for the M1911 pistol to the U.S. Patent Office in September 1910.

Books
Arts

A Posthumous Tribute To Guns From A Sniper Shot To Death

6:17pm June 16, 2013

by NPR Staff

Considered by many to be the most deadly sniper in American military history, Chris Kyle was killed on a Texas gun range in February. He was an outspoken advocate for both veterans and gun rights, and his book, American Gun, has just been published.

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New York artist Tatayana Fazlalizadeh uses posters to combat unwanted cat calls and attention from men in her neighborhood.

Fighting Unwanted Cat Calls, One Poster At A Time

6:19pm June 15, 2013

by Stephen Nessen

For women on city streets, unwanted attention from men often comes in the form of cat calls, whistles and roving eyes. New York artist Tatayana Fazlalizadeh says she's had enough and is taking her art to the streets.

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Books
Arts

Telling Stories About Ourselves In 'The Faraway Nearby'

6:19pm June 15, 2013

by NPR Staff

"Stories are compasses and architecture," says author Rebecca Solnit. "We navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of the world."

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Stephen King delves into the seedy underworld of carnies for his latest novel, Joyland.

Books
Arts

Stephen King On Growing Up, Believing In God And Getting Scared

2:29pm June 14, 2013

"The more carny it got, the better I liked it," King says of his new thriller, Joyland. The book, set in a North Carolina amusement park in 1973, is part horror novel and part supernatural thriller. King talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his career writing horror, and about what scares him now.

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Fran Kranz stars as Claudio in Joss Whedon's new take on Shakespeare's classic comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

Arts

Whedon's Touch Finds A Match With 'Much Ado'

1:31pm June 14, 2013

by David Edelstein

Sandwiched into Joss Whedon's busy schedule of TV series and big-screen features was an unexpected low-budget adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing — shot in black and white. Film critic David Edelstein says it's a delight. (Recommended)

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Arts

John Oliver: Topical Comedy With A Crisp Accent

1:26pm June 14, 2013

With Jon Stewart on leave, The Daily Show's "Senior British Correspondent" John Oliver has stepped up to fill in as host. In a Fresh Air interview from 2010, he talks about moving to the United States to join the show — and the weird credibility his accent immediately gives him with Americans.

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Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, won this year's Man Booker Prize.

Books
Arts

Mantel Takes Up Betrayal, Beheadings In 'Bodies'

1:26pm June 14, 2013

Hilary Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize twice, first for her 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, and then for that book's 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The novels are part of a historical fiction trilogy about Tudor England and the events surrounding the reign of King Henry VIII.

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Actor Henry Cavill and director Zack Snyder confer on a shot for an early sequence in Man of Steel. Cavill is the first British actor to wear Superman's iconic red and blue — though not the first to play a D.C. comics superhero.

Arts

Zack Snyder, Making Superman Over For Our Era

11:04am June 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

In Man of Steel, the director behind Watchmen and 300 has had a go at that most quintessentially American superhero. He speaks with NPR's Linda Werthheimer about his reverence for the character's mythology — and why he chose to change some of it up.

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Books
Arts

Meet 'Ivan': The Gorilla Who Lived In A Shopping Mall

7:00pm June 13, 2013

by NPR Staff

Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan was inspired by a real-life gorilla who lived in a mall in Tacoma, Wash. The author says humans have "a real obligation" to care responsibly for animals in captivity.

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Jeremy Jackson wanted to rethink his grandma Mildred's famous Strawberry Cake recipe, which uses boxed cake mix and Jell-O. His updated cupcake version is shown on the right.

Arts

Saving Grandma's Strawberry Cake From The Clutches Of Jell-O

6:35pm June 13, 2013

by Serri Graslie

Postwar marketing of convenience foods pushed our grandmothers to take many shortcuts in the kitchen that modern foodies might find unpalatable. Many involved Jell-O. Cookbook author Jeremy Jackson updated his grandma Mildred's famous strawberry cake recipe to remove this old-school secret ingredient.

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