Arts & Life

Books
Arts

'Unclaimed Baggage' Is The Quintessential Southern Novel For Teens

7:00am September 23, 2018

by Alethea Kontis

Jen Doll's new novel follows a group of misfit kids working at Alabama's legendary Unclaimed Baggage store, a place where all kinds of lost things (and people, and one purple leopard suitcase) end up.

The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre.

How The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Began In A Mother's Living Room Lab

5:26pm September 22, 2018

by Melissa Block

"The language of type can be immensely clarifying," says author Merve Emre. In The Personality Brokers she describes how a mother-daughter duo started a multi-million dollar "people sorting" industry.

The second season of Netflix's American Vandal uses several true-crime techniques, like this moody reenactment, to explore its fake-crime story.

Arts

How To Defend Season 2 Of 'American Vandal' Against Its Naysayers

7:00am September 22, 2018

by Glen Weldon

Now that enough people have seen the second season of Netflix's comedy/drama/true crime parody, your weekend will be full of people comparing it unfavorably to season one. Here's why they're wrong.

Aly Raisman competes on the balance beam during the Women's Individual All Around Final on Day 6 of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Sports
Arts

Not My Job: Gymnast Aly Raisman Plays A Game Called 'Oy! A Vault!'

6:40am September 22, 2018

Gymnasts are experts in one kind of vault ... but what about the kind you store your stuff in? Three questions for Olympian Aly Raisman, who has chronicled her career in the memoir Fierce.

Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

Books
Arts

Lorraine Hansberry: Radiant, Radical — And More Than 'Raisin'

6:28am September 22, 2018

by Karen Grigsby Bates

A new biography of the African-American playwright shows that she was so much more than her most famous work: A Raisin in the Sun.

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Muhammad Ali Biography Reveals A Flawed Rebel Who Loved Attention

1:40pm September 21, 2018

by Terry Gross

"I don't think we do Ali any good by treating him as a saint," says biographer Jonathan Eig. "He was a human being, and he was deeply flawed." Originally broadcast Oct. 4, 2017.

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Arts

'Jane Fonda In Five Acts' Reveals The Shifting Identities Of An Icon

1:40pm September 21, 2018

by John Powers

Susan Lacy's terrific HBO documentary examines Fonda's juicy, controversial life in five parts. The first four are named for a man under whose influence Fonda lived; in the fifth, she stands alone.

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Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) and Eli (John C. Reilly) Sisters are a brotherly pair of assassins-for-hire in Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers.

Arts

The Tough Wild West — Now With Feelings — In 'The Sisters Brothers'

12:39pm September 21, 2018

by Justin Chang

Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly play a brotherly pair of assassins-for-hire in Jacques Audiard's latest film. Critic Justin Chang calls The Sisters Brothers a "funny, stirring, brutal story."

This Is They: Abby (Olivia Wilde) and Will (Oscar Isaac) get caught up in Life Itself.

Arts

Life Can Be A Mess, But So Is 'Life Itself'

5:01pm September 20, 2018

by Linda Holmes

Life Itself, from the creator of This Is Us, launches two family stories on two different continents. It offers some lovely moments, but its grand ambitions are beyond its grasp.

Willy (Dominic West) and Colette (Keira Knightley) audition prospective Claudines in Wash Westmoreland's Colette.

Arts

'Colette' Is A Thoroughly Modern Fille

5:00pm September 20, 2018

by Glen Weldon

Wash Westmoreland's biopic of a French literary lioness is well-acted, gorgeously mounted and weighed down with incongruously modern speeches about sexuality and gender.