Weekend Edition - Saturday

Transcript JACKI LYDEN, HOST: Like many American workers, you might be using up your vacation time over the holidays but starting tomorrow. employees at Wedding Wire don't have to worry about rationing their leave. They can take off as many days as they like, just as long as their work gets done and the manager gives the OK. Jenny Harding is the Human Resources director for the web-based event planning company. She says Wedding Wire's new unlimited vacation policy will actually be good for...

Transcript JACKI LYDEN, HOST: Time now for sports. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) LYDEN: It's the last week of the NFL season and a handful of teams are still trying to edge their way into the playoffs. The NBA season is just wrapping up its first week, but already the Miami Heat look to be steamrolling it past straight to those playoffs. And there's a playoff-worthy college basketball game today in Lexington, Kentucky. Howard Bryant of ESPN.com and ESPN the magazine joins us now. Howard, welcome and...

Transcript JACKI LYDEN, HOST: Now, to Howard's point with the stories out of Penn State and Syracuse this year, it's almost hard to remember when a scandal in college sports referred to grade fixing or dishonest boosters. But some say that what should be considered a scandal is the billions of dollars generated by college football and men's basketball with hardly any of that revenue actually going to the players. New York Times op ed columnist Joe Nocera is among those who believe that...

Transcript JACKI LYDEN, HOST: Tonight, New York's Metropolitan Opera will premiere a new piece with music that's hundreds of years old. It's called "The Enchanted Island" and it features arias by several Baroque composers, including Handel and Vivaldi, and mashes up the plots from two Shakespeare plays. And, oh yes, it stars Placido Domingo as the sea god Neptune. Jeff Lunden has still more. JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: On Broadway, it would be called a jukebox musical. Take a bunch of tunes from,...

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/ . Transcript JACKI LYDEN, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden. In February of the New Year, the British will prepare a major celebration. It's not another Royal wedding. It's the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, marking the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne. It's an exceptionally long reign; only one other British monarch has reigned as long, her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria. In six decades...

What if you could hold on to time in your hands? You can, you know. You can crack open, on this New Year's Eve, the unsullied, unhurried, un-trammeled pages of an old-fashioned datebook — the kind that still arranges seven days into a week; the kind you write in with a pen and which never, ever, beeps at you to remind you of a meeting or errand. I have two friends, who have been making date books, by hand, for 30 years. Their small company Purgatory Pie Press, in lower Manhattan. They set the...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Christmas falls on a weekend this year; a chance for many families to curl up with a good film that's stood the test of holidays past. But what if you've already seen "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Bad Santa?" What's left? Cameron Crowe joins us now from Los Angeles. Mr. Crowe is the esteemed screenwriter and director whose films include "Say Anything," "Almost Famous," "Jerry Maguire," the documentary "Pearl Jam Twenty," and the just-released, "We Bought A Zoo,"...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Tim Minchin, the comic singer and songwriter, came to our studio on a hot, sticky summer day earlier this year and said it reminded him of Christmas - at home in Australia. Mr. Minchin's proudly a skeptic and abhors what he calls the commercialization of an ancient religion to sell Playstations and beer, but I quite like the songs. When he and his wife first moved to London, the winter nights felt cold and lonely. December came and they ached for the Christmases...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. This has been the bloodiest week in Syria since an uprising began last March. Reports of army massacres in northern Syria, with more than 200 dead have sparked outrage around the world. Yesterday, in Syria's capital of Damascus, two explosions killed more than 40 people and injured over 100. The Syrian government said that al-Qaida suicide bombers had targeted a security headquarters in one of the best...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Off the northeastern tip of North America on Newfoundland lies a stretch of the coast known as the graveyard of the Atlantic. The rocky shoreline has sunk hundreds of ships. Reporter Emma Jacobs traveled to the red and white lighthouse on the tip of Cape Race that still warns ships away from the coast. EMMA JACOBS, BYLINE: The day I visited in late fall was the kind of day the Cape Race lighthouse was built for. Twenty-foot swells rolled in towards the point...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro has spent much of this year covering the uprising and civil war in Libya. As she and her Libyan colleagues drove through the streets of Tripoli this week, they often found themselves listening to a legendary American country music song. The lyrics about changing fortunes seemed to ring true for Libya, as she tells us in this reporter's notebook. LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: If every conflict has a theme song, then Libya's for me is...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Coming up: A couch potato's holiday. It's time for sports. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SIMON: This weekend, the NBA gets going. The NFL gets extra thrilling. And the Boise State Broncos got to clean out their lockers. The boys in blue demolished Arizona State, 56 to 24 in the MAACO-Las Vegas Bowl. Now they got ahead home while lower ranked teams compete in the official bowl championship series games. NPR's Tom...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Families have passed down Christmas cookie recipes for generations, but few traditions date back further than this one from Medieval Europe. Marie Cusick reports for NPR from Strasburg, Pennsylvania. MARIE CUSICK, BYLINE: At Heather Botchlet's bakery in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, it's not uncommon for an Amish horse and buggy to pass by. (SOUNDBITE OF A HORSE AND BUGGY) CUSICK: But even though many of her neighbors are still living as if it's the...

There's a Purple Heart in the window of the A-Z Outlet pawnshop in Holland, Mich., right between a silver necklace and an inexpensive watch. Bryan VandenBosch says a young man walked into his shop just before Thanksgiving to pawn a medal that the U.S. government awards to soldiers who have been "wounded or killed in any action" while serving. He says that he doesn't know why the young man needed or wanted to pawn his medal. "He did say a couple of things — like he won two of these in...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Gadgets, like cell phone cameras and digital tablets, can turn almost anybody into some kind of amateur journalist. But writer Gwen Thompkins wonders when the amateurs will realize that what the professionals already know - recording an event often stops people from experiencing what's right in front of them. (SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE TALKING) GWEN THOMPKINS, BYLINE: Forget the fancy theologians and the philosophers, musician Dr. John says it best: Life is made up of...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. (SOUNDBITE OF CIRCUS MUSIC) SIMON: When the bright lights beam under the Big Top of the Big Apple Circus, Grandma shuffles in. She's got a silver hair, a slow walk, a sly smile, and a purse so huge you think she might have New Jersey somewhere in there. I mean Grandma the Clown. For the past 25 years, Grandma has headlined the Big Apple Circus. But this year's show, the "Dream Big Tour," will be her last...

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It may be telling that Christopher Hitchens should die in this season. I don't mean the holiday season but a contentious season in Congress and on the campaign trail, with politicians jabbing fingers and accusing each other of inconsistency. Writers and thinkers are fixed with labels these days so that people can order up opinions like flavors in an ice cream shop: chocolate or strawberry, liberal or conservative. A lot of people seem to turn to news for a bolstering jolt of reassurance that...

Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in cities across Russia today to protest alleged vote-rigging in recent parliamentary elections. Protests reportedly took place in more than 50 cities, but the largest by far was in Moscow. Reporter Peter van Dyk is in Moscow and joins us. Peter, thanks so much for being with us. PETER VAN DYK, BYLINE: Thank you. SIMON: You were in the crowds. What were they like? VAN DYK: It was an amazing atmosphere. It's the sort...