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11:33 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

NFL Sideline Reporter Michele Tafoya Plays Not My Job

Credit Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

Michele Tafoya is the Emmy award-winning reporter for NBC's Sunday Night Football, but she's spent time on basketball courts, softball diamonds, gymnastics mats and now public radio quiz show game grids.

We've invited Tafoya to play a game called "Enter at your own risk!" As one of the first female reporters to be allowed inside the NFL locker room, she has been a pioneer in her field. But there are still places out there where they believe in cooties, so Tafoya will answer three questions about men's-only clubs.

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Author Interviews
3:26 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

A Race Against Time To Find WWI's Last 'Doughboys'

Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 4:03 pm

Ten years ago, writer Richard Rubin set out to talk to every living American veteran of World War I he could find. It wasn't easy, but he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets, ages 101 to 113, collected their stories and put them in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the veterans he talked to, and the stories they shared.

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Movie Reviews
2:49 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

More Time Together, Though 'Midnight' Looms

Credit Despina Spyrou / Sony Pictures Classics
Still Talking: After 18 years, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) apparently have plenty left to hash out.

Celine and Jesse are sporting a few physical wrinkles — and working through some unsettling relational ones — in Before Midnight, but that just makes this third installment of their once-dewy romance gratifyingly dissonant.

It's been 18 years since they talked through the night that first time, Julie Delpy's Celine enchanting and occasionally prickly, Ethan Hawke's Jesse determined to charm; their chatter then, as now, scripted but loose enough to feel improvised as captured in long, long takes by Richard Linklater's cameras.

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Monkey See
12:34 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

Are Women Really Missing From Film Criticism?

Credit iStockphoto.com

Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 12:37 pm

A new study from the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film has led to headlines claiming that women are missing from film criticism. "Female Movie Critics' Influence Shrinking, Says Study," reads the headline in the Chicago Tribune.

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The Salt
12:34 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

The Great Charcoal Debate: Briquettes Vs. Lumps?

Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 2:30 pm

A lot of things about grilling can ignite a fight, including the meaning of "barbecue." And with the proliferation of fancy equipment — from gas grills to pellet smokers to ceramic charcoal cookers — amateur cooks are growing more knowledgeable, and opinionated, about how to best cook food outdoors.

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Movie Reviews
12:34 pm
Fri May 24, 2013

This Time, It's A Dull Ache Of A 'Hangover'

Credit Warner Bros. Pictures
Dazed And Confused (And Just Plain Lazy): Zach Galifianakis (center), with Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper, is back for a third Hangover film.

Well, they did say this one was going to be different.

After The Hangover II essentially duplicated the structure of the first movie --three guys piecing together a night of debauchery and mayhem none of them can entirely remember — director Todd Phillips promised that the third would go in a new direction. And, in a bold if unbelievable move in the era of never-ending sequels, he pledged that this Hangover would be the last.

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TED Radio Hour
7:58 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Can Eyewitnesses Create Memories?

Credit TEDxUSC
Forensic psychologist Scott Fraser says, "all of our memories, put simply, are reconstructed memories."

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Memory Games.

About Scott Fraser's TEDTalk

Forensic psychologist Scott Fraser studies how we remember crimes. He describes a deadly shooting and explains how eyewitnesses can create memories that they haven't seen. Why? Because the brain is always trying to fill in the blanks.

About Scott Fraser

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TED Radio Hour
7:58 am
Fri May 24, 2013

How Do Experiences Become Memories?

Credit James Duncan Davidson / TED / James Duncan Davidson
Daniel Kahneman says, "we tend to confuse memories with the real experience that gave rise to those memories."

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Memory Games.

About Daniel Kahneman's TEDTalk

Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman goes through a series of examples of things we might remember, from vacations to colonoscopies. He explains how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently.

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TED Radio Hour
7:58 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Can Anyone Learn To Be A Master Memorizer?

Credit James Duncan Davidson
Joshua Foer says that one past memory champion developed a technique to remember more than 4,000 binary digits in half an hour.

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Memory Games.

About Joshua Foer's TEDTalk

Some people can memorize thousands of numbers, the names of dozens of strangers or the precise order of cards in a shuffled deck. Science writer and U.S. Memory Champion Joshua Foer shows how anyone can become a memory virtuoso, including him.

About Joshua Foer

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TED Radio Hour
7:58 am
Fri May 24, 2013

Memory Games

Credit Marc Grimberg / Getty Images
"We all look through family albums. We all hear stories at the dinner table. ... They become incorporated into what we believe we actually remember." — Scott Fraser

"Some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them. And that happens to be the case even with memories that are not true." -- Daniel Kahneman

Memory is malleable, dynamic and elusive. When we tap into our memories, where's the line between fact and fiction? How does our memory play tricks on us, and how can we train it to be more accurate? In this hour, TED speakers discuss how a nimble memory can improve your life, and how a frail one might ruin someone else's.

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Movie Reviews
4:52 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

'We Steal Secrets': A Sidelong Look At WikiLeaks

Credit Jo Straube / Universal Pictures
Source material: As a virtual prisoner these days, he doesn't supply much in the way of fresh information — but WikiLeaks overlord Julian Assange is very much at the center of Alex Gibney's documentary We Steal Secrets.

Originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 5:52 pm

Current-events buffs probably think they know the tale of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney may have thought the same when he began researching his film We Steal Secrets. But this engrossing documentary soon diverges from the expected.

Even the movie's title, or rather the source of it, is a surprise. Not to spoil the fun, but it's neither Assange nor one of his allies who nonchalantly acknowledges that "we steal secrets."

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Movie Reviews
3:03 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

To 'Fill The Void,' A Choice With A Personal Cost

Originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 2:25 pm

Driving home from a screening of the ravishing new Israeli film Fill the Void, I caught sight of a young man in full Hasidic garb, trying to coax his toddler son across a busy Los Angeles street. My first thought was, "He's a boy himself, barely old enough to be a father, and they both look so pale."

My second was, "I wonder what his life feels like?" This is the more open mindset that director Rama Burshtein asks from audiences going into her first feature, a love poem to the ultra-Orthodox world as seen from within.

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NPR's Backseat Book Club
2:44 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

'Lunch Lady' Author Helps Students Draw Their Own Heroes

Originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 6:23 pm

Author and illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka is just 35 years old, but he's already published 20 books, including the popular Lunch Lady graphic novel series, NPR's Backseat Book Club pick for May.

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Movie Interviews
1:36 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

Julianne Moore, Relishing Complicated Characters

Originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 2:03 pm

In the film What Maisie Knew, Julianne Moore plays a troubled rock star whose young daughter witnesses her parents' volatile behavior as they argue over custody during their rocky separation.

On the surface, Moore's character, Susanna, might seem to be an entirely terrible one — a self-involved person and inappropriate mother who's not paying attention to her child. But Moore makes her more complicated than that.

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Television
1:36 pm
Thu May 23, 2013

Douglas, Damon Illuminate HBO's 'Candelabra'

Credit Claudette Barius / HBO
Michael Douglas stars as the flamboyant pianist and entertainer Liberace in Steven Soderbergh's new HBO biopic, Behind the Candelabra.

Originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 4:43 pm

Before you see any of Behind the Candelabra -- when you just consider the concept of the TV movie and its casting — this new HBO Films production raises all sorts of questions: How much will be based on verifiable fact, and how much will be fictionalized? On an anything-goes premium-cable network such as HBO, how graphic will the sex scenes be?

And the most important questions involve the drama's two leading men, playing an ultra-flamboyant piano player and the wide-eyed young man who becomes his behind-the-scenes companion for five years. Michael Douglas? Matt Damon?

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