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Independent producer Julian Crandall Hollick continues his three-part audio portrait of modern India with an inspiring profile of Calcutta's tiny Ram Bhagan slum. The community has thrived on the skills of its native musicians, painters and craftsmen.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new box set of Dave Brubeck's Time Out albums.

Host Scott Simon talks with Monica Mancini, the daughter of film score composer Henry Mancini and singer in her own right, about her father's music, his legacy... and his new postage stamp.

The 1970s movie Walking Tall, about a man who takes the law into his own hands after his town becomes a sinkhole of iniquity, became a B-movie classic, inspiring a TV movie and a short-lived network series. A new remake, starring wrestler-turned-actor the Rock, opens this weekend. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a review.

Director Kevin Smith's latest film, Jersey Girl, stars Ben Affleck as a single father raising a young daughter. It's a departure from Smith's past work. The biting, iconoclastic humor of films such as Clerks, Dogma and Chasing Amy had established Smith as a force outside Hollywood's mainstream. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a review.

In the ninth century, the Buddhist sage Lin Chi told a monk, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." He meant that those who think they've found all the answers in any religion need to start questioning. The new book Killing the Buddha takes this advice to heart, examining American roadside distractions on the path to enlightenment. Chicago Public Radio's Jason DeRose reports.

Violinists with the Beethoven Orchestra in Germany sue for a pay raise on the grounds that they play many more notes per concert than their musical colleagues. Orchestra officials, however, say the violinists knew this when they began taking violin lessons -- and if they wanted to play fewer notes, they should have chosen a different instrument. Kyle James reports.

The incandescent, influential funk musician Betty Davis died on Wednesday. She made a string of albums in the mid-1970s that helped to shape stylish, Afrofuturist strains of funk and hip-hop.

A report on sex abuse in the German Catholic Church faulted former Pope Benedict's handling of four cases. Benedict acknowledged the abuses under his watch but denied any wrongdoing.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with economy reporter Chabeli Carrazana from The 19th News about women whose spouses and children have died of COVID struggling to seek benefits from Social Security offices.