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The new HBO film Something the Lord Made tells the story of the interracial medical collaboration behind the first successful open-heart surgery in 1944. At a time of strict racial conventions, Dr. Alfred Blalock, a wealthy, white Southern surgeon, formed a remarkable partnership with his black assistant, Vivien Thomas. NPR's Renee Montagne speaks with Joseph Sargent, the film's director.

Being a sports fan comes with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As the Super Bowl approaches, we want to hear how a big win or loss by your favorite team impacts your mood and well-being.

Kinky Friedman used to perform offbeat country songs with his band, the Texas Jewboys. He later turned to writing mysteries. Now he wants to be governor of Texas. His slogan for the 2006 campaign: "How Hard Can It Be?" NPR's Ketzel Levine has a profile of the Texas funnyman.

NPR's Susan Stamberg visits writer Andrew Sean Greer in San Francisco to talk about his new novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli.

Ann Patchett has written a memoir of her friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy, who died from facial bone cancer in 2002. Grealy wrote about surviving the pain of her treatments -- surgeries and chemotherapy -- in Autobiography of a Face. Patchett writes about Grealy's courage and her love of life in Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. NPR's Melissa Block talks with Patchett.

Alan Cheuse reviews Little Black Book of Stories, by English writer A.S. Byatt. Three of the five stories included in the collection touch on the weird, the ghostly, and the miraculous.

NPR's Liane Hansen has the second half of her conversation with the authors of two new books on the use of American power in the world. Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of Financial History at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He's the author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book is Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.

Singer Hayley Westenra is fresh from success on the international classical charts, and hoping to win new fans in the U.S. NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams talks with the 17-year-old New Zealand soprano about her voice and her new album, Pure.

As a child, writer Sandra Cisneros turned to fairy tales to escape from her run down surroundings. Their highly stylized language inspired her own distinct literary voice, which blends Spanish-language rhythms and cadences into English to tell stories of a cross-cultural world. For Intersections, a series on artists' influences, Cisneros tells NPR's Felix Contreras how she finds inspiration in the collision of languages.

An unidentified buyer paid $104.1 million Wednesday for a Pablo Picasso painting sold at Sotheby's in New York -- a record price for a work of art sold at auction. "Boy with a Pipe" was painted in 1905 and dates from Picasso's Rose Period. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and reporter David D'Arcy.