Audra McDonald, A Broadway Star Gone Roaming, Comes Home

In the seven years since her last album, Audra McDonald has kept busy. She spent several years in Hollywood, filming the television series Private Practice. She's gotten divorced and remarried, absorbed the shock of losing her father in a plane crash and watched her daughter, Zoe, grow up from a kindergartener to a middle-schooler.

Working Women On Television: A Mixed Bag At Best

When actress Geena Davis was watching children's shows with her daughter a few years ago, she became so troubled by the lack of female representation, she started a think tank on gender in the media. The Geena Davis Institute recently partnered with University of California, Los Angeles, professors to conduct a study analyzing gender roles and jobs on screen.

The good news? Prime-time television's pretty decent at depicting women with careers.

Pakistanis 'Defy Violence' To Vote In Landmark Election

Despite attacks in the days and weeks leading up to Saturday's voting — and deadly bombings and other attacks on the very day they're going to the polls — Pakistanis are showing they're willing to "defy the violence," NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from Lahore.

Yngwie Malmsteen: 'I've Always Been A Little Bit Of An Extremist'

Yngwie Malmsteen is the king of the neoclassical shred guitar. Since 1984's Rising Force, the Swedish musician and composer has somehow bridged centuries, from Paganini to his own arpeggiated acrobatics.

Frozen Lakes Cut Into Minnesota Fishing Tradition

On the shores of Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota, it finally feels like spring. But the lake still looks like winter.

Saturday marks the opening of the walleye fishing season, and it's usually one of the busiest weekends for the state's resort communities. But this year, many of the northern lakes are still frozen, restricting water access and, potentially, local businesses.

Rick Bruesewitz, a fisheries manager for the Department of Natural Resources, says it would be tough to get a boat in the water in most places around the lake.

To Count Elephants In The Forest, Watch Where You Step

Imagine you're flying in a two-seater plane over Africa, and, in an effort to see how elephants are faring, your job is to count all the ones you see. Over the savannah, that's easy. But how do you peer into the forests, where all you see is treetops?

For years, the zoologists who tried to do this just guessed. But in the late 1980s, conservationist Richard Barnes devised a method to take an elephant census in the densest of forests.

Christopher Guest Comes To HBO With A 'Family' Comedy That's Serious

Christopher Guest has made so many people laugh since he started making mock documentaries with This Is Spinal Tap in 1984 that his fans might be surprised to hear his response to Scott Simon's question on Saturday's Weekend Edition about whether he ever thinks about making a serious movie.

Referencing Family Tree, his new show for HBO starring Chris O'Dowd as a man discovering his roots, Guest says that even with comedy, the emotional content can still be critical.

Tiny Mites Spark Big Battle Over Imports Of French Cheese

The Food and Drug Administration is currently embroiled in a surprisingly heated culinary standoff — pitting French cheese-makers (and American cheese-lovers) against regulators, all because of one very small problem: cheese mites.

Cheese mites are microscopic little bugs that live on the surfaces of aged cheeses, munching the microscopic molds that grow there. For many aged cheeses, they're something of an industry nuisance, gently brushed off the cheeses. But for Mimolette, a bright orange French cheese, they're actually encouraged.

Sequester Has Air Force Clipping Its Wings

The Pentagon says the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration could leave the U.S. with a military that is simply unprepared for the most challenging combat missions. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told Congress in April that the military is eating its seed corn.

Mini-Memoirs: 6-Word Stories To Honor Mom

This Mother's Day, think about the relationship you have with your mother. Now consider: Could you tell that story in just six words?

The newspaper The Forward recently put out a call for six-word memoirs about mothers — specifically, Jewish mothers. The submissions they received show that you can pack a lot of emotion into a half-dozen words, like in Jennifer Glick's memoir: "Mother, our lady of perpetual dissatisfaction."