NPR Blogs

In the tradition of forgotten features returning from the dead, please welcome back Culture Yourself, an afternoon post wrapping up some of our arts and culture coverage you might have missed.

Today's All Things Considered features an interview with John Hawkes, who was in Winter's Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and whose new movie, The Sessions, is (just my two cents) terrific.

Population censuses aren't normally something to get excited over. But for Bosnia, a nation that hasn't counted its own people in over two decades and has its eye on becoming part of the European Union, even a pilot census is of great importance. No formal national count has taken place since before the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the subsequent ethnic conflict that shocked the world.

Today, Bosnia began a two-week test census, targeting around 15,000 people, in order to gauge how prepared it is for an official, nation-wide census in the spring of 2013.

Giving the human papillomavirus vaccine to teenage girls doesn't increase the likelihood that they will be sexually active, according to a new study.

That may help put parents at ease; the notion of vaccinating 11- and 12-year-old girls for a sexually transmitted virus has made some uncomfortable, and is one reason why only a little more than half of teenage girls have had the vaccine.

The universe continues to surprise us. Two citizen scientists have discovered a very rare world: A planet that orbits two stars and has a second pair of stars revolving around it.

Wired explains just how odd this is:

Reuters today catches up on a story that's been getting some traction in recent weeks:

An Israeli inventor has come up with a way to make a bicycle almost entirely out of cardboard — and so inexpensively that he thinks retailers would only need to charge about $20 for one.

The Chicago Sun-Times broke the news late last week that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., is "the target of a federal investigation into 'suspicious activity' into his congressional finances."

As the election nears, energy policy remains a regular topic on the campaign trail. Controversial subjects like arctic drilling and hydraulic fracturing continue making headlines as the political class debate our nation's changing energy mix. But let's not deceive ourselves, or the public at large, about a president's real role and reach.

The wolf enters a different era in Wisconsin, today, and Minnesota later this fall: For the first time in recent history, hunters in those two states will be allowed to bait, shoot and trap wolves.

The Green Bay Press Gazette reports that the move comes after the Federal government "removed Great Lakes wolves from the endangered species list in January."

This chart offers another perspective on just how warm it was around the world last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.

The agency has been keeping records since 1880 and the "average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September on record."

Even extreme stress doesn't have to get you down.

That's the message from brain scientists studying the relationship between stress and problems such as depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Researchers at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans presented studies showing how stress caused by everything from battlefield trauma to bullying can alter brain circuitry in ways that have long-term effects on mental health.