Ryan Benk

NPR's Scott Simon talks to film historian Jason Bailey about his book, "Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend." It details how different he was from the gangster he portrayed on "The Sopranos."

David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is a meditation on grief and obsession.

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Tracy Chapman about standing the test of time and the re-release on vinyl of her self-titled 1988 debut album.

The album's namesake, Polari, is a set of a few hundred words and phrases that was adopted by gay men as a way of speaking in secret during periods of criminalization.

We hear from musicians Grady Allen and Dante Melucci from the band Anxious about their second album Bambi. The young hardcore act says it's their most authentic outing yet.

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen, authors of "Pseudoscience," about why people want to believe in things like Bigfoot, palm reading, and spontaneous human combustion.

Promising violinists can get their hands on a Stradivarius and other 18th century instruments through a lending program out of Chicago.

NPR's Scott Simon talks with Patrick Patterson and Steve Scipio of the British funk band Cymande about their new album and about reconstituting the band after decades.

A lot of old records at the National Archives are written in longhand, but fewer people can read cursive. The institution is looking for volunteers to help decipher and digitize them.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks to Nobel-Prize winning author Han Kang about her latest novel, "We Do Not Part."