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Actress Paula Patton could watch Adam McKay's comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby a million times. "I can't tell you how much I use quotes from it in my daily life," she says.

Writer-director Derek Cianfrance could watch Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas a million times. "It was just a perfect movie, and I returned to see it about 30 times in the theater that year," he says.

Jason Holliday was a black aspiring performer in 1960s New York — he was also openly gay, when that wasn't safe. Holliday is the subject of Shirley Clarke's 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason. Michel Martin speaks with film archivist Dennis Doros, who spent years restoring the old film, and Robert Fiore, who originally helped craft it.

Actor Saoirse Ronan could watch Amy Heckerling's teen comedy Clueless a million times. "There are so many great moments and I literally love every single moment from start to finish of that film," she says.

The editor in chief of Newsweek and the Daily Beast joins NPR's Steve Inskeep to talk about women taking on big cultural challenges, and the stories of how they got there.

NPR and Radio Diaries are looking for personal, surprising stories from teens. Write it, photograph it (and record it if you want) and submit it to the storytelling site Cowbird. Two entries will be picked to produce audio stories with Radio Diaries and a selection will be featured on NPR.org.

New Orleans hosts one of the biggest Mardi Gras celebrations on Tuesday. Local self-described Mardi Gras Indians are known for their eye-catching regalia, but police have seemed to look critically at them. Host Michel Martin speaks with Clarence "Big Chief" Dalcour of the Creole Osceola Mardi Gras Indians.

In The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel writes of turn-of-the-century Vienna, where artists mingled with writers, scientists and physicians, and explains how the brain perceives a work of art.

Lego's new play sets, which are geared toward girls, include a beauty shop, cafe and pool. Critics say the toys are too focused on image and gender stereotypes. Others, including Lego, say they're simply what girls want to play with. Host Michel Martin and a diverse panel of moms explore gender-focused marketing.

For three decades, the Smithsonian Institution has been collecting work by African-American artists, work that is now on display at the American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. The exhibition offers a wide-ranging and colorful view of African-American life.

Films such as Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins have romanticized the nanny role, but there's no magic umbrella for the star of the reality TV show America's Supernanny. Deborah Tillman visits a home-in-crisis during each episode, helping kids and parents behave. She talks to host Michel Martin.

We're awash in discussions of so-called "adult content," but that can mean everything from a brutal battle to a dropped expletive. How do we navigate these particular argument-infested waters?

Three comics, all Indian-American, will play seven cities in the land of their parents' birth. On the bill: politics, gender roles and religion.

Three Kings Day is when the three wise men are believed to have visited the baby Jesus. Many cultures, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, are celebrating on Friday. Festivities are also going strong in East Harlem, Miami, Los Angeles, even Disneyland. Host Michel Martin speaks with Gonzalo Casals, who organizes a parade in East Harlem.

Cameroon-born Collinet began his radio career in the 1960s, introducing American soul singers like James Brown to African audiences. Collinet became a famed broadcaster in Africa and a top expert on African Pop music. He speaks with host Michel Martin about his upbringing, worldview, and why black Americans have been slow to embrace Afropop.

We're streaming our video, downloading our books and doing away with the hard copies that used to help communicate our personalities to one another. Bob Mondello points to a surprisingly early vision of that kind of digital future — and asks what's behind the worry it expresses.

Before IBM had Watson, Westinghouse had Elektro. The Ohio manufacturer built the 7-foot-tall robot as a showpiece for the 1939 World's Fair.

The Scream, by Edvard Munch, is one of the most recognized and reproduced works of art ever created. Experts say the image seems to crystallize viewers' fears and anxieties, transcending language to express something primal.

Forty years ago Sunday, history was made when talk show legend Dick Cavett introduced Groucho Marx at Carnegie Hall. The night marked Groucho's debut at the famed New York venue and became the record, An Evening with Groucho Marx.

The memoir, in African-American history, dates back to slave journals. But memoirs can also move us and make us laugh out loud. Tell Me More marks Black History Month with a series of discussions about the impact of memoirs, including today's conversation between host Michel Martin and a roundtable of writers and scholars.

Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz checks-in with Three-Minute Fiction judge Luis Alberto Urrea to hear how the reading process is going and to hear some of his favorite stories thus far.

In just the last year, 96-year-old sculptor Elizabeth Catlett has had her work featured in exhibitions from Istanbul to Mexico to New York. She broke through barriers of race and gender, yet remains unknown to all but the artists she inspires.

Now is the time when critics make their year-end lists. Unfortunately, you cannot please everyone, and if enough people read your list, you will eventually run into these 20 unhappy people.

Athenaeums are social libraries, cornerstones of a community where you don't just borrow books — you can visit cherished antiquities, hold talks, attend parties and even bring your dog. In Providence, R.I., the "Ath" is a 19th-century library with the soul of a 21st-century rave party.

In this hourlong special, wistfulness, joy, doubt, hope — all the emotions we feel at this time of year — are summoned up in memorable stories from the NPR broadcast archives.