Anya von Bremzen's new memoir is a delicious narrative of memory and cuisine in 20th century Soviet Union. She writes about her family's own history and contemplates the nation's "complicated, even tortured, relationship with food."

Virginia's film industry is making millions of dollars for the state while employing residents.

Want to top your pancakes with something other than maple? The alternatives vary, depending on the types of trees in a region. There's Kahiltna birch syrup made in Alaska, blue spruce pine syrup from Utah and Georgian black walnut syrup.

This year marks the 125th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot. To celebrate, a re-issue of the first edition of his seminal poem has just been published, with an introduction by New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Muldoon about the poem's lasting influence.

Carville, a Democrat, is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. We've invited him to play a game called "You're like two peas in a pod!" Three questions about couples who are an awful lot alike.

The host of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac has published his first poetry collection called O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic and Profound. "I love rhymes," Keillor says. "I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.'"

In Blowback, Plame channels her expertise in nuclear counterproliferation into a "realistic portrait" of a female covert agent. Plame confesses that there's a lot of downtime in the life of a spy, but still, the CIA is "the world's biggest dating agency."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's writing and directing debut is a modern look at a Don Juan who's got a bit of a porn problem. NPR's Bob Mondello says it's an assured first film from an actor who's clearly been paying attention to what makes a movie work.

A Touch of Sin, from director Jia Zhangke, is a tangle of four violent vignettes — all based on true stories — that made it past China's famously strict censors with hardly any cuts. It gets its U.S. premiere this weekend at the New York Film Festival.

The company behind iconic public service campaigns like Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog has been around since the 1940s. But how much is really known about the Ad Council? Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks to author Wendy Melillo about her book How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America.