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Abandoned imaginary friends now have a place to call home. Craig McCracken, whose Powerpuff Girls took the nation by storm in the 1990s, has a new Cartoon Network series: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Hear McCracken and NPR's Jennifer Ludden.

There's a lot of speechifying going on these days, with President Bush and Sen. John Kerry traveling around making their stump speeches. Has it always been this way? NPR's Scott Simon asks Weekend Edition classics commentator Elaine Fantham what oratory was like in the days before teleprompters.

We discuss the plans for rebuilding at ground zero in Lower Manhattan, and the debates surrounding those plans. Goldberger says idealism met cynicism at ground zero, and so far they have battled to a draw. His new book is Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York.

Hero, China's biggest-ever box-office movie, opens in U.S. theaters Friday. The film, which stars Jet Li as a master swordsman, alternates gravity-defying swordplay with Chinese history. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a review.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber. Jonathan Demme directed the remake of the 1962 classic thriller.

Franks, formerly the commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, led the American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. He says the United States did not anticipate the insurgency that followed the invasion of Iraq, and he warns against underestimating Osama bin Laden. He's written a new memoir, American Soldier.

Tony-winner Phylicia Rashad returns to Broadway this fall in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean. She tells NPR's Michele Norris she likes to surround herself with nature while preparing for her roles.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Weekend Edition ambassador to the world of kiddie literature, Daniel Pinkwater, about a book written by Arlo Guthrie and illustrated by Alice M. Brock (of Alice's Restaurant fame). The book is called Mooses Come Walking.

Arto Lindsay has been making music since the late 1970s in New York City with the band DNA was shrill and aggressive. These days, Lindsay makes Brazilian music with subtlety and grace.

He's the founder of the Newport Folk Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival, which turns 50 this year. A new three-CD set, Happy Birthday Newport: 50 Swinging Years, celebrates the milestone. In the early 1950s, Wein founded the jazz clubs Storyville and Mahogany Hall in his hometown of Boston, where jazz giants Art Tatum, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Miles Davis played. In 1954 he launched the Newport Jazz Festival, where he presented Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Dave Brubeck and others. The other music greats he knew and worked with: Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong. Last year, Wein published his autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life In Music.