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Actress Patricia Clarkson is making waves -- and winning fans -- for her sharp-edged interpretation of Blanche DuBois in a Kennedy Center production of A Streetcar Named Desire. NPR's Liane Hansen talks with Clarkson.

Being a sports fan comes with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As the Super Bowl approaches, we want to hear how a big win or loss by your favorite team impacts your mood and well-being.

Kinky Friedman used to perform offbeat country songs with his band, the Texas Jewboys. He later turned to writing mysteries. Now he wants to be governor of Texas. His slogan for the 2006 campaign: "How Hard Can It Be?" NPR's Ketzel Levine has a profile of the Texas funnyman.

The new HBO film Something the Lord Made tells the story of the interracial medical collaboration behind the first successful open-heart surgery in 1944. At a time of strict racial conventions, Dr. Alfred Blalock, a wealthy, white Southern surgeon, formed a remarkable partnership with his black assistant, Vivien Thomas. NPR's Renee Montagne speaks with Joseph Sargent, the film's director.

NPR's Susan Stamberg visits writer Andrew Sean Greer in San Francisco to talk about his new novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli.

Ann Patchett has written a memoir of her friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy, who died from facial bone cancer in 2002. Grealy wrote about surviving the pain of her treatments -- surgeries and chemotherapy -- in Autobiography of a Face. Patchett writes about Grealy's courage and her love of life in Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. NPR's Melissa Block talks with Patchett.

French arts performers plan to strike as the Cannes Film Festival gets under way Wednesday in France. Actors, dancers, electricians and cameramen say government reforms have cut some of their unemployment benefits. Festival organizers scrambling to make sure the event is not shut down. NPR's Renee Montagne reports.

Thursday night marks the end of the NBC hit show Friends. After 10 seasons of widespread popularity, the comedy will now be seen only on syndicated reruns. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with James Poniewozik of Time magazine.

With President Biden set to appoint the first Black woman Supreme Court justice, Black women in the legal profession reflect on the limits and promises of representation.

NPR's Liane Hansen has the second half of her conversation with the authors of two new books on the use of American power in the world. Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of Financial History at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He's the author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book is Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.