More than 6,000 original stories were submitted to this round of Three-Minute Fiction. To see these stories and others, visit npr.org/threeminutefiction.
With Love is singer Rosie Thomas' first full-length album in four years, and she's experienced many ups and downs in that time. One of the downs was an injury: Her thyroid broke, causing her to take a hiatus from music.
Both President Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney made general-election-esque speeches this week, further closing the gap between the two men in the upcoming presidential election. Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about the news that made headlines this week.
Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan speaks with NPR reporter Joseph Shapiro about the sentence of Shirley Ree Smith's "shaken baby" case. California Gov. Jerry Brown has commuted Smith's sentence. Despite her claims of innocence, Smith was convicted in December 1997, and has been free since 2006 awaiting the results of her appeals.
Group Therapy: Director Nanni Moretti (left) plays an agnostic psychiatrist summoned to the Vatican to counsel the pope — but he's advised not to ask about sensitive topics.
Credit IFC Films
Heavy Lies The Head That Wears The Mitre: Michel Piccoli plays Melville, a cardinal unexpectedly elected pope who falls into an existential crisis before he can make his first papal address.
When the College of Cardinals gathers in the Vatican to choose a new church leader — formally the Bishop of Rome — it announces its selection with the Latin phrase "Habemus papam" ("We have a pope").
But suppose that, when a cardinal steps out onto a balcony in St. Peter's Square to utter those fateful words, the gentle soul in white sitting behind him, out of sight of the crowd, develops stage fright.
The Australian artist Gotye has been big in his home country for several years, but this winter, one particular song started an avalanche. "Somebody That I Used to Know," from the album Making Mirrors, has been a massive hit everywhere it's landed: the U.K., Germany, South Africa, Israel and now here in the U.S. It even inspired a YouTube cover that's become a runaway hit all its own.
A lineup of the bald Bratz and Moxie Girlz dolls that are scheduled to hit store shelves this summer.
Credit Jane Bingham
This image of a bald Barbie was created for Jane Bingham's "Beautiful and Bald Barbie" campaign on Facebook. She successfully lobbied Mattel to create a bald version of its iconic doll.
Credit MGA Entertainment
MGA Entertainment plans to release bald Bratz and Moxie Girlz dolls in stores this summer.
Credit Jane Bingham
Jane Bingham with her daughter, Belleliana. She started a "Beautiful and Bald Barbie" campaign on Facebook after her battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Barbie is best known for her curvy figure and long blond hair — but Mattel plans to produce a doll that's a dramatic departure from that classic image.
This Barbie will be bald.
Mattel decided to make the doll after a campaign by Jane Bingham, a survivor of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Philadelphia. She started a Facebook group with her friend called "Beautiful and Bald Barbie." She tells Audie Cornish, host of All Things Considered, that they wanted the toymaker to create a doll for kids who have cancer or have lost their hair for medical reasons.
When I hear the word "Titanic," I picture a tuxedoed Leonardo DiCaprio, waiting at the bottom of a gilded staircase while the voice of Celine Dion swells in my mind. It's all Edwardian glitz and glamour, decadence and passionate love, the kind best enjoyed in a dark theater with plenty of popcorn. And then I quickly remember that the ship sinks, and that Titanic is more than just an epic film from my youth. On April 15, a century will have passed since the ship plummeted into the icy Atlantic, and it is the tragedy we should remember, not just the mythology surrounding it.
Lemmy Kilmister immortalized the Marshall amp in the Motorhead song, "Dr. Rock": "Chin up, shoulders back / You've got a body like a Marshall stack."
Credit Photo: Evening Standard / Getty Images
When Jimi Hendrix first walked into Jim Marshall's store, Marshall reportedly recalled thinking, "Bloody hell, here's another American guitarist wanting something for nothing."
Credit Photo: Shantel Mitchell for NPR
Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis practically encases himself in Marshall stacks.
Credit Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images Entertainment
Only Marshall amps can handle the "modulistic terror" of Kerry King's divebombing guitar solos for Slayer.
Credit Photo: Leon Neal / AFP/Getty Images
"These go to eleven."
Credit Photo: Lars Gotrich / NPR
Guitarist Matt Pike of Bay Area metal band High on Fire (pictured here in a performance with Sleep at 2010's All Tomorrows Parties Music Festival) uses Marshall amps to crush skulls.
Credit Photo: Lars Gotrich / NPR
The long-running American psych-rock band Bardo Pond depends on Marshall amps to make a thick, noisy swirl of controlled chaos.
Credit Gisel Florez for NPR
Somehow everything is right in the world knowing that such a powerful hip-hop force like Public Enemy uses Marshall amps.
Credit Photo: Shantel Mitchell for NPR
Deerhunter isn't the first band you think of when it comes to Marshall, but take the band's sometimes antogonisticly loud live show into consideration, and it all makes sense.
Credit Photo: Dave Etheridge-Barnes / Getty Images Entertainment
Lemmy Kilmister immortalized the Marshall amp in the Motorhead song, "Dr. Rock": "Chin up, shoulders back / You've got a body like a Marshall stack."
Kerry Washington knows that her new drama, Scandal, will inevitably be compared to another drama about D.C.: The West Wing. Scandal tells Audie Cornish on today's All Things Considered that it even has Josh Malina, a West Wing cast member, for a little of what she calls "secret D.C. credibility."
