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The pop star has a flair for the extravagant, to say the least, but his album The Diving Board is stripped down. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the "Elton John excess," his fear of sex as a young man, and how Liberace's example encouraged John to make the piano a star instrument.

New York City's first new mayor in a dozen years was sworn in by former president Bill Clinton Wednesday. Bill de Blasio's term running the largest city in the U.S. will be markedly different than that of outgoing billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg — if he follows through on campaign promises. De Blasio's populist platform offered remedies for the city's growing economic inequality, but he'll need approval from state legislators in Albany if he's to implement some of the policies.

President Obama will announce this year how he wants to overhaul operations at the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies. The NSA surveillance activities disclosed by Edward Snowden have been criticized by Congress and others. In the past, reports of intelligence abuses or failures have prompted significant changes.

A Harvard economist finds there are psychological connections between the bad financial planning of many poor people and the poor time management of busy professionals. In both cases, he finds the experience of scarcity causes biases in the mind that exacerbate problems.

A baby born today in Ethiopia is three times less likely to die before age 5 than one born in 1990. This reduction in child mortality isn't due to expensive international aid but rather to an investment in bare-bones health clinics run by minimally trained community workers.

Tell Me More chats with a global roundtable, about stories to watch this year in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Host Michel Martin speaks with NPR's East Africa correspondent Gregory Warner who is in Kenya; Fernando Espeulas of Univision; and Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center.

Retail sales of recreational marijuana are now legal in Colorado. Host Michel Martin looks at the highs, and possible lows of the new law with Dana Coffield of The Denver Post, and The Sacramento Bee's Peter Hecht, author of Weed Land.

Author Lucy Lethbridge explores the history of British servants through their diaries, letters and memoirs. She says, "What I found particularly fascinating was how ... butlers were so butlery"; the old caricature of the clever manservant and the silly master is one "butlers have appeared to play to the hilt."

Kalamazoo native Janet Ruth Heller is a writer, playwright, and literary critic. In her third book of poetry called Exodus, Heller fills in the gaps in…

A new nine-hour box set, titled Sun Country Box: 1950-1959, collects Sun Records' country output.