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Anita Elberse's new book, Blockbusters, examines the strategy behind making and marketing megahits. She tells NPR's Renee Montagne that content companies — publishers, movie studios and the like — can create blockbusters by dedicating most of their budgets to a select few likely winners.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of StoryCorps, we revisit Laura Greenberg, who told her daughter Rebecca about her gregarious parents — and her awkward first kiss with Rebecca's father, Carl. Now, it's his turn to share his side of the family story.

From 1941 to 1943, J.D. Salinger exchanged letters with a young, aspiring writer in Toronto named Marjorie Sheard. The letters predate Catcher in the Rye, but Sheard may have been one of the first people to learn about its eventual protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Sheard's letters from Salinger are on display at the Morgan Library in New York.

A mountain town in Norway has spent all 100 of its winters in the shade. Now that may change. A local artist campaigned to have mirrors placed on a mountainside. When unveiled on Oct. 31, they should drop a patch of sunlight in the town square.

The Vatican has announced it will be engaging in "sporting diplomacy" with a new team. St. Peter's Cricket Club will be made up of priests and seminarians from cricket-loving countries. And the Vatican threw down a challenge to longtime rival the Church of England: Form a team and make it the Anglicans versus the Catholics at Lord's Cricket Ground in London.

Thousands of customers in Southwest Michigan are without power this morning. Consumers Energy's website shows over 3,000 customers in Allegan County and…

As heard on WMUK's Let's Hear It, singer Doug LaBrecque tells host Cara Lieurance about his musical rise from roles in Lakeview High School productions in…

Under the Taliban, 1 million Afghan boys and very few girls went to school. Now, 10 million students are enrolled, 40 percent of them female. But on any given day, a much smaller number actually shows up for class. What's more, there are shortages of classrooms, books and qualified teachers.

Yale historian David Blight says Americans like to think of themselves as "the country that freed the slaves," but prefer not to dwell on the sobering history that came first. He says the new film 12 Years a Slave is a rare, effective depiction of slavery in the United States.

Director Steve McQueen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to help fill a "huge hole in the canon of cinema." And actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose parents are from Nigeria, says he grew up feeling "a sense of unity amongst African people and people of African heritage."