Maira Kalman Travels Country to Fall Back In Love with America from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

All week long we have been talking about the idea of "home," and the physical attributes and emotional attachments we have to our homes. We end our series by talking with artist and writer Maira Kalman. She is the author of “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” a compilation of her year-long journey for our partner, The New York Times, to explore her adopted home, America. Kalman was not born in the United States, but she traveled the country to fall back in love.

Download The Takeaway podcast here.

Also, the NY Times had this to say:

If children’s picture books are on the wane, all the more reason to hail the advent of a new picture book for grown-ups. Kalman, the creator of a dozen books for children, and whose previous adult works include “The Principles of Uncertainty” and the unaccountably ingenious illustrated edition of “The Elements of Style,” now brings us AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (Penguin Press, $29.95), an investigation of the historical underpinnings and current workings of democracy in America. Sort of. Really, it’s more like an impromptu interpretive dance about our country, executed in fat, frolicky color, unprissy brushstroke, a smattering of pleasantly pedestrian photo­graphs and perfectly rambunctious penmanship. Oh, Maira. May we call you Maira? You are like the imaginary childhood friend we never had. Never mind, we have you now, and in these pages you give us your giant, wistful heart; your unfettered, inquisitive prose; and your loving renderings of hats, noses, despondency, public restrooms, a numbered Civil War grave, a Brooklyn sewage plant, Thomas Edison in a cream-colored suit, napping on the grass, and various fried eggs. Wait — this is democracy? In Kalman’s eclectic, catholic, ecstatically skewed view, yes. All this and more.

See the full NY Times piece here. Don't forget, Kalman was on The Colbert Report as well.

Do Atheists Know More About Christianity Than Christians? from The Atlantic Wire by Heather Horn

A new Pew survey is pretty much guaranteed to ruffle the feathers of the faithful. In a survey of religious knowledge, Americans did fairly poorly, displaying little knowledge of world religions. More provocatively, Americans did not even know much about their own religions. A shocking forty-five percent of Catholics incorrectly answered a question about Catholicism and Communion, for example. To make matters worse, it seems that those who scored highest on this survey were, in fact, atheists and agnostics. The next-highest scoring groups were Jews and Mormons. 'Religion Congruence Fallacy' That's what "academics call it," writes Jeffrey Weiss at Politics Daily, referring to the phenomenon of "Americans who say they belong to a particular religious tradition tend[ing] not to act like it," whether through premarital sex or divorce or what-have-you. He points out that, until this survey, there had been little evidence to support scholar Stephen Prothero's claim that "Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion." Weiss is skeptical, though, about some of the questions (on which Prothero, apparently, was consulted), which, he says " read to me as if they were taken from a religion version of Trivial Pursuit." That said, he's fascinated by the fact that Jews, Mormons, and the "religiously unaffiliated" do so well, and is particularly struck by the responses to two questions [...]

Read the full Atlantic article here. See also: Statistics on Religion in America Report -- Pew Forum on Religion, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert

Today: Tracking Luther King's killer from BBC Podcast - Best of Today

Fifty years ago today saw the conviction of James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King Jr. Author Hampton Sides and Estelle Eugene, wife of the lawyer who represented the defendant, discuss the events leading to Earl Ray's capture.

Listen to the BBC podcast here. There's also this Colbert Report episode.

Stephen Colbert Author Interview: Mika Brzezinski On 'All Things At Once' (VIDEO) from Huffington Post, The - Blog by The Huffington Post News Editors

Stephen Colbert spoke with Mika Brzezinski from Morning Joe last night about her new book, "All Things at Once." She explained to Stephen how she struggled for a long time trying to be the perfect correspondent, mother, and wife all at once, and how it just didn't work. Brzezinski explained: I wasn't doing anything right because I was trying to do everything too much. She and Stephen also discussed why she chose not to remain "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen," as Colbert suggested she should have.

What the HuffPo posted video here.

Colbert Builds 'Report' with Viewers, Readers from NPR Podcast Fresh Air

Story: Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report talks about his book I Am America (And So Can You!). Colbert targets race, religion, sports and the American family as well as more mundane topics like breakfast cereal and the Hollywood blacklist.

Read the full Fresh Air transcript here, and listen to the podcast.