All Things Considered

The U.S. Supreme Court took up the subject of lying on Wednesday.

Specifically at issue was the constitutionality of a 2006 law that makes it a crime to lie about having received a military medal. But the questions posed by the justices ranged far beyond that — from advertising puffery to dating lies.

At the center of the case is Xavier Alvarez, a former California county water board member who is an undisputed liar. Among his lies is that he played professional hockey, served in the marines and rescued the American ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis. None of those lies was illegal.

The Supreme Court engaged in a lively debate Wednesday when it heard oral arguments in a case testing whether the 2006 Stolen Valor Act is constitutional. The law makes it a crime to lie about military honors.

Before the rise of Def Jam as hip-hop's definitive record label, there was Profile, which helped shepherd in some of the genre's early shifts in sound and style. A new two-CD anthology, Giant Single: The Profile Records Rap Anthology, chronicles the label's 15-year history and legacy.

Profile never meant to get into the rap game. When Cory Robbins and Steve Plotnicki started the label in 1981, they thought they'd be releasing dance singles — a plan that quickly shriveled in the punishing heat of the anti-disco era. However, hip-hop was just beginning its rise, and Profile gambled on a New York rap duo named Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.

Get ready to dance, because it's Mardi Gras — a day to cut loose before Lent begins. In New Orleans, that means a day of parades, costumes and music everywhere you turn.

For the members of Galactic, Mardi Gras actually started on Monday, with an "annual gig that goes until the sun comes up at local club Tipitina's," saxophonist and harmonica player Ben Ellman says. For the long-running New Orleans funk band, it's one of the biggest gigs of the year.

Patrick deWitt is the author of The Sisters Brothers.

"Doesn't the act of noticing matter as much as what's noticed?" So asks the narrator of Harry Mathews' masterpiece of minutia, The Journalist.

On the mend from a nervous breakdown (though it's mentioned only in passing — "the steering wheel came off in my hands," he says), he's been encouraged by his doctor to keep a journal. A seemingly benign idea, and he throws himself into the task with gusto — far too much gusto, it turns out, as the journal soon eclipses his entire life.

When Hollywood imagines the future, from Logan's Run to Avatar, it tends to picture living spaces as sterile and characterless, without any cultural clues to the person who lives there. No record library, no DVDs, no Hemingway on bookshelves ... often no bookshelves.

When Brian O. Selznick wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabaret — a graphic novel about an orphan in 1930s Paris — he imagined the secret spaces of a Paris train station. For inspiration, he visited Grand Central Terminal in New York City. But the scenes in the book — hidden tunnels, secret rooms, the giant clock tower — were all drawn from Selznick's imagination and later turned into the movie Hugo by Martin Scorcese, which is nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Selznick recently got to explore Grand Central's secrets for the first time and it turns out that life imitated art in shockingly faithful ways.

Florida's legislature has released its new legislative and congressional maps as part of the once-every-decade redistricting process, and the lawsuits are already flying. Democrats and watchdog groups say the new maps violate constitutional amendments that require districts to be drawn without regard to political parties or incumbents. The process is likely to be tied up in the courts for months, but the proposed maps are already having an impact — including forcing Tea Party favorite, Congressman Allen West, to leave his old district for one that's friendlier to Republicans.

Host Audie Cornish talks with Don Gonyea about the week ahead in politics, including the contests in Michigan and Arizona.

J.D. Salinger famously refused to sell the film rights to The Catcher in the Rye saying it was "unactable." It's true the subtleties of such great novels can get lost in translation. But with the Oscars only days away, and with so many of the nominees for best picture this year based on great books, I thought I'd take a look at three of my favorite novels that have never made it to the multiplex. Each of these will transport you to another time and another place.

One of the most talked about personalities on the Republican presidential campaign trail, Callista Gingrich, rarely says a word. That hasn't kept her out of the spotlight, though. From their hair to their home life, potential first ladies get attention on the campaign trail.

The new iPhone app called "Zombies, RUN!" is not your standard running game.

It's designed to encourage folks, such as say, video gamers, who aren't usually associated with exercise to take up running.

British writer Naomi Alderman, who is a gamer herself as well as an Orange-award winning novelist, came up with the idea for "Zombies, RUN!" while in a class for amateur runners she tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Mary-Louise Kelly.

"The start of the course they said to us, "Why do you want to learn how to run?" and one woman said, "I want to be able to out run the zombie hoarde," Alderman explains. "Then I thought, 'Ahh, this would be a good idea for a game.'"

Among the thousands of U.S. military men and women still fighting in Afghanistan, many will have their missions cut short by serious injury. Quickly airlifting them out of the war zone requires teams of specially trained medical personnel. Cheri Lawson of WNKU spent the day at a Cincinnati, Ohio, hospital where the rigorous training takes place.

Sunday the world lost a man who elevated a simple arcade game into an American obsession. Steve Kordek was Mr. Pinball. National Pinball Museum founder David Silverman talks to guest host Mary Louise Kelly Kordek and his legacy.

It was at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., where Whitney Houston first learned to sing, and it was there that friends and family gathered on Saturday to say goodbye to the pop superstar.

The star-studded service lasted more than three hours. Among those in attendance were Dionne Warwick, Kevin Costner and Alicia Keys.

Stevie Wonder performed his song "Ribbon in the Sky," while friends and family offered remembrances. Patricia Houston, the singer's sister-in-law, characterized Houston as a woman whose battles with addiction could not keep her from giving her fans what they wanted.

"Even when she was tired and lost, she gave and gave and gave some more," she said.

A troubled starlet dies in a helicopter crash off the Irish coast after sending a series of mysterious text messages. Three years later, a hungry young reporter desperate for work takes an assignment to write a quickie celebrity biography of her — but finds complexity and danger.

That seemingly accidental death is the catalyst for the events in Bloodland, a new thriller by Irish author Alan Glynn.

Glynn tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Mary Louise Kelly that his book takes the reader from Dublin to New York to the Congo in pursuit of a tangled story of murder, corruption and illegal mining of rare ores.

The market for children's books is huge: Consumers buy $3.1 billion children's books annually. Now, with e-books and apps taking off, there are new opportunities to turn traditional story books into interactive experiences. Guest host Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dan Poynter, consultant and publisher at Para Publishing, and Roxie Munro, an author and illustrator of more than 30 children's books, about where children's books are headed.

In a victory for the White House, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an extension of the payroll tax cut on Friday after weeks of refusal. Host Mary Louise Kelly speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about the political reasoning behind the vote.

Country Music Award winner Gretchen Peters had an eventful 2010: The BP oil spill washed up on her doorstep, a good friend committed suicide, and her son announced that he's transgender. The last of those in particular, she says, got her thinking about personal conflict.

"[My son] had withheld a very basic and large truth about himself for a long, long time," Peters says. "And I thought, what's the difference here — except a difference of degree — between him and anyone else? I think all of us withhold truths about ourselves that we think would make other people like us less, or accept us less."

Who'd have thought a 77-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter would be hovering near the top of the pop charts? Leonard Cohen was a poet and fiction writer who, in the 1960s, wrote songs like "Suzanne," "So Long, Marianne" and "Bird on a Wire." His unmistakable voice lulls you into a hypnotic spell on his new album, so we asked two fellow singers and Cohen fans to talk about what they hear on Old Ideas: Conor Oberst, best known for his band Bright Eyes, and Ron Sexsmith.

Following days of rebellious complaints from The Sun tabloid's newsroom, News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch was in London Friday to reassure journalists of his commitment to the paper. Murdoch also announced plans to create a Sunday edition of The Sun.

A number of Greeks are struggling to get by as the country's economy falters, including a group of middle class families in one Athens apartment building. They save they've lost hope they'll ever have a decent life again.

The wind howls on a blustery Sunday morning in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona, as well-dressed families pull into the parking lot of a Mormon church.

Mormon pioneer roots run more than a century deep in this part of the state, an isolated spot between two Indian reservations.

Karen Johnson is among the Mormon faithful, passionate about God and country.

"I have the gene," Johnson said, laughing. "It's the gene of freedom and liberty. In our faith, we have been taught that the Constitution is like unto Scripture. That we should know and understand the Constitution as well as we understand the Bible, that we should support it, and we should look for and uphold righteous men."

For Johnson, that righteous man is GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Washington County, Maine, is not a place for unhardy souls.

It's the easternmost county in all of New England, and one of the poorest. And at this time of year, people in Down East Maine do anything they can to eke out a living.

"I get about six months out of it," county resident Hartley Goston said, referring to his lobster boat, The Darian Sue. "I get a few odd jobs here and there to help tie up some loose ends."

Goston's boat sits up on blocks outside his house in the coastal town of Milbridge. Down the road stands a sign advertising Goston's part-time welding business.

Goston's in the garage fixing a trailer when a friend drops in with some fliers for GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.

China's economy sailed through the financial crisis unscathed — at least in the short run.

When the global crisis hit, the country's government-owned banks started lending out lots more money. The money came largely from the savings accounts of ordinary Chinese people. It went largely to finance big construction projects, which helped keep China's economy growing.

"It sort of explains why China recovered so quickly," Hu Angang, an economist at Tsinghua University, told us. Indeed, China's strong showing through the crisis was seen by some as a vindication of the large role Chinese government plays in steering the country's economy.

Melissa Block talks to TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay, co-directors of the documentary Undefeated. Their film follows an inner-city high school football team in North Memphis, Tennessee, for a season and profiles their coach and players. It documents the struggles they have on and off the field.

Melissa Block and Robert Siegel read emails from listeners about violinist Aleksey Igudesman and pianist Hyung-ki Joo.

The northern plains, especially the Dakotas, are home to about half of the country's honey bee hives during the summer. It's been a good place for bees because they can gather nectar and pollen from so many wildflowers. But the landscape of the area is becoming less bee-friendly, and the consequences could be felt as far away as the almond groves of California, which depend on those same bees for pollination.

Melissa Block speaks with Eric Heginbotham — senior political scientist at RAND — about China's military capability today, how it's developed over time and what the Chinese make of ramped-up attention from the US.

Sometimes I wonder: Do the members of young indie-rock bands know that they're walking stereotypes? There's the scruffy dude who's obsessed with everything vintage and analog, the Pavement-worshiping, whiny-voiced lead singer, the rhythm section that knows its way around every oddity recorded by The Kinks. That's pretty much how I pegged the Philadelphia sextet Dr. Dog in the early days, right through the band's first five critically slobbered-over albums.