Nov 17th, 2008 · He's descended from jazz royalty, and he wears it with pride. But the saxophonist has engineered his own modern and thoroughly personal approach to improvisation. Hear Ravi Coltrane's working quartet perform live at the Vanguard.
Nov 11th, 2008 · In The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American writer and the grandson of an ayatollah, travels behind "Persian walls" to provide a revealing look at modern Iran.
Nov 8th, 2008 · Jeffrey, Wyo., is a modern-day ghost town. Once home to a booming uranium mining industry, the town crumbled after uranium prices plummeted in the 1980s. Its 50 remaining residents react to the possibility of a new uranium boom.
Nov 4th, 2008 · Old Crow Medicine Show brings its rootsy back-porch sound to World Café, where it showcases songs from the new Tennessee Pusher. The disc takes a modern approach to Americana with gospel and rock overtones, but leaves the band's roots firmly intact.
Oct 31st, 2008 · A new generation of vampire heroes is dominating best-seller lists, movies and TV. The modern-day vampire gentleman is eerily alluring in all the old-fashioned, bloodsucking ways but reins in his baser instincts in an impressive display of control.
Oct 31st, 2008 · Oetzi, a mummified man found frozen in the Italian Alps after 5,300 years, has no living genetic descendants among modern humans. The discovery came after researchers sequenced Oetzi's entire genome and compared it with human DNA.
Oct 29th, 2008 · The McCain campaign's charge that Barack Obama has socialist leanings has put the spotlight on a word relatively uncommon to modern American elections. Linguist Geoff Nunberg explains how the "S" word was used in the past — and why it's come up now.
Oct 23rd, 2008 · Nearly a century ago, an economist noted a correlation between the health of the economy and the length of women's skirts — the phenomenon became known as the "hemline index." New York Times reporter Tamar Lewin set out to find modern-day economic indicators.