Reporting for NPR from dangerous places like Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, Kelly McEvers braved gunfire, explosions and tear gas to "get the story" during the turbulent Arab Spring. Friends and colleagues doing the same work were kidnapped or even killed.

Kelly has turned her reporting skills on her own gripping story, an intimate portrait of the sacrifices war correspondents and their families make -- and the sometimes dangerous allure of the job. She and veteran public radio producer Jay Allison bring us this one-hour documentary, Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent's Dilemma, on this week's Sunday Radio Matinee, Sunday, Aug. 11 at 12 noon.

 

Calling all artistes! Want to design a new t-shirt for public radio? The popular crowdsourcing vendor Threadless has teamed up with NPR for the "My Sound World" t-shirt design contest, challenging artists and listeners to show how the sounds and stories of public radio inspire them. Your design could end up in the NPR Shop! Create, submit and vote for your favorites over the next few weeks, through Sept. 2.

 

Jazz fans are giving favorable reviews of one of KGOU's newest music programs, Backstage Jazz, which is locally produced by Jeremy Gossett. The one-hour program profiles jazz musicians through live recordings and backstage interviews. Tomorrow, Aug. 9 at 9 p.m., Jeremy brings us a retrospective on Al Jarreau's long and illustrious career.

You can hear the inaugural season of the show from the beginning, starting Friday, Aug. 16 as KGOU broadcasts the pilot episode at 9 p.m. The pilot features trumpeter Rodney Block and vocalist Bijoux Piggy. Subsequent episodes feature David Sanborn, Larry Coryell, Poncho Sanchez, and more. Here's a Season 1 preview video with just a taste of what's to come.

Back in January, NPR Senior European Correspondent Sylvia Poggioli profiled Italian pianist and music teacher Francesco Lotoro, who has been reconstructing an entire chapter of music history, a body of work both created and hidden during the Holocaust. Inspired by her report, the U.S. State Department recently hosted The Lost Music of the Holocaust, an event honoring Lotoro's work, which is one of several current efforts to reclaim this canon of music.

 

Whether it's called a cobbler, crisp, crumble, pandowdy or buckle, this family of desserts allows cooks the versatility to experiment with various combinations of summer fruit and bits of pastry. Folklorist and baker Emily Hilliard shares recipes at NPR's Kitchen Window for cobblers, etc. that are easier than pie, but more than "thrown together".