Greenland, Antartic Ice Melting Faster

"Superstorm Sandy sparked a lot of interest in rising sea levels when it swept across the Northeast last month and flooded parts of the coast. Over the next century, more water — and higher sea levels — could come from melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica. How much has been unclear."

"But now scientists have developed a much clearer view of how quickly that ice has been melting over the past two decades. And that will help researchers forecast the rate of sea-level rise in the years to come."

"There's enough ice sitting on Greenland and Antarctica to drive up sea level catastrophically — by more than 200 feet. Thankfully, nobody expects it all to melt."

"But over the past two decades, scientists have been struggling to understand just what has been happening on those ice sheets, using primarily satellite-based instruments."

The Hidden Costs of Raising the Medicare Age

"Whenever the discussion turns to saving money in Medicare, the idea of raising the eligibility age often comes up."

"'I don't think you can look at entitlement reform without adjusting the age for retirement,' Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on ABC's This Week last Sunday. 'Let it float up another year or so over the next 30 years, adjust Medicare from 65 to 67.'"

"It's hardly surprising that the idea keeps finding its way into the conversation. That same increase is already being phased in for Social Security. Even President Obama reportedly had the idea on the table during his informal negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner during the summer of 2011."

Do Orchestras Really Need Conductors?

"Have you ever wondered whether music conductors actually influence their orchestras?"

"They seem important. After all, they're standing in the middle of the stage and waving their hands. But the musicians all have scores before them that tell them what to play. If you took the conductor away, could the orchestra manage on its own?"

"A new study aims to answer this question. Yiannis Aloimonos, of the University of Maryland, and several colleagues recruited the help of orchestral players from Ferrara, Italy."

"They installed a tiny infrared light at the tip of an (unnamed) conductor's baton. They also placed similar lights on the bows of the violinists in the orchestra. The scientists then surrounded the orchestra with infrared cameras."

No Innocent Spice: The Secret Story of Nutmeg, Life and Death

"Ah, nutmeg! Whether it's sprinkled on eggnog, baked into spice cake or blended into a latte, this pungent spice can evoke memories of holidays past. We tend to link it to celebratory times."

"But a lot of blood has been shed over this little brown seed. 'Nutmeg has been one of the saddest stories of history,' explains culinary historian Michael Krondl. If you listen to my story you'll hear the gruesome, grisly tale of how the Dutch tortured and massacred the people of the nutmeg-producing Banda Islands in Indonesia in an attempt to monopolize the nutmeg trade."

"So, why was nutmeg so valuable? Well, Krondl likens it to the iPhone of the 1600s. It was fashionable among the wealthy. It was exotic and potent enough to induce hallucinations — or at least a nutmeg bender, as detailed in this account from The Atlantic."

Old Newspapers: New Perspectives on the American Revolution

"Time has a way of condensing major historical events into a few key moments, with one-dimensional, legendary figures at the forefront. In his new book, author and archivist Todd Andrlik gives life and depth to one such event — the American Revolution. He uses newspaper reporting from that era to provide a sense of the Revolution as it actually unfolded."

"The book includes eyewitness accounts, newspapers and battlefield letters — the kind of primary sourcing that's increasingly rare in our Wikipedia world. It's called Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News. "It's not just newspaper clippings, it's the entire newspapers," Andrlik tells NPR's Rachel Martin. 'These newspapers are not like we think of today, they're quite different in that they're only four pages in length, and only about 10 by 15 inches tall.'"

Color of Christ: A Story of Race and Religion in America

"What did Jesus look like? The many different depictions of Christ tell a story about race and religion in America. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore that history in their new book,The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. The book traces how different races and ethnic groups claimed Christ as their own — and how depictions of Jesus have both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists."

"The Ku Klux Klan could not rely on Christian doctrine to justify their persecution and violence, so they had to turn to religious icons. 'The belief, the value, that Jesus is white provides them an image in place of text,' Blum tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. 'It gets them away from actually having to quote chapter and verse, which they can't really do to present their cause.'"

When 'Unfilmable' Books Make Memorable Movies

"The centerpiece of the film Life of Pi is a boy adrift on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the ocean. That's easy enough for Yann Martel to describe in his novel — but hard to make happen on the set of a movie. As it happens, Pi is in theaters with another movie based on an "unfilmable" novel:Cloud Atlas, with six different plots in six different time periods."

"Some books are challenging to film because they're challenging to read. TakeUlysses, James Joyce's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece, published in 1922."

"'Ulysses was for a very long time considered unfilmable both because of the complexity of the plot and the point of view of the characters,' says Maria Konnikova, a freelance writer who recently explored unfilmable books for The Atlantic."

Iron Dome Embraces Tel Aviv As Residents Take Cover

"Sarah and Yael Levintin raised their wine glasses to the sky and toasted the Iron Dome system that had just been deployed outside Israel's commercial center."

"The two sisters decided to leave their apartment Friday evening after two rockets fired into the Tel Aviv area were successfully intercepted by the system."

"'We had stayed home all day because we didn't want to take the chance that, you know, we'd be away from the bomb shelter,' said Yael Levintin. 'We aren't used to war. I guess we are kinda babies about it.'"

'Anna Karenina,' Rushing Headlong Toward Her Train

"After he'd finished reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, did director Joe Wright scribble on the last page, 'Needs more pep?'"

"Wright is, after all, the man who put the cute little ampersand in Pride & Prejudice and gave us a giggly Lizzie Bennet rendered by Keira Knightley. Knightley is back again in the title role as the Russian chick who loves and loses and throws herself under a train."

"Casting the British actress, whose last memorable performance was in Bend It Like Beckham and who appears topless on the cover of the current Allure magazine, may have brought roses to the cheeks of the folks in marketing. But it creates a crippling problem with regard to gravitas, of which more anon."

WW I Poetry On Veterans Day: The Words of War

"Veterans Day — originally Armistice Day — was renamed in 1954 to include veterans who had fought in all wars. But the day of remembrance has its roots in World War I — Nov. 11, 1918 was the day the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. On this Veterans Day, we celebrate the poetry of World War I, one of the legacies of that conflict."

"Soldiers like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, John McCrae and Rupert Brooke wrote evocative poems about their experiences. One of the most famous poems of the war is Brooke's "The Soldier." Brooke died of dysentery aboard a troop ship headed for Gallipoli in April 1915. The opening verse of "The Soldier" reads:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home."

Struggle For Smarts: How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning

"In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth grade math class."

"'The teacher was trying to teach the class how to draw three-dimensional cubes on paper,' Stigler explains, "and one kid was just totally having trouble with it. His cube looked all cockeyed, so the teacher said to him, 'Why don't you go put yours on the board?' So right there I thought, 'That's interesting! He took the one who can't do it and told him to go and put it on the board.'"

"Stigler knew that in American classrooms, it was usually the best kid in the class who was invited to the board. And so he watched with interest as the Japanese student dutifully came to the board and started drawing, but still couldn't complete the cube. Every few minutes, the teacher would ask the rest of the class whether the kid had gotten it right, and the class would look up from their work, and shake their heads no. And as the period progressed, Stigler noticed that he — Stigler — was getting more and more anxious."

John Williams Inevitable Themes

"For more than 50 years, John Williams' music has taken us to galaxies far, far away, through adventures here on earth, made us feel giddy joy and occasionally scared us to death."

"He might be the most recognized contemporary composer in the world, but Williams says writing music wasn't what he first set out to do. He wanted to be a concert pianist, and studied at Juilliard with renowned teacher Rosina Lhévinne."

"I played pretty well," Williams says. "I did hear players like John Browning and Van Cliburnaround the place, who were also students of Rosina's, and I thought to myself, 'If that's the competition, I think I'd better be a composer!'"

"Williams moved to Los Angeles, where he became a popular session musician, playing piano on movie and television soundtracks. He began getting jobs arranging music and then composing it. He worked at Universal Studios, writing TV scores."

Nick, Nora, & Asta Return in Thin Man Novellas

"Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Maninvented a new kind of crime fiction. It was hard-boiled, but also light-hearted; funny, with a hint of homicide. Nick and Nora Charles — and Asta, their wire-haired terrier — were rich, witty and in love, when America was in the middle of the Depression. They also drank a lot — Nick and Nora, not Asta, though he got an occasional leftover slurp."

"In 1934, The Thin Man was made into a popular motion picture, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy — and a wire-haired terrier — which spawned five sequels, including After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man. And although the screenwriting couple of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich usually completed the screenplays, MGM Studio needed the stories and characters that only Hammett could write."

"Now, for the first time, the stories of After the Thin Man and Another Thin Manhave been published as novellas — The Return of the Thin Man. They have been edited by Richard Layman."

Day of the Dead: A Joyful Celebration of Life and Food

"Sugar skulls, tamales, and a spirit's favorite spirits — these are things you might find on the altar in cemeteries all over Mexico and nearby places where families go to picnic and celebrate the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, on Nov. 1 and 2."

"The Aztecs developed the rituals some 3,000 years ago because they believed one should not grieve the loss of a beloved ancestor who passed, but rather celebrate their lives and welcome the return of their spirits to the land of the living once a year. That's where the food and drink and music ofrendas, or offerings, come in."

"Hayes Lavis, cultural arts curator for the Smithsonian'sNational Museum of the American Indian, says that mourning was not allowed because it was believed the tears would make the spirit's path treacherous and slippery, "This day is a joyous occasion; It's a time to gather with everyone in your family, those alive and those dead," he says."

Cloud Atlas: You're Better Off Reading the Book

"First I need to talk about the book, because it's not as if Cloud Atlas the movie came from nowhere — and if you think it's only the movie you want to know about, I think you need a context for what's onscreen."

"Author David Mitchell writes exquisite pastiches, and Cloud Atlas is in the form of six distinct and enthralling novellas set in six different eras with six different literary styles."

"First comes the journal of a 19th century lawyer for a slave-trading company, then a series of early 20th century letters from a down-and-out composer who apprentices himself to an elderly musical giant. We jump to a 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller; then a 2012 tale of a debt-ridden publisher tricked into signing himself into an old age home. In a totalitarian future, a South Korean restaurant is staffed by female robots called "fabricants," a couple of which are beginning to think for themselves with tumultuous social consequences. The last story is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which some denizens are hunter-gatherers, others cannibals."

If the World Picked US President Obama Would Win By a Landslide

"The presidential election here at home is neck and neck. The Real Clear Politics average of the popular vote puts Gov. Mitt Romney 0.6 percent ahead of President Obama."

"But if the world had its say, this election would be a blowout favoring the incumbent."

"That's according to a BBC World Service poll taken in 21 countries. It found for the most part, foreign countries preferred Obama. The only exception was Pakistan where more people said they preferred Romney."

Master Jefferson: Defender of Liberty then Slavery

"His public words have inspired millions, but for scholars, his private words and deeds generate confusion, discomfort, apologetic excuses. When the young Thomas Jefferson wrote, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' there's compelling evidence to indicate that he indeed meant all men, not just white guys."

"But by the 1780s, Jefferson's views on slavery in America had mysteriously shifted. He formulated racial theories asserting, for instance, that African women had mated with apes; Jefferson financed the construction of Monticello by using the slaves he owned — some 600 during his lifetime — as collateral for a loan he took out from a Dutch banking house; and when he engineered the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Jefferson pushed for slavery in that territory. By 1810, Jefferson had his eye fixed firmly on the bottom line, disparaging a relative's plan to sell his slaves by saying, 'It [would] never do to destroy the goose.'"

A Startling Gap Between Us and Them In "Plutocrats"

"Journalist Chrystia Freeland has spent years reporting on the people who've reached the pinnacle of the business world. For her new book,Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, she traveled the world, interviewing the multimillionaires — and billionaires — who make up the world's elite super-rich. Freeland says that many of today's richest individuals gained their fortunes not from inheritance, but from actual work."

'These super-rich are people who, as they like to say, 'did it themselves,' " Freeland tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "And what's interesting for me, and actually I didn't expect it, I think it's a paradox of this sort of working super-rich, which is that you would think ... that having done it yourself, you might have more sympathy, be closer to the 99 percent."

But, she says, that's often not the case. "In many ways, that personal history of really feeling like, 'I did this! By myself!' actually creates more of a chasm between them and the rest of us, and, I would say, a certain degree of disdain."

A Human-Powered Helicopter: Straight Up Difficult

"'I grew up wanting to fly,' says Graham Bowen-Davies. 'I guess I just settled for being an engineer.'"

"He's standing on an indoor track in southern Maryland, watching a giant helicopter take flight. At the end of each of its four spindly arms — arms he helped design and build — a giant rotor churns the air. In the cockpit sits the engine: a 0.7-horsepower, 135-pound graduate student named Kyle Gluesenkamp."

"Gluesenkamp is pedaling like crazy to keep the rotors spinning and the craft aloft."

"Bowen-Davies and dozens of his fellow students from the University of Maryland are chasing one of aviation's last milestones: the Sikorsky Prize. The American Helicopter Society (AHS) has promised $250,000 to the team that can build a human-powered helicopter. All it has to do is hover for a minute, reach a height of 3 meters (about 10 feet), and stay in a 10-meter box."

"Turns out, that's harder than it sounds. The prize has been unclaimed for more than three decades."

Liquid Nitrogen Cocktails Smoking Hot Trend Or Unnecessary Risk

"Doctors use liquid nitrogen — a substance registering a wickedly cold 321 degrees below zero Fahrenheit — to freeze warts so they dry up and fall off. Yes, folks, this stuff kills tissue. So imagine what it might do to your stomach if you drink some."

"Unfortunately, a British teen recently found out the hard way.The Telegraph reports this week that an 18-year-old had a portion of her perforated stomach removed after sipping the stuff in a trendy cocktail where the substance was used to chill the glass and create a smoky vapor."

"And, as ABC News puts it, 'celebrity chefs, master mixologists and medical experts from around the world are steamed up' over it."