Arts

The presidential candidates may not be talking much about Guantanamo Bay, but the U.S. detention center there has been at the forefront of Michelle Shephard's mind for the last decade. The national security correspondent for the Toronto Star has traveled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, more than two dozen times; she even got enough stamps on her Guantanamo Starbucks card for a free latte.

Whenever I hear someone called a "cult writer," my hackles jump toward the ceiling. It's not only that the phrase calls up images of self-congratulatory hipsters, but that writers who become cultish tend to do so because their work is steeped in bizarro sex, graphic violence, trippy weirdness or half-baked philosophy.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And next, the Wisdom Watch conversation. That's the part of the program where we speak with those who've made a difference through their work. Today, we will meet a longtime observer of the Washington scene, former Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Trescott.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, for two decades she covered theater, museums, gallery openings and movie premiers. Now arts reporter Jacqueline Trescott sits down with us to share some of what she's learned along the way. It's our Wisdom Watch conversation and it's coming up in a few minutes.

I feel very much like the radio lady at the beginning of Singin' In The Rain when I say "rumor has it," but rumor has it that Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone might be starring in something written and directed by Cameron Crowe, and that's actually good enough news if true to make me want to put aside those worries. (Dignity, always dignity.) [Deadline]

Actor Al Pacino is returning to Broadway in November to star in David Mamet's classic play, Glengarry Glen Ross. He's playing a different character from the one he playd in the movie version 20 years ago. According to Bloomberg News, he's making $125,000 per week, plus a cut of the show's profits — one of the biggest pay packages ever for a Broadway performer.

Before his 2010 installation for the Tate Modern's Unilever Series, in which the former London power station-turned-art museum annually commissions a work for its cavernous Turbine Hall, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei said, "I try not to see art as a secret code." He then filled the hall with 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds.