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NPR's Robert Smith reports on the rise of "podcasts" -- amateur music and talk shows created by the users of Apple's popular iPod personal music devices and other digital music players. Whole "shows" of music and talk can be downloaded from the Internet to individual players automatically, and some of the show hosts have become celebrities among the burgeoning podcast audience.

Comic books have become a new frontier for the portrayal of scientific ideas and the drama of discovery. But they're also a battleground for the ongoing debate between evolutionary scientists and proponents of creationism.

Folk artist Charlie Lucas uses discarded items in his work to piece together his family history. In a new exhibit, Lucas traces his ancestors' story, from the slave ships of Africa to their struggles in America. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.

Microsoft releases its "Antispyware Beta" as a free download, without saying if consumers will have to pay for it in the future. It works like other free tools available from other providers, scanning computers for software known to have ill inent.

Musician and Day to Day contributor David Was says there's a vast amount of good music that can be downloaded legally, and for free, on the Internet. He plays a selection of the wide variety of styles and genres available.

During the last two decades, Chinese traditional music has begun to have a real impact on Western classical music. In the third of a five-part series, NPR's Fred Child explores the connections between folk traditions from around the world and the western tradition of art music.

Japanese comics, called manga, take up more and more space on American bookshelves, and they've infused new life into the publishing industry. Neal Conan and guests discuss the growing influence of Japanese culture in America.

Derek Kirk Kim's debut graphic novel Same Difference and Other Stories has won the top three awards of the comic world. He talks with NPR's Jacki Lyden.

Tim Curry's first movie was the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He turned heads as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite mad scientist. This week, Curry opens on Broadway in Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He plays King Arthur.

This week in 1814, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, made publishing history. His poem "The Corsair" sold out its entire first run, all 10,000 copies, in London in one day. "The Corsair" is the tale of a pirate captain willing to risk the love of his life to save a slave in a Turkish harem. Steven Jones, a Byron scholar who teaches at Chicago's Loyola University, discusses the great work.