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Shuai Wang thought he'd peaked before competing on Top Chef. But over a plate of food at King BBQ, the chef tells NPR's Debbie Elliott he now knows his career is just getting started.

It's been a remarkable year for jazz, and narrowing down a Top 10 list for 2008 takes a bit of work. Once again, there's room for enthusiasm and optimism about the state of jazz and its ability to inspire musicians and listeners alike. Here's a look (and a listen) back at some of the year's highlights.

Josh Rogosin (he/him) stumbled into NPR HQ in 1999 on his way to mixing shows at The Shakespeare Theatre in downtown DC. Since then, he has been at the controls for all of NPR's flagship newsmagazines and gathered sound in far flung places like Togo and Benin, West Africa, Cambodia and Greece for the Radio Expeditions series. He has engineered at NPR West and NPR NY and spent two years as Technical Director at Marketplace Productions in Los Angeles. He served as Senior Broadcast Engineer for New York Public Radio and Studio 360, and was an originating producer and sound designer for NPR's Ask Me Another.

For the past month, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich laid out multiple strips of paper on his desk, with names like Uncle Owen Aunt Beru, Extra Life and Erykah Badu printed on them.

Also: Paul Ryan is writing a book; more Craigslist poetry; Alexander McCall Smith on W.H. Auden.

John Wesley Harding laments the Starbucks-ization of America, great music from Josh Ritter, Edie Brickell, and Punch Brothers. Then questionable life advice from Sarah Vowell and Eugene Mirman, topped with Haley Tanner's homage to a favorite writer.

A most unlikely CD has been close to the top of the Billboard charts recently. The Mars Volta, from Texas, somehow missed the news that progressive rock was nearly extinct. Their new CD, Frances the Mute, is a saga based on the diary of a child in search of a birth mother.

Music critic Christian Bordal reviews the two-CD collection Hypnotize, the latest from the Armenian-American, Los Angeles-based rock group System of a Down. The band's follow-up album to their best-selling surprise hit Mezmerize finds the band once again pounding out a genre-bending blend of rock, reggae, punk, metal and rap.