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Day to Day TV critic Andrew Wallenstein discusses the dual endings for a recent episode of the police drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He advises programs not to leave plot lines in the hands of the audience -- though this clever approach does boost ratings.

The new book In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits pulls hundreds of photos from the magazine's vast archives. Hear NPR's Alex Chadwick, the book's editor, Leah Bendavid-Val, and Ashley Riggs, whose portrait appears on the cover.

A new anthology of fiction was published on World AIDS Day in response to the global epidemic. Conceived and edited by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Nadine Gordimer, Telling Talesfeatures stories from 21 distinguished authors. All profits will go to medical and advocacy programs on AIDS. NPR's Jennifer Ludden speaks with Gordimer.

Day to Day television critic Andrew Wallenstein reviews The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, a new film premiering on HBO. The movie uses unique cinematic devices to reveal the complex life of actor Peter Sellers, played by Geoffrey Rush.

Author Susan Sontag died Tuesday in Manhattan, after a long struggle with cancer. Sontag was the author of many essays and 17 widely translated books. She wrote about photography and AIDS, film and choreography, Vietnam and the Sept. 11 attacks. Her novel In America won the National Book Award for fiction. Sontag was 71. Hear NPR's Kim Masters.

One of the great composers of the early 20th century, Béla Bartók was also one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology. Hungarian musicologist Peter Laki joins NPR's Fred Child to explore the folk and classical elements in Bartok's music.

Comic and journalist Stephen Colbert is the fake senior correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We talk with Colbert about his reports, from "Rathergate" to "This Week in God."

Hip-hop scholar and Northeastern University professor Murray Forman joins culture critic Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University to talk with NPR's Tony Cox about their new book That's the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.

A major figure in the American musical scene died on Dec. 7 at his home in Siesta Key, Fla. Frederick Fennell was a legendary conductor and educator known for his musicality and interpretive abilities. NPR's Fred Child remembers him through his music.

Actor Jerry Orbach died Tuesday at age 69 of prostate cancer. Orbach spent years on the New York stage as a song man in hit musicals, but he was perhaps best known for his role as acerbic New York homicide detective Lennie Briscoe in the long-running hit series Law and Order.