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Once, American Idol helped establish a new pop songbook and distilled the essence of contemporary stardom. NPR Music's critic, Ann Powers, says those days are gone.

The downfall of ambitious politician Bo Xilai exposed a bitter, high-level political power struggle in China. Now, victims of his crackdown on organized crime are breaking their silence, with stories of torture and disregard for the law that reveal the campaign's dark side.

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, whose book Where the Wild Things Are became a favorite for generations of kids, died at age 83. Fresh Air remembers Sendak with excerpts from several interviews.

Nearly two months after a collision on China's high-speed-rail network killed 40 people, the government is still investigating why it happened. But critics blame the haste with which the network was built, corruption and a disregard for human life.

The newest legal front for Rupert Murdoch's media giant involves the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law banning U.S. firms from paying bribes to government officials abroad. The British division of the U.S. company has admitted that private investigators working for one of its newspapers paid police for information from confidential databases.

Surgeons in Sweden replaced an American patient's cancerous windpipe with a scaffold built from nanofibers and seeded with the patient's stem cells. Lead surgeon Dr. Paolo Macchiarini discusses the procedure and the benefits of tissue-engineered synthetic organs.

Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been vilified for their role in the housing collapse. Key employees have left as morale has plummeted. But the two organizations are key to the functioning of the U.S. housing market, leaving some observers concerned about the ongoing brain drain.

Artists and musicians often take the first hit when the economy takes a turn for the worse. Host Michel Martin speaks with writer Amanda Abrams about one violin maker's struggle to make ends meet in tough times. Abrams chronicles Howard Needham's story in this week's Washington Post Magazine.

The rules of the game in education are shifting. The same sort of work rule changes that are at the heart of the teachers' strike in Chicago are being debated in school districts and states across the country.

One is House Speaker John Boehner's golfing buddy; the other, an ally of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Republican Tom Latham and Democrat Leonard Boswell have long served together in the U.S. House. But redistricting has put the popular incumbents on a general-election collision course.