Hanging Around With Monkey See At The All-Singing, All-Dancing NPR.org

You have probably noticed things looking slightly different around these parts as of today. That's because there's an entirely redesigned NPR.org — not just the homepage, but here on the blog as well.

Most things haven't changed too much — we're not altering the content or introducing a live webcam of my desk (how horrifying) or anything like that. You'll see little things: the headline has a little more room, the column is a little wider, things like that. And the monkeys have gotten smaller at the top. (To paraphrase one of the greats, Monkey See is big. It's the monkeys that got small.)

The biggest change, though, is that the comment and recommendation information is at the beginning of the post instead of the end — you can still open the comments from the bottom of the post, but the counts are at the top left, if you're wondering whether there's already chitchat going on.

Some other things to keep in mind:

• We're making more use of the Twitter feed these days, and some things I don't get around to mentioning on the blog show up there. (Nathan Rabin's book made it to the Twitter feed well before it made it to the blog today.) We'd be happy to have you in on the discussion.

• Don't forget the newsletter, which you can subscribe to from the link over to the right (right under the no-longer-stylized photo of me). In addition to giving you an easy daily reminder to check in, the newsletter is also a great way to get a heads-up if we unexpectedly have something popping on a weekend or something like that.

And don't forget that there are lots of places on NPR for pop-culture and entertainment coverage besides this page. NPR Music is always humming (I highly recommend the new Sarah Siskind Tiny Desk Concert — I was there to see it, and it was wonderful).

And there are books (currently featuring Summer Science Books — where but NPR will you see a promo for "mysteries of the human stomach," I ask you), and there are movies (if you haven't read Ella Taylor's review of The Ugly Truth, please check it out; it is devastating and dead-on), and there are lots of other things to enjoy in Arts & Life — even Jeremy Piven.

And by all means, find your local station (you can do that from right next to the NPR logo at the top), which will then sit nicely at the top of the page so you can go back and forth between what's national and NPR-driven and what's special to your particular part of the country.

So look around, but then — obviously — come back.