Culturetopia: Must-Listen Arts & Entertainment (Son Of A Gun Edition)

NPR reporter and producer Elizabeth Blair cohosts the podcast this week-- while you've doubtless enjoyed her stories about musicians, talk shows hosts and other pop culture cynosures, Elizabeth enjoys a formidable behind-the-scenes reputation as the powerhouse who's created award-winning series like The NPR 100, In Character and 50 Great Voices, which is running for much of the rest of this year.

And the first piece in our weekly roundup of NPR's best arts and culture stories happens to be my entry for that series -- a more personal than usual look at Umm Kulthum, still considered one of the Arab world's biggest stars even though she died decades ago. I confess to never really understanding her appeal, even though everyone on my dad's side of the family loves her. My father -- with the help of a renowned ethnomusicologist -- helps me to hear what I'd been missing.

We've also got the hilarious Sebastian Faulks, who is hereby forgiven for writing a sequel to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, simply because his new book sounds genius. He tells Linda Wertheimer A Week In December is meant to be a throwback to Dickens, but where Dickens was obsessed with class conflict and true love, Faulks' interest is in terrorism, the Internet and, well, true love.

Other pieces include the winner of WATC's Three-Minute Fiction contest, the travails of an opera understudy, and a profile of the new band Broken Bells, who come with an impressive alt-rock pedigree (The Shins, Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley).

Finally, longtime adman Tom Burrell talks with Neal Conan about how slavery's stain still taints every aspect of American culture. His book Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority argues that the most successful and longest-running propaganda campaign of all time has been the belittling of black people.

You can listen right here, or subscribe.