For Amy Grant, Beauty And Tragedy Give Way To 'Mercy'

Amy Grant released her first album in 1977, when she was a teenager. Apart from a few secular mainstream hits in the 1990s, most of her work is unabashedly spiritual, and her name has become synonymous with contemporary Christian pop music. It doesn't bother the singer; for her, music has always represented a sacred place.

The MIDI Revolution: Synthesizing Music For The Masses

You can't hear it, not exactly, but it's in almost every song on the radio. It's a 30-year-old technology that hasn't changed much over the years but is now used in ways that its creators likely never imagined. In contemporary music, there's nothing closer to a universal translator than MIDI.

Bombing Suspect's Lawyer A Quiet Defender Of The Notorious

Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner all have one thing in common: defense attorney Judy Clarke. With her help, all three avoided the death penalty.

Clarke routinely faces an enraged public, top-notch prosecutors and difficult, often disturbed clients. Now, Clarke is soon to face those things again with another high-profile client, alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

With such notorious clients, you might assume Clarke is tough, aggressive and happy in the spotlight.

He Didn't Just Call His Mother, He Made Her A Star

A little over three years ago, filmmaker Josh Seftel's father passed away. After that, he says, it became difficult to keep up with his mom. He didn't use the phone very often and she didn't like email.

But then he got an idea.

He got his mom, Pat Seftel, an iPad and flew to Florida to teach her how to use it. Pretty soon they were video-chatting regularly. A filmmaker by nature, he began recording and turning the conversations into short episodes for Youtube, called My Mom on Movies.

C-Sections Deliver Cachet For Wealthy Brazilian Women

The office is immaculate, as you would expect in an upscale neighborhood in Sao Paulo — all sterile, white, modish plastic furniture and green plants. Behind the reception desk are pictures that would look more appropriate in a pop art gallery than a private maternity clinic.

The list of services at the clinic in Brazil's largest city is long: fertility treatments, specialized gynecology and, of course, obstetrics. But one thing they rarely do here is preside over a vaginal delivery.

This One Is For You, Ma

On-air challenge: You are given two words starting with M-A. The answer is a third word that can follow the first one and precede the second one, in each case to complete a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase.

Last week's challenge: Name a famous performer whose last name has six letters. Move the first three letters to the end — without otherwise changing the order of the letters — and add one more letter at the end. The result, in seven letters, will name a place where this person famously performed. Who is it, and what's the place?

Paul Rudnick On His 'Gorgeous' Adventure

Paul Rudnick has made a name as a playwright, novelist, columnist and screenwriter. Now he's turned his attention to the Young Adult market with a kind of Cinderella story starring a young woman named Becky, who's grown up in a trailer park.

When Becky's mom dies, she discovers a mysterious phone number. Calling it, she receives a mystical offer: A legendary New York fashion designer will make her three dresses, one each in black, white and red, and if she'll only wear them — and do everything he says — she'll become history's most beautiful woman.

How To Dip Without Breaking The Chip

The Mexican army's May 5 victory in 1862's Battle of Puebla is a pretty small holiday in Mexico. But in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo has grown into a kind of Mexican St. Patrick's Day. So this weekend, in honor of that holiday, thousands of Americans will be dipping tortilla chips into guacamole, and when they do they'll have an important decision to make: how best to dip without breaking the chip.

For The Austin Lounge Lizards, Weirdness Is A Virtue

For decades, the Austin Lounge Lizards have been trying to keep their Texas hometown weird. Armed with an alt-country sound and precise harmonies, the members have been spoofing politics, religion and romance for as long as most Austinites can remember. Now, they're releasing their first studio album in seven years, Home and Deranged. Founding members Hank Card and Conrad Deisler spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin; click the audio link on this page to hear their conversation.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

How Different Cultures Handle Personal Space

Our perspectives on personal space — the distance we keep between the person in front of us at an ATM, the way we subdivide the area of an elevator — are often heavily influenced by the norms of the places we inhabit.

Jerry Seinfeld once focused an episode of his sitcom on the concept of personal space, giving us a new term: the "close talker."