Weekend America Voices
Marc Sanchez
Recent Stories
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The Sads Are Quiet
The Sads are a Los Angeles band that's putting on a "silent" show tonight. What they do is feed all their instruments into about 80 sets of headphones. The idea is to get the audience closer to the band, which sits in a circle at the center -- kind of like a campfire, only with lots of wires and headsets...
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A Father's Day Gift of Letters
Father's Day is a time for phone calls -- but for one family, it's been all about the written letter. As a way to keep in touch with his daughters, Dick Weiss made a proposal: Each month, he would give them a topic. They'd write a letter to him on that topic. He'd write back. We talk to the family about their old-fashioned correspondence.
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Eat Well, Pay What You Can
Brad and Libby Birky's restaurant in Denver, the SAME Cafe (for So All May Eat) does things a little differently. When it comes time to pay for a meal, patrons can pay what they want, or what they can. And if you can't pay, you can volunteer your time. Their theory is that everyone deserves decent, healthy food.
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Kid Poems for Summer Days
Betsy Franco is a children's poet and author of many books. She shares some of her favorite poems about summer, and what it's like to be young and full of wonder as the days turn hot and the nights are full of stars.
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Looking for the Next Best Apple
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been breeding apples for 100 years, and developed the Honeycrisp variety a little more than 30 years ago. The patent expires this fall -- so this weekend, breeders are busy cross-pollinating trees in search of the next Honeycrisp.
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Bike Maintenance Tips
Commuters are taking a good hard look at bicycles as an alternate means of transportation. To make sure they get those rusty old bikes rolling, we're going to take a look at bike maintenance and repair.
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Before GTA, There Was Death Race
Grand Theft Auto IV is expected to sell five million copies in the first two weeks of sale -- that makes it the biggest news in the entertainment business this weekend. But it's not the first video game to spark controversy for its violent content. We look back at one of the first video games, Death Race.
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Music, Memories for Record Store Day
Independent record stores all over the world are celebrating Record Store Day. And in a world where the number-one music retailer doesn't even have a storefront (it's iTunes), record stores might be considered a precious resource.
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Playing with Food... And Utensils
Umami is the fifth taste sensed by the tongue -- it's Japanese for "savory" or "meaty." Umami is also a food and art festival happening this weekend in New York City. And for that festival, composer Fast Forward -- his real name -- debuts music played using only kitchen utensils and foodstuffs.
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A Noir Novel by Committee
L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote the first chapter of a new, online, collaborative novel project -- then he let the world write what happens next. The experiment has taken some surprising turns and the characters are getting dark and even stranger.
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Signs of Spring
This weekend, the signs of spring are everywhere. We celebrate the arrival of the season with three stories of how folks say farewell to winter and embrace the Northern Hemisphere's return to the sun.
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Memories of the First MP3 Player
Ten years ago this month, the first MP3 player was introduced. For the first time people could carry around digital copies of their music. Wired Magazine tech writer Eliot Van Buskirk reminisces about the first time he saw the MPMan and how it influenced his entire life.
