Daily Schedule

Your morning companion from NPR and the WNYC Newsroom, with world news, local features, and weather updates.

The Brian Lehrer Show is not live today, so we won't be taking any calls. As always, you can join the conversation online through our comments section (links below), on Facebook, or on Twitter through @BrianLehrer.

Bette Midler talks about her early life in Hawaii, her first big world tour and her environmental activism. Then: Brooklyn’s own Vijay Seshadri, the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Plus: funny stories from New York transplants on who taught them how to be New Yorkers (which for some reason often involves…bagels); the founders of the Reelabilities Film Festival, which features films about disability and those made by disabled filmmakers; and the mayor of (old) Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan.

The Peabody Award-winning program features Terry Gross’ fearless and insightful interviews with big names in pop culture, politics and the arts.

A wrap-up of the day’s news, with features and interviews about the latest developments in New York City and around the world, from NPR and the WNYC newsroom.

A wrap-up of the day’s news, with features and interviews about the latest developments in New York City and around the world, from NPR and the WNYC newsroom.

In this episode: Author Francine Prose recently released a novel called Lovers At The Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 -- a kaleidoscopic portrait of one very complicated woman's life and those affected by it in the lead-up to World War II. She joins us to talk about the actual Parisian club and Henry Brassai photograph that inspired her tale -- and shares three songs that helped her get into her characters' heads while writing it all down.

In this episode: Musicians and songwriters on Soundcheck often say that “getting out of your comfort zone” is a good way to create fresh and surprising work. For Casey Dienell, who records under the name White Hinterland, getting out of her comfort zone meant scrapping her new album (twice), moving back to her hometown, and building a studio in her parents’ basement. Hear the dynamic songwriter perform songs from that album, Baby, in the Soundcheck studio.

Then: The noise-punk band Perfect Pussy, led by singer Meredith Graves, recently lent Soundcheck host John Schaefer a pair of earplugs and let loose. Watch them play in the Soundcheck studio and talk about everything from the term “cisgender” to Kool Keith.

For this New Sounds, we’ll listen to songs with a twilight feel – that is, evening songs.  We’ll hear songs, both old and new - by Henry Purcell along with songs by Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake-  featuring baroque harp, Swedish Nickelharpa, and viola da gamba on a record called “If Grief Could Wait.”  The project is a collaboration between baroque harpist Giovanna Pessi and the Swedish singer Susanna Wallumrød.