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John Powers, Fresh Air critic at large, weighs in on the trends of 2007: political campaigns, Iraq movies failing at the box office, HBO's The Sopranos, stories about hitting the road, the TMZing of America, jocks gone wild, hip sentimentality, the nightly ideological news, atheist chic and the writers strike.

Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" as doo-wop? Scott Bradlee imagines pop music in a time machine.

Robert Siegel sits down with a group of students from Tel Aviv University for a conversation about their expectations for the future. The students are politically divided, but they agree that their main concern, even more than security, is the Israeli economy.

In the liner notes to his 2012 trio album Accelerando, the pianist and composer Vijay Iyer wrote: "[T]his album is in the lineage of American creative music based on dance rhythms." Dancing in rhythm and exemplifying creativity, here are 10 records which belong to that great lineage.

West Virginia will soon hold its annual Liars Contest. Last year, college professor Adam Booth won. He's been a contender five times according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

After a record-setting Christmas, Hollywood wraps up the year with more than $9 billion in the till -- the second biggest box office total in its history. Film critic NPR's Bob Mondello says a large part of that money was well-earned: some of 2003's most popular movies were also among the year's best. He offers a list of his top movie picks for the year.

At our desks, in nightclubs, and over bedroom speaker systems, these are the tracks that made us move.

A group of leading Shiite clerics are holding talks to resolve the U.S. standoff with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose anti-American rhetoric touched off a wave of attacks on U.S.-led forces in several Iraqi cities. Al-Sadr's militiamen have withdrawn from police and government buildings they had occupied, but the security situation remains unstable. Hear NPR's Anne Garrels.

The resignations came just days after a senior cleric with ties to the institution was arrested after being caught with about $26 million in cash he was trying to bring into Italy from Switzerland. Pope Francis recently set up a special commission of inquiry to resolve the bank's problems.

Starting in 2018, companies will have to disclose how CEO pay compares to median worker pay. A recent survey of the biggest CEO-to-worker pay ratios shows Discovery at the top at nearly 2,000-to-1.