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The new HBO film Something the Lord Made tells the story of the interracial medical collaboration behind the first successful open-heart surgery in 1944. At a time of strict racial conventions, Dr. Alfred Blalock, a wealthy, white Southern surgeon, formed a remarkable partnership with his black assistant, Vivien Thomas. NPR's Renee Montagne speaks with Joseph Sargent, the film's director.

NPR's Susan Stamberg visits writer Andrew Sean Greer in San Francisco to talk about his new novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli.

Thursday night marks the end of the NBC hit show Friends. After 10 seasons of widespread popularity, the comedy will now be seen only on syndicated reruns. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with James Poniewozik of Time magazine.

An unidentified buyer paid $104.1 million Wednesday for a Pablo Picasso painting sold at Sotheby's in New York -- a record price for a work of art sold at auction. "Boy with a Pipe" was painted in 1905 and dates from Picasso's Rose Period. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and reporter David D'Arcy.

Noi is a new film from Iceland about a disaffected Albino high school student. The film blends comedy and tragedy in its approach to its subject. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a review.

As part of an occasional series titled, "Musicians in their Own Words," organist Paul Jacobs discusses his upcoming marathon performance. On Saturday, Jacobs will perform all nine hours of Olivier Messiaen's complete organ works. Features in the series are produced by David Schulman and NPR's Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr.

Singer Hayley Westenra is fresh from success on the international classical charts, and hoping to win new fans in the U.S. NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams talks with the 17-year-old New Zealand soprano about her voice and her new album, Pure.

Alan Cheuse reviews Little Black Book of Stories, by English writer A.S. Byatt. Three of the five stories included in the collection touch on the weird, the ghostly, and the miraculous.

NPR's Liane Hansen has the second half of her conversation with the authors of two new books on the use of American power in the world. Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of Financial History at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He's the author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book is Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.

As a child, writer Sandra Cisneros turned to fairy tales to escape from her run down surroundings. Their highly stylized language inspired her own distinct literary voice, which blends Spanish-language rhythms and cadences into English to tell stories of a cross-cultural world. For Intersections, a series on artists' influences, Cisneros tells NPR's Felix Contreras how she finds inspiration in the collision of languages.