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When it comes to writing comedy, every syllable counts. Host Scott Simon talks to Mike Sacks, author of And Here's the Kicker: Conversations With 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft, and writer and director Harold Ramis about the art of being funny.

Pearl Fryar's yard in Bishopville, S.C., has made him something of an art-world star. He's trimmed 400 plants and trees into fantastical shapes — diamonds, mushrooms, hearts and even a square. At 69, Fryar mulls his legacy and is looking to pass on his clippers.

The New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word of the Year can trace its origins back to the 17th century. The word: "unfriend." Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer at Oxford University Press, says the Oxford English Dictionary provides a citation for "unfriend" from 1659.

R. Crumb, the bespectacled, gray-bearded artist who is regarded around the world as granddaddy of underground comics, has taken on what might be his biggest subject ever: the first book of the Bible.

In the three decades of The Diane Rehm Show, the radio host has interviewed Nobel laureates and novelists, Supreme Court justices and presidents, movie stars and Cabinet officials. But it wasn't something she really set out to do.

Former Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay is the first politician to compete on Dancing With The Stars. In Monday night's season premier, Delay and his partner Cheryl Burke scored a 16 out of a possible 30 from the judges, and then viewers got a chance to vote.

Sally Singer, the fashion news and features editor of Vogue, says that she's seeing more "humble fabrics" on the runway this year, including linen, T-shirt jersey and, yes, even cheesecloth.

Fernando Perez, the 26-year-old outfielder for the Tampa Bay Rays, has written an essay in the September issue of Poetry Magazine about the firm place poetry holds in his life. Perez says poetry and baseball occupy different realms of his life.

After baring her soul on dance stages, movie screens and gallery walls all over New York, the Oscar-winning actress can officially say that — artistically speaking — she's pretty much done it all.

In Iraqi filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi's new documentary, 12 Iraqi women gather in Syria with a goal: They intend to learn photography, decide what stories to tell, then return to Iraq and tell those stories.