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In Part 10 of our series on the roots of American country music, NPR's Paul Brown tells the story of Bob Wills. The fiddler grew up in a family of fiddlers in the cultural mixing bowl of the American southwest. He went on to lead a band that mixed breakdowns, big band swing, blues and square dance music — a style that came to be called Western swing.

As the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, NPR's Pam Fessler reports on how Americans feel about their safety and security today. She talks to residents of Wilmington, Del.

Commentator Andrei Codrescu laments the hard time non-blockbusters have catching browsers' attention on bookstore shelves. He details the thought-process that a potential reader goes through in making a bold determination if he or she should actual buy a lesser-known work. It is this detail that gives us insight into the difficulties of authors. Codrescu's latest book is It was Today: New Poems, available from Coffee House Press.

The nine Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination meet in Albuquerque, New Mexico for their second debate. Hear NPR's Mara Liasson.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travels outside Baghdad to Mosul and Tikrit in northern Iraq, visiting with military leaders and briefly thanking troops. Rumsfeld is in Iraq to make a first-hand assessment of the U.S. occupation. Hear NPR's Emily Harris.

In this edition of Director's Cuts, Weekend Edition Sunday's music director Ned Wharton reviews two new projects from Mark Oliver Everett, also known simply as "E." His group Eels has a new disc on DreamWorks called Shootenanny! and under the name MC Honky, the fictitious rapper produces "Self Help Rock" on the CD I Am the Messiah on spinART Records.

Two years ago, a TV picture-tube plant moved from Scranton, Pa., to Mexico and left nearly 2,000 people without jobs. Many of the town's residents are still struggling to find jobs. In the second of this three-part series, NPR's John Ydstie reports on three former plant employees.

Legendary jazz bandleader Artie Shaw donates two of his clarinets to the Smithsonian Institution, including the instrument he used in 1938 to record his first big hit, "Begin the Beguine." Shaw received the institution's James Smithson Medal for his lifetime achievements in music. Until he retired in 1954, Shaw's fame rivaled that of Benny Goodman. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and NPR's Robert Siegel.

A car bomb that tore apart Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim mosque Friday killed at least 100 people, authorities say. Among them was Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, a prominent Shiite cleric. Six suspects are being questioned, but their identities and allegiances are unclear. Hear NPR's Scott Simon and NPR's Emily Harris.

NPR's Melissa Block talks with Larry Charles, who directed the new movie starring Bob Dylan, Masked and Anonymous. Charles also picked the songs for the soundtrack. They're all Dylan songs — either he's performing them or a panoply of international musicians are. We sample some of the international fare. Among them are Italian and Japanese covers of Dylan tunes, which Charles says are testament to Dylan's worldwide appeal.