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As a small South Asian kid with a big mouth, Russell Peters found himself the victim of race bullying. To coax his bullies from rage to laughter, he used self-deprecating comedy. Decades later, he is still poking fun at his own ethnic quirks to disarm audiences, and in the process, he is becoming one of the highest-earning comedians.

President Obama ruffled conservative feathers when he bowed to the Japanese emperor during his trip to Asia. Bowing is the standard greeting in Japan, as it once was in the United States. Slate magazine's Andy Bowers explains the history of the gesture and why it feel out of favor in the U.S.

The heads of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art have made a Super Bowl wager: The IMA will loan William Trevor's The Fifth Plague of Egypt, to NOMA if the Colts lose the Super Bowl. If the Saints lose, NOMA will loan Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli.

The new documentary One Fast Move or I'm Gone uses various artists to voice Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. Director Curt Worden and biographer Joyce Johnson discuss the beat poet's relationship with the California coast.

At the SXSW Film Festival, we profile the new film Lovers of Hate, hear how distribution will change in five years and attend Jeffrey Tambor's acting seminar.

In Columbus, Ohio, nonprofit arts groups are doing what U.S. businesses have done for decades: outsourcing. Financially beleaguered arts groups are handing over the "back office" to CAPA, an organization that handles finances, marketing, ticketing and fundraising ... stuff that artists don't really like doing anyway.

Best-selling author Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, draws on the lore and mystique of the Freemasons. Once the object of fear and suspicion, the group is now a social organization with spiritual leanings.

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.

A painting by the late pop artist Andy Warhol of 200 $1 bills, recently sold for $44 million. That's one of the highest prices ever paid for one of his paintings. Art writer Sarah Thornton has been exploring why works by Warhol maintain such high prices — his continued fame is one reason. She talks to Steve Inskeep about her article in The Economist.