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Since the 1973 release of his first album, “Closing Time,” Waits has won over fans with his original songwriting and distinctive, gravelly vocal style. One reviewer calls Waits “the Ultimate hobo boho, a Jack-in-the-box cum storyteller.” Musicians including Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and Rod Stewart have recorded covers of his songs. He has also acted in films, including Sylvester Stallone’s “Paradise Alley,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Down By Law,” and Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.” Waits has two recent CDs; “Alice” and “Blood Money,” a pair of very different sounding albums, were written and produced by Tom Waits and his wife and long-time collaborator, Kathleen Brennan.

The Other Network, a repository for TV pilots that never made it to the air, offers a traveling theatrical release featuring samples of the shows. NPR's Susan Stone reports.

Now the head of the Peace Corps, he served on President Clintons transition team as Deputy Director in 1992. Hes been Assistant to the President, Director of Communications, and White House Chief of Staff. Under his direction, the Peace Corps has expanded its efforts to South Africa and Jordan in addition to opening a new section for crisis and natural disaster. And, Boyden Gray. He was George Bush, Sr.s Director of the Office of Transition Counsel. He counseled the elder Bush when he was President and Vice President. Now, a Chairman at Citizen for a Sound Economy, he is also a lawyer for a Washington,D.C. firm that specializes in regulations for trade, the environment, biotechnology and risk management.

On this ninth annual observance, the question is raised: Has success spoiled International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Columnist Dave Barry, the holiday's single most important booster, says he's fed up with the holiday -- sort of. He tells NPR's Robert Siegel that people need to expand their pirate vocabulary beyond "Arrrr."

NPR's Steve Inskeep profiles Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, a moderate Republican who cast a crucial vote against President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal. Sen. Jeffords' tie-breaking ability on close votes in the evenly divided Senate gives him considerable influence. He used it to help reduce the size of the tax cut by about a fourth and divert more than $200 billion of it to pay for special education. Jeffords was just re-elected and has received less criticism in his home-state than from conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Island of Lost Maps: A true Story of Cartographic Crime (Random House) by Miles Harvey.

Pizza, tacos and onion rings -- just another balanced lunch in many school cafeterias across the Unites States. If given a choice, most kids won't opt for the broccoli. And financial constraints are keeping many school districts from doing away with more popular -- but more fattening -- choices.

For years, E.L. Doctorow thought that Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march to the sea near the end of the Civil War would make for a gripping work of fiction.

The latest book by NPR's Noah Adams follows the quest by the Wright brothers to be the first to build a heavier-than-air craft that could fly on its own power. He talks about the book with NPR's Melissa Block at the site of the first-ever plane crash death in 1908. Read an excerpt from The Flyers describing that fateful day.

Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire witnessed the killing and chaos of the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Scott Simon talks to Dallaire about his experience, which is chronicled in his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.