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NPR Music's Stephen Thompson picks new music for the hard-to-please on a host's shopping list.

With Paula Deen, it's not really about the butter, the mayonnaise or the fried cheesecake. For fans, it's about that feeling that you're sitting around the kitchen table with a friend.

Iowa voters catapulted the young senator from Illinois to victory in the state's leadoff caucuses four years ago. The president's campaign, which is gearing up in the early states ahead of next year's election, is counting on activists to stick with him in 2012.

The failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal on reducing federal government deficits is being called another example of dysfunction and gridlock in Washington. New attention is now focused back on the plan put forth last year by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission, a blueprint that a number of Democrats and Republicans endorsed. Host Scott Simon talks with former Sen. Alan Simpson, former co-chair of that deficit reduction commission, about the failed negotiations of the supercommittee.

Military families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving this week with loved ones who were home after being deployed to Iraq for the last time. For one Kentucky National Guardsman, his commitment to family is as strong as his desire to serve.

Bill Bratton is the former chief of police in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. He helped introduce the system of predictive policing and calls it the next era of crime prevention and an evolution of community policing. Host Scott Simon speaks with Bratton, who's been tapped by the University of California Davis to lead the independent investigation of pepper spraying of student protesters by campus police.

This year's historic drought killed thousands of evergreen trees in Texas and Oklahoma. Now Christmas tree farmers are scrambling to meet holiday demands. Host Scott Simon checks in with Karen Barfield, owner of Tinsel Time Christmas Tree Farm in New Caney, Texas.

More than 15 million women in the U.S. are gun owners, and 78 of them are in a new photo book. Photographer Lindsay McCrum says guns play a big part in some women's lives, but for very different reasons.

This year, the Air Force says it will recruit more pilots to fly unmanned aircraft than manned fighters and bombers combined. Here's what that shift means for the military, for potential pilots, and the way we think — or don't think — about war.

Francis Ford Coppola shares stories from his early film making career and from some of his most famous movies, including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Also, Jason Segel and Nick Stoller talk about their new Muppet movie and Ed Ward reviews hillbilly boogie's earliest days.