During World War II, rationing became not only accepted, but a symbol of patriotism for most Americans. Listen to Oscar Brand in this never-broadcast documentary on how the government —and WNYC— helped foster that sentiment.

It is April 19th, 1944. Thousands of mourners silently march from a service at the Warsaw synagogue on Rivington Street to City Hall.  A few carry signs: "Save Those Jews in Poland Who Can Yet Be Saved!" and, "Three Million Polish Jews Have Been Murdered By the Nazis!"  When they arrive at the steps of City Hall, Cantor Moishe Oysher sings El Mole Rachamim, a funeral prayer for the the 40,000 Jews who died a year earlier in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Home furnishings catalogs have evolved over the past couple of decades into glossy, sumptuous celebrations of domestic life (minus the mess). They're a far cry from the fuzzy line drawings of a Sears catalog at the turn of the last century. But Judith Kampfner says that some ...

Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux painted his own beach fantasy in 1942 -- “The Village of the Mermaids.” The foreground tells one story, and in the distance there’s a surprise. Judith Kampfner went into the vaults of the Art Institute of Chicago to see Delvaux’s painting with curator ...

Spiderman, Superman ... do we really need another comic book action flick? Fans say the Silver Surfer isn’t your average superhero - he’s shinier. No one’s more excited about Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer than Judith Kampfner – she fell for him years ago.

The Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi depicted the biblical story of Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes like no other artist. She painted it many times, in fact, almost obsessively. Judith Kampfner found out why.

Art house movie hits like Monsoon Wedding and Bride and Prejudice,, were intended for Western audiences. They featured some of the high energy music and dance numbers that you’d find in a pure Bollywood film. And they have spurred some New Yorkers—including WNYC’s Judith Kampfner---to explore Hindi cinema—and Bollywood dance ...

Most remembered as Mrs. Robinson, film and stage actress Anne Bancroft has died.

She won both a Tony and an Oscar for her role as Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, in The Miracle Worker but she's best known for seducing Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Bancroft, who was 73, was married to ...

While debate continues over what will be built at Ground Zero, work has started this week on the construction of a new Memorial park the size of a city block in the historic Wall St neighborhood. It is dedicated to the 67 British victims who died on Sept 11th. Judith ...

There was a party last night at the British consulate on Third Avenue, just hours after the explosions yesterday morning. WNYC's Judith Kampfner reports that attendees were relaxed as they celebrated Tony Blair's winning of a historic third term as prime minister.

Although police guided guests to a side entrance, security ...

A new play at Columbia University is the latest work from British theater director Peter Brook. The work explores the life and teaching of a West African Sufi master. WNYC’s Judith Kampfner has more on the play, which is in French with English supertitles.

SOUND OF PLAY: Ta verite, ma verite, ...

A few years on into the revival of Burlesque shows, there's a community of performers who have loyal audiences in clubs and bars. Increasingly dancers and performance artists are reinterpreting the traditions of burlesque cabaret and variety. WNYC's Judith Kampfner checks into the scene and finds that it has even ...

In the late fifties and early sixties, the drug Thalidomide caused birth defects in many parts of the world. Americans at the time were aware of the tragedy but the impact of thalidomide was not an issue which inspired artists. Until now. An off Broadway play called “The Flid Show”, ...

Businessman Donald Rubin started buying Himalayan sacred paintings twenty years ago. Now over 900 works of art from his collection are on display in the new Rubin Museum of Art. The museum opened in Chelsea last October in a building which used to house the original Barneys store. Judith Kampfner ...

Many writers, musicians, and artists got their start in the office — the British novelist Anthony Trollope worked for the postal service and composer Charles Ives was a full-time insurance agent. Judith Kampfner looked into the workaday lives of artists to find out how it fuels their creativity outside ...

The Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi was born a hundred years ago. He died in 1988 and left behind a museum in Long Island City to showcase the breadth and scope of his work. He had an international reputation for large scale landscape design and corporate monuments. But the recently ...

Kids are prone to asking questions, like “where did I come from?” These become harder to answer when you’ve cloned your son, but no one’s really sure how many of them were made. In Caryl Churchill’s new play, A Number, there are no white coats or labs, ...

When Dolly the sheep was cloned in Britain in 1999, it seemed human cloning might be right around the corner. After the media frenzy died down, British playwright Caryl Churchill decided to explore what it might be like to live as a clone. WNYC's Judith Kampfner recently took scientific experts ...

Mention a movie about the Korean War to Americans and they probably think of M*A*S*H.  But while the most expensive film out of Korea is about the Korean war -its not about the experience of the US Army but the hardships of Korean fighting men and the civilian population.   For ...

New York actors at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

It's expensive to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. It also takes guts and gumption to be part of the biggest and oldest fringe festival in the world. This year sixteen off and off- off Broadway theater companies organized ...