Arts & Life

We've been hearing a lot recently about how algorithms can predict just about anything. They find long-lost friends on Facebook and guess which books we'll buy next on Amazon. Algorithms hit the big time this month, when New York Times blogger Nate Silver used mathematical models and statistics to correctly forecast the outcome of every state in the presidential election.

You might think that actor Irrfan Khan — the co-star of the special effects-filled film Life of Pi -- performed his scenes by himself, or with inanimate objects that would later be transformed via CGI. Not so: As the older Pi in Ang Lee's new adaptation of the best-selling novel, Khan went back to the basics.

He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he thinks of scenes as being like duets: "You strike a note, and somebody responds, and then you respond accordingly," Khan says.

What did Jesus look like? The many different depictions of Christ tell a story about race and religion in America. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore that history in their new book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. The book traces how different races and ethnic groups claimed Christ as their own — and how depictions of Jesus have both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists.

[If you were about to note that this doesn't look like a sandwich, keep in mind the Sandwich Draft Principle applies.]

With Thanksgiving a few days away, you have to save as much stomach room as you can. That means, of course, breathing your food. To that end: Le Whif Breathable Chocolate. They're like little plastic chocolate cigarettes, filled with some kind of chocolate powder.

Ian: It's a powder. We're breathing Chocothrax!

For the last four years, Randy Shull has spent part of his year in Mexico.

He moved for the culture, the language, and the inspiration it gives him as an artist. All around him he saw the local artists defining what it meant to be Mexican.

"I felt like, well I could come to Mexico and have this experience that is really different than what I have in Asheville, but in the end I’m still from the United States.” Shull says. “So I began to ask myself, what is it to be uniquely American?”