AADL storyteller Miss Laura leads a story time group in a lullaby sing-a-long to help her fuzzy friends Puppy, Kitty, Mouse, and Chick settle down for a cozy nap in their basket.

AADL storyteller Miss Laura tells a story about getting a teddy bear. She demonstrates the proper care and feeding one must give a stuffed animal friend, including sharing snacks, playing ball, and of course, giving plenty of snuggles!

Listen to AADL storyteller Miss Rachel and story musician Sara M. Keller sing their welcoming Hello, Hello song, and learn how friends greet one another in different languages and cultures all around the world.

Martin talks to playwright, essayist, and critic James Harvey about his new book Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar. With great perception and insight, Harvey explores how charisma is created in the movies, writing about Greta Garbo, Robert De Niro, Charles Laughton, John Wayne and many other stars, concluding with a strikingly moving passage about director Robert Bresson’s masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar, whose star is a donkey! Hopwood Award winner James Harvey, who graduated from the University of Michigan with a Master’s Degree in English, has written a deeply personal and extraordinarily compelling account of the films that have changed his life and will also change yours. The interview was recorded on September 24, 2014.

Do you have a special item at home that you would like to share with others? Something that has a particular story that is meaningful to you – or something that reveals a bit about Ann Arbor’s past? We all remember bringing a treasured possession to school and telling our friends why we love it so much. As adults, we have many more treasures today. Consider a photo or letter, a family heirloom, an object from a job or trip, an ancient artifact, a work of art, new or old, that has meaning to you. It’s the story that counts.

Each participant for this event took five minutes to tell the story behind the object. There’s no reading or performing; this is amateur storytelling.

Show & Tell events for adults are sweeping the nation, with recent publicity of the trend in the Wall Street Journal. Described as The Moth Radio Hour meets Antiques Roadshow, these events focus on connecting people through their personal histories.

The local organizers—Janet Ogle-Mater, Chuck Newman, and Stephanie Kadel Taras—are members of the Association of Personal Historians, which promotes Show & Tells in May to celebrate Personal History Awareness Month. Dozens of communities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia hosted Show & Tell events for grown-ups in May.

Martin talks to Bill Morris about his long-in-the-works new book Motor City Burning.

From the critically acclaimed author of Motor City, Detroit comes alive in a powerful and thrilling novel set amidst the chaos of the race riots and the serenity of Opening Day.

Bill Morris is currently a staff writer with the online literary magazine The Millions, and his writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Popular Mechanics and numerous other newspapers and magazines. Bill grew up in Detroit and now lives in New York City.

The interview was recorded on August 13, 2014.

Host Rich Retyi and local beer historian David Bardallis delve into the history of beer in and around Ann Arbor. From Ann Arbor's German roots to tales of haunted breweries, the two wind their way through a "hoppy history" of our town, including some stories that didn't make it into Bardallis's book, Ann Arbor Beer.

Rob Hess of Ypsilanti’s Go! Ice Cream shares the story of the ingredients behind your favorite ice cream flavors, from vanilla and its variations around the world to the science of brown butter, learn about delicious flavors!

Go! Ice Cream is a small company that crafts artisanal ice creams in small batches using local ingredients, and delivers them right to your door. Whether it gets to you from the back of their bike or you find it in your favorite grocer’s freezer section, you can be sure you’re eating all-natural products without preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, or other multi-syllabic chemicals.

Go! Ice Cream was founded by Rob Hess on the belief that dessert is a good thing, a sweet enhancement to a life well-lived. His goal is to bring more flavor to life through bold versions of classic ice creams and adventurous new flavor combinations. 2014 SUMMER GAME Code: GOICECREAMGOOOOOO

What goes into building a Library? Concerned with sustainability, the developers of the Traverwood Branch of the AADL took a unique approach to the building process by harvesting hundreds of ash trees devastated by the Emerald Ash Borer and reusing the trees in the construction of the building. 'Up From Ashes,' produced by KDN Films in Madison Heights, Michigan, captures each step of the Traverwood Branch construction process, a process that combined both primitive and modern construction methods.

In this hour-long documentary, director Bill Kubota treats viewers to a behind-the-scenes look at drawing board designs, deadlines, and one-ton draft horses harvesting the lumber. Also captured on film is the anxiety of the development team as design and structure challenges arise and are dealt with.

While he was in town for the 40th anniversary of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Wayne Kramer, lead guitarist and co-founder of the seminal Detroit/Ann Arbor band, MC5, sat down to talk with us. Wayne discusses the early years of the band and the influence of jazz, Sinclair, and Detroit culture on their music.