All Things Considered

Among the movies opening this weekend is The Beaver. The film might get attention for the fact that it's Jodie Foster's first directing job since 1995's Home For The Holidays. Or it might get attention because Mel Gibson spends most of it speaking in a Cockney accent through a beaver puppet.

Betto Arcos hosts a show called Global Village on KPFK in Los Angeles. He recently sat down with Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz to discuss what he's been spinning. Normally, Arcos shares new music, but here he goes back in time. You can listen to their conversation by clicking on the audio link above, and hear the full songs below.

More than a dozen environmentalists rallied in downtown Fort Collins today. At issue was Republican 4th Congressional District Congressman Cory Gardner’s support of legislation that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

The protesters delivered a letter to Congressman Gardner, questioning his support for a bill that would have taken away the EPA’s ability to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Gary Wockner is Colorado program director for Clean Water Action, which helped organize Friday’s event.

For comic book fans around the world, the first Saturday of May marks an annual holiday — Free Comic Book Day. Started by a small shop in California, the event has spread around the world as a way of thanking customers and encouraging new ones.

Hidden away in a towering, castle-like mound on an African savannah lives the termite queen. There, isolated in an earthen capsule, she lays over a quarter-of-a-billion eggs in her lifetime.

"The concept of the queen was basically named by early colonial naturalists," says writer Lisa Margonelli, who has been studying the mysteries of the termites. "When they dug through the termite mound and found this large female figure pumping out eggs they said, 'Well, that's the queen and she must be in charge.'"