From Willie Nelson to Siouxsie and the Banshees; from Phish to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, our listeners weigh in on the eclectic music they're sure they wouldn't get sick of in a marathon listening session.

Here in New York, WQXR, the sister station of our co-producer WNYC is launching something they're calling Bach 360°. It's a proper Bach-a-thon — a ten-day Bach marathon festival that explores what Johann Sebastian's music means to modern listeners.

It’s the week before Christmas and, as usual, The Takeaway is celebrating with our annual “Remixing the Holidays” series. Throughout the month, we’re talking with musicians, actors, experts listeners about the best and worst songs of the season. Today’s guest is Grammy award-winning singer and actor Olivia Newton-John.

This week, the Powerball reached $550 million, the highest it's ever been. And last night, two lucky ticket holders - in Missouri and Arizona - won the jackpot. But how does one even begin to spend $550 million? The Barenaked Ladies came up with a pretty good list of what they'd buy if they had $1 million. And it got us to thinking: What if we remade their song, but replaced word "million" with "billion." And so we have, with the help of Takeaway listeners, real people on the street, and fun facts about how much you can really buy for a billion dollars.

John Hockenberry usually wouldn't say it out loud, but sometimes he wonders to himself, 'Are New Yorkers crazy to live so directly in danger's path?' The city has weathered twisters, earthquakes, and now a major hurricane that has left dozens dead and millions without power. Shouldn't we live where it's safe, rather than rebuild where it's not?

Seventy years ago, half of all Americans read comic books, and much of what they saw were stereotypical images of Asian kamikazes, gurus, temptresses, and lotus flowers. How did Asian Americans read these images? How do they see them now?

"Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years," attempts to capture the scope of Warhol's extraordinary influence on contemporary American art, featuring the work of artists like Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Richard Prince — famous artists in their own right.

In a major investigation conducted by Bloomberg Markets, senior reporter David Evans found that the American Cancer Society, among other major charities in the United States, have signed suspicious contracts with telemarketers to raise money.

Many of the air attacks conducted by the United States since the commencement of air warfare have gone under the radar. That was, until 45-year-old Minnesota native and former Lieutenant Colonel Jenns Robertson decided to make a project of documenting each and every bomb that the United States has ever dropped.

Where do sounds go when they die? The Museum of Endangered Sounds has archived sounds that will soon die: sounds like modems connecting, Tetris, Windows 95 startup chime, Nokia ringtone and more. John Hockenberry reflects on sounds lost and found in this audio essay.

The biggest campaign fundraiser in history raised $15 million and packed a star-filled house of Hollywood millionaires in LA with the President at the center of it all. A huge chunk of the money came from people who were entered in a drawing for a chance to see it all, to hang out with George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Robert Downey Jr., producers like Jeffery Katzenberg, and director Stephen Speilberg.

Who would want to be a nobody at a party like that? We wanted to find out, so John Hockenberry crashes the Clooney dinner in this audio essay.

He made the monsters fun. Maurice Sendak, the child author and illustrator, has died at age 83. His books and style of illustration immediately evoked a whole world of creatures and characters, dark places that were part scary and part cozy. Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning creator of the graphic novel, Maus, comments on the life of Sendak.

Earl Scruggs, the man who reinvented the banjo as a solo virtuoso instrument, has died at the age of 88. Scruggs invented a style, the three finger picking style of banjo playing distinct from the ancient Clawhammer technique. Scruggs style is precise, rhythmic, dizzyingly fast and took the banjo from the back of the band and brought it down front. The Takeaway pays tribute to Scruggs, who played his instrument like no one had ever before played it and changed music forever.

In poet Kevin Young's new book, "The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness," Young offers a remarkable, encyclopedic essay on the history of African-American culture. Young explores how African-American culture and American culture have affected one another. The book, part prose and part essay, also explores how African-American culture has become an essential and inextricable part of American culture.

The battle for the New Hampshire primary plays out on TV screens, newspapers, and the internet as results come in throughout the night. One way to tell the story of this event is through Twitter, by seeing how pundits, politicians, pranksters and across the country reacted to the results. Takeaway co-host John Hockenberry tells the story of the New Hampshire primary according to tweets.

Country music has enjoyed a long tradition of reflecting the everyday concerns of working men and women, good times and bad times. With 14 million Americans currently out of work, a crippling national debt, and a record number of people living below the poverty line, country music may be going through a sea change. Call it an indicator of economic times but in the time it took pickup trucks to go from stripped down working class boxes of mud and steel to plush seated luxury vehicles, country music went from the folksy tinny common man voice of Woody Guthrie to the likes of Tim McGraw singing about the perils of being rich.

In music, there are few things more insane than an amateur going and trying to sit down with a real player. But that's just what John Hockenberry did earlier this week, when he went to the house of comedian, author and banjo aficionado Steve Martin. A documentary called "Give Me the Banjo" airs tonight, and is narrated by Martin. But in the comedian's New York City apartment, talking about the banjo — as well as Martin's long career in comedy and interest in music — was augmented by some performance and a lesson or two. 

Country music has enjoyed a long tradition of reflecting the everyday concerns of working men and women, good times and bad times. With 14 million Americans currently out of work, a crippling national debt, and a record number of people living below the poverty line, country music may be going through a sea change. Call it an indicator of economic times but in the time it took pickup trucks to go from stripped down working class boxes of mud and steel to plush seated luxury vehicles, country music went from the folksy tinny common man voice of Woody Guthrie to the likes of Tim McGraw singing about the perils of being rich.

Since the 1980s, R.E.M. has been a reliable presence on the pop music scene. Songs like "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and "Losing My Religion" helped define what indie rock would sound like for the next two decades; and for better or for worse, songs like "Everybody Hurts" and "Shiny Happy People" will forever be a part of our alt rock lexicon. Now that they've disbanded, what are we to make of their place in the rock canon?

In a trial that is being broadcast live across the world, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is standing before a special court this morning with his sons, the former interior minister, and six senior police offices on charges of corruption and ordering the killing of protesters in February of this year. Mubarak has pleaded not guilty.