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Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect, invented a game that players say perfectly balances skill and luck, risk and reward. As part of Morning Edition's Present at the Creation series, sportswriter and Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsis explores the unlikely origins of an American game.

Aerospace consultant Nick Cook, author of the new book, The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. (Broadway Books/ Random House) In the book, Cook tracks down the secret history of anti-gravity research. It*s technology that defies the laws of physics. Cook discovered that during WWII, the Nazis claimed to have been close to antigravity technology. The U.S. government allegedly conducted antigravity research in the 1950s and 60s. Cook is former Aviation Editor for the military affairs journal, Jane's Defense Weekly.

Our summer reading series profiles novelist Jackie Collins, author of 22 novels, including Lucky and Hollywood Wives. This summer Collins is reading Her (Knopf; ISBN: 037541388X) by Laura Zigman, Billy (Overlook Press; ISBN: 1585673080) by Pamela Stephenson, and Killing Pablo (Penguin USA; ISBN: 0142000957) by Mark Bowden.

Novelist Chaim Potok died Tuesday at the age of 73. Potok was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, was ordained as a rabbi, and later became a best-selling author of the novels The Chosen, The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev. Much of his writing explored the conflict between spiritual and secular worlds, a subject that earned him readers from all faiths. This interview first aired in 1986.

Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. He's the man behind the family adventure films Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2. His list of credits include: writer, director, producer, director of photography, production designer, editor, visual effects supervisor, sound designer, re-recording mixer and composer. His first feature film was El Mariachi, which he made in 1993 for $7,000. It won the Audience Award for best dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival and was the first American film released in Spanish. He also wrote a book about making El Mariachi called Rebel Without a Crew.

On July 29, 1967, 134 U.S. sailors were killed aboard the USS Forrestal in Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin. They fought a fire that threatened to destroy the ship and the 6,000 men aboard. On Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon talks to the author of a new book about the fire.

Clifford's new book is The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy. The lost fleet was a group of French ships that sank in 1678 on the reef of Las Aves island, 100 miles off the Venezuelan coast.

For Kentucky students wanting to participate in sports, their sex would be determined by the sex printed on their birth certificate and an affidavit from a doctor ascertaining that information.

Host Liane Hansen talks with Rachel Swarns of The New York Times about this week's World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Organizers say the talks will center on practical solutions to the problems of the developing world.

This week the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival features Steve Straight, whose new book of poems, The Water Carrier, was just released by Curbstone Press. He's an English professor and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Conn. He reads his poem, "Lesson" for Weekend Edition Saturday. We also pays homage to independent producer Phyllis Joffe, who filed nearly 175 stories for NPR over 20 years, including producing the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. Joffe died last weekend.