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Weekend Edition popular culture commentator Steven Stark addresses the impact of the internet and cable TV on the presidential campaigns.

Commentator Lorraine Johnson Coleman offers some helpful tips for Yankee tourists heading down south over the next few months on vacation, particularly on the delicate subject of food.

NPR's Andy Bowers reports on changes in the Reform Party. The name of the party is still the same, but nearly everything else has changed. The dispute over who's running the party erupted at the party convention in California. {5:15}

The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin is in isolation following four members of his entourage testing positive for COVID-19.

A mysterious attendee at Elizabeth Holmes' fraud trial derided the case against her to reporters. Turns out, he was not whom he claimed to be, but was the father of Holmes' partner.

Mary Ellen Mark is a celebrated photographer. Her most recent work is an askew shot of controversial Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker and Minnie Mouse in last week's New Yorker. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is currently featuring Mark's work in a major exhibit. Peter Clowney has a profile.

Host Bob Edwards talks to two members of the House, Democrat Shelley Berkley of Nevada and Republican Jack Quinn of New York, about what they heard from constituents back home over the July 4th holiday. Congresswoman Berkley and Congressman Quinn both say that the high costs of gasoline, healthcare insurance, and prescription drugs were among their constituents' greatest concerns.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City on the future of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. In wake of Sunday's defeat at the polls, many PRI supporters are trying to re-establish their party as a player in the new realm of Mexican politics. But others say the victory of the National Action Party's presidential candidate, Vicente Fox, could be the end of the PRI.

Alan Cheuse reviews the book that won Italy's 1998 Elsa Morante Prize for a first novel: What We Don't Know about Children, by thirty-year-old Simona Vinci. It has been translated by Minna Procter and is just now published in English. (2:30) (What We Don't Know About Children is published by K

Apart from its better-known roles in bluegrass and Dixieland, the banjo was once a sought-after status symbol in late 19th-century America. Young ladies learned to play parlor music on the banjo; there were banjo societies and banjo virtuosi; and manufacturers fought wars over who could make the fanciest banjos. On top of that, this was primarily a northern phenomenon. It's chronicled in a new book, America's Instrument: The Banjo in the 19th Century, by Philip Gura and James Bollman. Paul Brown reports. (7:45) (America's Instrument: The Banjo in the 19th Century is published by University of North Carolina P