When the Internet offers a superabundance of material to read, watch, listen to and play, it's easy to skim over text and half-listen to broadcasts. But the British government is inviting schoolchildren to put down their cellphones, turn off their news feeds and spend a long time lingering over a poem — so long that they learn it by heart.

Georges Bizet:The Pearl Fishers 
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam 
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus 
Michel Plasson, conductor

CAST: Annick Massis (Leila); Charles Castronovo (Nadir); Jean-Francois Lapointe (Zurga); Nicolas Teste (Nourabad)

Cristina Pato is a jazz pianist from Spain who also plays flute and sings. But on her new album, Migrations, there's a striking sound not often heard in jazz: a bagpipe. Pato has been playing the traditional gaita (pronounced "GY-tah"), a version of the bagpipe from her native region of Galicia, since she was 4 years old.

More questions for the panel: The Tale of Two Kelly Hildabrandts; Heads Roll at O'Hare.

Carl reads three news-related limericks: Sober Ice; Yelling Bellied Warblers; the Pol Pot of Pop.

Back in the early 1990s, Melinda French was a rising star at a software company when the boss asked her out on a date. This was complicated because he was her boss, and frankly, he was kind of a nerd. But they fell in love and got married, and decided to raise a family, retire from the business, and in their spare time give away more money to charity than anyone else in the history of the world.