Tom Waits recorded his new album Bad As Me, his first collection of all-new studio recordings in eight years, in his studio, which he calls "Rabbit Foot" for good luck. The space, a converted schoolhouse, still has class pictures dotting the walls of each classroom.

Congress still bans women from serving in combat, but the U.S. Army has implemented Cultural Support Teams to foster dialogue between elite U.S. service women and Afghan women. The teams work closely with Rangers and Special Forces units during raids. Kevin Maurer recently wrote about the unit's purpose and tough selection process for The Washington Post Magazine. He speaks with host Michel Martin.

As families in Mexico are preparing for Day of the Dead, shop owners are increasingly stocking their shelves with a sinister skeleton figure: Santa Muerte. She's not considered a saint by the Catholic Church, but she's still worshipped by people as diverse as middle-class housewives to narco-traffickers. Host Michel Martin discusses Santa Muerte with historian Robinson Herrera of Florida State University.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, host: I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Happy Halloween. If all the witches, goblins, and ghosts coming to your door don't scare you enough, then you might want to head south of the border for an encounter with Sante Meurte, or the Saint of Death. In a few minutes, we'll talk about why the veneration of this folk saint seems to have really taken off in the last decade or so and why the Catholic church is not happy about it. But first, happy birthday to the world's seven billionth inhabitant.

It's the season for stomach bugs again. And if you want to know just how contagious those bugs can be, just ask the National Basketball Association.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the play-by-play on an outbreak of gastrointestinal misery that afflicted as many as 13 NBA teams a year ago, spreading rapidly from player to player and from players to team staffers.

Glenn Stout has served as the editor of the Best American Sports Writing series since 1991. His latest book is Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year.

Baseball is over again and — for a while — so am I.

Tony La Russa, who just managed the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series title, announced this morning that he's retiring after 33 seasons.

The major problems after the weekend's surprising snowstorm in the Northeast relate to a couple of million customers who are without power.

But one of the other stories we can relate to is about the passengers who were stranded on the ground Saturday in jets that landed at Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Conn.

Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh says he’s determined to keep the county’s med-evac helicopter, Air One flying, despite the loss of county funding for the chopper.

On the surface, it's easy to dismiss this menu as a mere Halloween stunt: duck hearts, cow tongues, lamb kidneys, pig ears and even testicles.

But chef Daniel O'Brien, who runs the Seasonal Pantry supper club in Washington, D.C., and hosted a "Scary Bits" dinner this weekend, is one of a growing number of innovative American chefs who are incorporating "variety meats," or offal, into everyday menus.