In fact, the latest installment in the long saga of coffee just came out, and of course, we’re on it. It’s a big new study that found that people who drink java appear to be less likely to die prematurely than those who don’t.

Now, there’s been a lot of research into whether coffee’s good for our health. “The results have really been mixed,” acknowledges Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine today. “There’s been some evidence that coffee might increase the risk of certain diseases and there’s also been maybe more recent evidence that coffee may protect against other diseases as well.”

So to clarify the field a bit, Freedman and his colleagues undertook the biggest study yet to look at the relationship between coffee and health. They analyzed data collected from more than 400,00 thousand Americans ages 50 to 71 participating in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.

“We found that the coffee drinkers, they had a modestly lower risk of death than the non-drinkers,” he tells The Salt.

Here’s what he means by “modestly:” Those who drank at least two or three cups a day were about 10 percent or 15 percent less likely to die for any reason during the 13 years of the study. But you don’t necessarily need to be a heavy coffee drinker.

“Starting with those drinking a cup a day or more then there started to be this inverse association,” he said.

When the researchers looked at specific causes of death, coffee drinking appeared to cut the risk of dying from heart disease, lung disease, strokes, injuries, accidents, diabetes and infections.

Now, Freedoman stressed that the study doesn’t prove coffee can make people live longer. A study like this can never prove a cause-and-effect relationship. All it can really do is point researchers in the right direction for further investigation.

And even if it turns out that coffee is really good for you, scientists have no idea why. (That might be tomorrow’s study.)

They do know it’s not caffeine — decaf was just as good in the study. But Freedman says there are lots of other candidates for the potentially protective effects.

“It’s estimated that there are more than 1,000 different compounds in coffee. And each one of them may affect coffee in different ways,” he says.

For example, coffee contains antioxidants, as well as substances that appear to play a role in diabetes, he said.

Freedman also noted that the study could not tease apart whether different types of coffee — corporate office drip versus French press, for example — might differ.

Until scientists do more research, Freedman doesn’t recommend anyone start drinking coffee, or drink more coffee. But at the very least the new findings, he said, provide a little reassurance that coffee lovers aren’t hurting themselves by indulging in a couple of cappuccinos or lattes every day. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The ACLI Capital Challenge is an annual tradition that dates back to 1981, and one senator has run the race every time: Dick Lugar, R-Ind. But Wednesday’s race was also his last.

When the now 80-year-old Lugar first started running in the Capital Challenge, his goal was to be the fastest senator. That was 31 years ago.

“In more recent years, we’ve had more modest goals — like finishing the race,” the six-term senator said with a chuckle a few minutes before the start.

Earlier this month, Lugar lost in a tough primary fight, meaning this would be his last time lining up at the start.

“Just looking forward to a good race, lots of enthusiasm, and try to keep the eye on the ball here,” Lugar said, sounding as much like an athlete as a senator.

Lugar navigated the 3-mile course at a pace that wouldn’t break any land-speed records. As runners passed by him, they cheered and offered high-fives.

“It’s awesome,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. “I mean, I can’t believe this guy’s been doing this for 31 years. We’re going to miss him next year, but obviously he’s had a great run here.”

Thune won the medal for fastest senator for the third time in a row, finishing in 18:57.

“It’s a bittersweet time for Sen. Lugar,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, just moments after crossing the finish line himself. “This is his last 5K out here for a good cause.”

Lugar was one of four congressional runners this year either retiring or forced out by a primary loss. Cornyn said it’s just the nature of the business.

“You either leave voluntarily or involuntarily,” Cornyn said. “No one’s entitled to these offices. We just have to recognize what a privilege it is to represent our constituents for the time we’ve been given.”

Some 45 minutes after the start, a figure appeared in the distance. He had white hair, an orange shirt and a giant grin.

“Making his way to the finish line as he has every year since 1981,” an announcer shouted from a loudspeaker. “A big warm Washington round of applause for Sen. Richard G. Lugar!”

To mark the occasion, the race organizers held up a finisher’s tape for the senator to run through one last time.

“Obviously, I would have liked to look forward to a 32nd, 33rd, 34th, but, then again, I have been so fortunate to have these 31 great years in good health and spirits,” Lugar said, having caught his breath and still grinning from ear to ear.

The race director, Jeff Darman, said a lot of people asked him if the senator would show up at the race after losing his primary.

“Of course,” Darman said. “There’s just never any question.” [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The public health honchos agreed with an expert panel that recommended in January that anything greater than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood for kids 5 and younger should be considered dangerous. That’s half the current standard and represents the first reduction since 1991.

With that change, the number of kids in the U.S. who would be considered to have lead poisoning that needs medical attention would rise to nearly a half-million, almost double the number before the change.

“This new definition of childhood lead poisoning will provide an enormous public health difference for all young children in the U.S., because it is evident that the prior level of 10 micrograms/deciliter did not protect the developing brains of young children,” John Rosen, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, told Shots in an e-mail.

Lead is a neurotoxin that’s particulary dangerous for children, even in small amounts. The damage it wreaks can’t be reversed.

But the CDC acknowledged in its response to the panel’s recommendations that it doesn’t have the resources to fulfill several of them, such as implementing a national policy to prevent kids from being exposed to lead in the first place, even though it agrees with them in principle.

Dr. Robert W. Block, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, praised the CDC’s decision in a statement, saying it “affirmed what pediatricians have recognized for decades: there is simply no safe level of lead exposure for children.”

Budget cuts have reduced CDC’s funding for lead prevention from $30 million to around $2 million this fiscal year. Block said pediatricians “call on Congress to reinstate funding for lead prevention programs” at the CDC “as soon as possible.”

“Despite the near elimination of CDC funding for lead poisoning, this is the right policy for the nation’s children. Parents will now have the information they need to protect their families from lead,” Rebecca Morley, executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, said in a statement. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Now Facebook is planning to raise up to $16 billion from investors by taking a small slice of the company to the public. And it will likely be worth more than $100 billion on its opening day of trading. It could easily go higher.

So this week Zoe Chace at Planet Money and I have been poking through Facebook’s business. Really trying to answer one pressing question: Can this company be worth this much? Can it live up to its hype?

Anant Sundaram is a valuation expert at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He says for Facebook to justify its stock price over the long term, 10 years from now it will need to attract one of every 10 ad dollars spent anywhere on the planet. That’s not just on the Internet — that’s the planet.

So do Facebook ads work? Are these ads, in the words of Zoe Chace, “going to become the bomb that explodes the advertising industry?”

It’s a good question — a $100 billion question. And the answer you get depends who you ask.

General Motors says no, these ads don’t work. And the company chose this week to pull all its paid advertisements off of the social network — and GM did it publicly.

But drive across Detroit and you get a radically different answer. Ford loves Facebook.

It used Facebook to unveil the 2011 Ford Explorer. Ford says that campaign yielded better results than a Super Bowl ad — for a fraction of the cost. Part of the problem is that the return on investment for brands that advertise on Facebook is hard to measure.

Zoe and I ran our own little test. We recruited a pizza place in New Orleans called Pizza Delicious and watched as it launched a mini-campaign. And while Facebook delivered the ad to a huge number of New Orleanians in a short time — we may never know if the campaign pays off.

Just like on television, advertisers on Facebook struggle to figure out which ads are leading to which customers, but in the digital world this kind of clear return on investment is what many advertisers have grown to expect.

“Google built a great search experience and then they stumbled upon AdWords which turned into the big cash cow for them,” says Rob Leathern, the CEO of Optimal, a social media marketing firm. “I don’t know that Facebook has found that yet.”

Ultimately it’s the amount of information about its users that seems to have entranced Wall Street.

“When Facebook investors and founders rake in billions of dollars on Friday [the first day of public trading], they are making that money by selling little bits of each of us,” says Fred Cate, a distinguished professor and director of the Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. “What Facebook is selling is us. They’re selling data, but data that more than 900 million of us volunteer on a daily basis.”

This may be Facebook’s most valuable asset — the information about us it has and its ability to collect more. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

This time, United Nations monitors were watching. The monitors are in Syria to keep an eye on the government forces and the opposition, who are supposed to be observing a cease-fire and opening a dialogue.

But the trouble Tuesday began with a funeral the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun.

A man who was killed by Syrian security forces over the weekend was about to be buried. The funeral was held in a part of town that claims to be free — meaning it no longer considers itself under the control of the Syrian government.

It’s held by anti-government rebels who call themselves the Free Syrian Army. Still, the government’s army and security forces maintain checkpoints in other parts of town.

It was these checkpoints that reportedly drew the attention of the U.N. monitors. Under the U.N. peace plan, the government’s soldiers and security forces are supposed to pull out of cities and towns.

Funeral Turns Into A Protest

Residents of Khan Sheikhoun say U.N. monitors watched the funeral, which quickly turned into a protest against the government.

Emboldened by the monitors, protesters and rebels shouted insults at government soldiers.

The Syrian soldiers and security forces unleashed a barrage of gunfire. Parts of the confrontation were captured on video that has been posted on YouTube, including one that shows a tangle of bodies falling to the ground. Then the film goes blank. Activists in Khan Sheikhoun say the man who shot the video was killed.

Amid the chaos, U.N. monitors went back to their cars. Then, an explosion went off, producing a huge cloud of white dust. The lead U.N. truck was mangled by the explosion.

Other U.N. vehicles were also damaged. The vehicles speed away from the scene, at least one of them running over bodies of the injured or dead.

Like so many confrontations in Syria, there are multiple versions of this story. Residents say government security forces launched a grenade at the UN truck. The government says it was a bomb planted by what it calls terrorists.

The UN would only say that it was a homemade bomb.

Death Toll Is More Than 30

The blast and the shooting that preceded have left more than 30 people dead, many of them civilians.

Another video uploaded by activists on YouTube shows young men with gruesome gunshot wounds at a makeshift field hospital.

People who oppose the government in Syria are often too afraid to go to government hospitals.

Journalists have generally been barred from reporting in Syria, and none of the videos could be independently verified. However, residents of the village have confirmed that rebels and government soldiers clashed in Khan Sheikhoun after the explosion. An army tank was set on fire by the rebels, according to the govenrment forces.

The situation was so volatile Tuesday that the U.N. monitors could not leave Khan Sheikhoun. They ended up staying the night in the village.

Residents say the monitors were able to negotiate a halt in the fighting Wednesday and that other monitors were allowed to come and pick them up.

One final video shows the destroyed U.N. trucks being towed away while the young boys of Khan Sheikhoun look on. Residents say soon thereafter, the tanks rolled back into town and started shooting again.

The U.N. mission in Syria has found that there is no peace for it to monitor. Rather, the hope is that it can create the peace. In some parts of Syria, the mere presence of monitors has brought a lull in the violence. But not this week.

One activist in Khan Sheikhoun, speaking in an interview over Skype, said he thought the monitors should leave for good. Before they came, the town was bad, he said. Now that they’ve pulled out, Khan Skeikhoun is burning.

Lava Selo contributed to this report. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Descriptions of the White House lunch meeting from those on the opposing red and blue teams aware of the details of the discussion made it sound like yet another meeting featuring the nation’s top policymakers that you could have accurately described beforehand.

The nation’s top Democrats and Republicans essentially told the other side what they wouldn’t compromise on as they ostensibly work to defuse the fiscal time bombs poised to explode at the end of the year — the debt ceiling, the Bush tax cuts and automatic and deep budget cuts due to take effect next year because of past failures to compromise.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president told those assembled that he wanted a “balanced approach” to debt reduction, meaning not just spending cuts but tax increases, in any deal the sides reach.

“The president made clear … that we are not going to recreate the debt ceiling debacle of last August,” Carney said, according to a Reuters report.

For his part, House Speaker John Boehner sought clarification from the president: Did Obama intend to propose a debt-ceiling increase without recommending spending cuts? the Ohio Republican asked according to a statement from his office.

When the president answered “yes,” the speaker repeated a line from a speech he gave in Washington the day before.

“The speaker told the president, ‘As long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.’ “

Boehner’s version of the lunch continued:

“The speaker also asked the president for his plans to deal with the largest tax increase in American history, which will mean tax hikes on small businesses, and the devastating cuts poised to hit our military, both scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. The speaker pressed the president to approve the job-creating Keystone pipeline energy project. The speaker also asked the president to encourage the attorney general to provide the information congressional investigators have sought about the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation.”

Lest you conclude it was all issues of contention, the readout of the lunch from Boehner’s perspective ended with something that sounded like a bit of postprandial snark:

“The Speaker was very pleased with the sandwiches served.”

There was nothing from the man who runs Congress’ other chamber, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on whether he enjoyed the lunch fare. But it was fairly clear via a statement from a Senate Democratic aide that the majority leader didn’t much enjoy the discussion:

“Senator Reid made clear his view that absent a balanced agreement that pairs smart spending cuts with revenue measures asking millionaires to pay their fair share, the debt will be dealt with through the sequester, which will cut another $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending in a fair manner – half from military spending and half from domestic spending.

“Since no debt ceiling increase will likely be necessary until after the end of the year, Senator Reid conveyed his view that any discussion of the debt ceiling is premature until after the sequester takes effect or is replaced with a balanced agreement, and after Congress deals with the expiring Bush tax cuts.

“Senator Reid thought it was unfortunate to see Republican leaders engaging in the same kind of brinksmanship that led to a slump in economic confidence and a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating last year. Republican leaders’ pronouncements left him with the distinct impression that they remained more interested in drawing lines in the sand and appeasing the Tea Party than working with Democrats in a calm and rational manner.”

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.), also had nothing to say about quality of the sandwiches. And McConnell, who once famously said that his number one goal was to make sure Obama was a one-term president, actually mentioned possibilities for agreement though he seemed to place the onus on Democrats. Don Stewart, McConnell’s deputy communications director, provided a read out:

“In a cordial lunch meeting, Sen. McConnell pressed the President and the Democrat leadership on the need to produce a bill to prevent the student loan interest rate increase that can actually pass the Senate.

“McConnell: ‘We all agreed that rates shouldn’t go up this year and that we need to resolve the differences and pass legislation together.’

“Sen. McConnell noted in the meeting that the Senate passed bipartisan legislation over the past year when poison pills were removed and Republicans were included in the debate (some examples: JOBS Act, Veterans jobs, trade agreements, FAA reauthorization, highway bill, payroll tax holiday, patent reform). And he believes that there is time before the election for even more bipartisan accomplishments.”

[Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Just post the image to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #NPRbike, and we’ll take a look. To be considered for the gallery, post your pics by 2 p.m. EDT Thursday. If you miss that deadline, don’t worry — on Bike to Work Day, you can use that same hashtag to see how NPR listeners roll.

If you love riding on a particular street, or maybe a certain hill really challenges you, show us what makes your commute special. You can also show off your bike’s fenders, racks or baskets, but this is no beauty contest — it doesn’t matter if the only TLC your bike gets is air for its tires and oil for the chain.

NPR’s coverage of Bike to Work Day will also include a Morning Edition interview with Grant Petersen, the iconoclastic leader of Rivendell Bicycle Works (and the author of a new book, Just Ride). Check the Morning Edition page Friday for that story — and to see the gallery of bike commuters.

More than 730,000 Americans ride their bikes to work, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey, taken in 2010. But many would-be cyclists say they’re worried about riding alongside cars. And they don’t want to be that pushy rider who weaves around folks on the sidewalk, either.

If you’re looking to explore new routes, consider using a site like Bikely, which compiles the favorite bike routes of cyclists around the United States (and the world). The routes are tagged with words like “scenic,” “intermediate,” and “low traffic.” You can search by state or region, and download a Google Map version of the ride. Even if you don’t want to ride the full 15 or 20 miles of a route, you can still get good ideas about the roads and paths that cyclists prefer.

Another resource is the new Most Bikeable Cities list, compiled by Walk Score — the site that rates neighborhoods and cities based on how easy (and rewarding) it is to walk around in them. According to Walk Score, Minneapolis is the “most bikeable” large U.S. city, with a score of 79.

The runner-up position is held by Portland, with 70 points. San Francisco also has 70 points, but maybe Walk Score is against the idea of ties. Here’s the full list:

Minneapolis

Portland

San Francisco

Boston

Madison

Washington, D.C.

Seattle

Tucson

New York City

Chicago

There are many ways to see how your area rates in terms of “bikeableness,” from the League of American Cyclists’ interactive map of Bicycle Friendly America, to Bicycling magazine’s Top 50 American bike cities list. Both lists include criteria like bike lanes and racks, as well as bike-friendly businesses.

And their goal isn’t just to make cyclists who don’t live in those anointed cities jealous. As Bicycling writes, “If your town isn’t named below — or if it falls on our worst-cities list — then use this as an opportunity to do something about it, like cyclists in Miami did after their city earned a black mark in 2008.” Miami bounced back from that showing to place 44th in the magazine’s most recent list. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

“The protesters, including Arbuckle, were in the street blocking traffic, Officer Elisheba Vera testified. The police, on the sidewalk, had to move in to make arrests to allow blocked traffic to move. But there was a problem with the police account: it bore no resemblance to photographs and videos taken that night.”

In an ironic twist, Arbuckle was actually working on a New York University photojournalism project aimed at defending police officers working at Occupy protests when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

“I felt the police had been treated unfairly on [sic] the media,” he said to the Village Voice. “All the focus was on the conflict and the worst instances of brutality and aggression, where most of the police I met down there were really professional and restrained.”

Occupy videographer and indefatigable live-streamer Tim Pool’s clip was used as evidence along with the NYPD’s own video footage in the trial. The video shows protesters clearly using the sidewalk like they were asked to. (Watch the arrest around minute 35 of Pool’s video.)

“What’s happening is very similar to what happened in 2004 with the Republican National Convention,” Arbuckle’s lawyer told the Voice. “It’s just a symptom of how the NYPD treats dissent. But what has changed is that there is more prevalence of video. It really makes our job a lot easier to have that video.”

Pool, who has used an iPhone, solar-powered backpack and even a drone to stream Occupy protests, has been central to the movement’s emphasis on transparency and constantly capturing the movement using new media tools. The Nation profiled the visibility efforts in March:

“By embracing transparency and pursuing maximum visibility, the protest on Wall Street provided, in the words of one activist, a ‘virtual template for occupation’ that inspired people around the world to follow suit. …

“But Occupy’s habit of obsessive self-documentation isn’t just pragmatic—it’s a matter of principle deeply woven into its DNA. ‘Without a doubt, a founding principle of OWS is transparency,’ says Carrie, a member of the Occupy Wall Street facilitation and minutes working groups (who asked that I not give her last name).”

[Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Prince doesn’t dispute the basic facts in the case. He acknowledges appropriating dozens of photographs of Rastafarians from Patrick Cariou’s book, Yes Rasta. Prince took the original pictures, cut them up and juxtaposed them with images of guitars and naked women for a series of collages he called “Canal Zone.” Prince’s gallery then sold some of the paintings in the series for $10 million.

“If you rip out photographs from somebody else’s book, put some paint on them and sell them for $10 million, it does seem to most people — and to the law — that there should be some consequences,” says lawyer Dale Cendali, who filed a friend of the court brief in the appeal on behalf of the American Society of Media Photographers.

Cendali applauds the ruling last year by a federal judge who found Prince liable for copyright infringement, and ordered him to hand over all copies of the works to Patrick Cariou. It was a resounding victory for the French photographer. But lawyer Virginia Rutledge says it’s based on a misreading of copyright law.

“What the court missed unfortunately in the trial court level with Richard Prince,” Rutledge says, was “the work that he has made using imagery including some from Patrick Cariou’s photographs says something different, something new.”

Rutledge filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation in support of Prince. Warhol was himself sued for taking other people’s images without permission, although he always settled out of court. In this case, Rutledge argues that Prince transformed the original photographs into a new work of art.

“The work that Richard Prince is being charged with thievery for, essentially, is instead part of a long-standing tradition that’s well understood in the visual arts of making something new from material that’s already out there in the word.” Rutledge says. “That is finally the test for fair use.”

For those of us who need a very brief refresher on fair use: U.S. copyright law generally prohibits you from using somebody else’s work without permission. But there’s an exception for so-called “fair use” — that’s what allows you to comment, or criticize, or somehow transform the original work into something new. (For example, it was fair use that allowed the Florida rap group 2 Live Crew to win a landmark Supreme Court case in 1994 for their parody of the Roy Orbison song, “Oh, Pretty Woman.”)

Now back to the current case. It’s rare for fair use lawsuits in the visual arts to get to court all, and that’s why everyone is watching the outcome in Cariou vs. Prince. Attorneys for both artists declined to be interviewed for this story, for fear of offending the appeals court. But Prince did talk about his artistic philosophy in an interview with Vice magazine’s online video network in 2007.

“For me, a lot of what I think about is this idea of continuation. That’s all it is really — it’s something that’s added on from what has been done before me,” Prince explained.

Prince has been playing on traditional notions of authorship and originality since the late 1970s. His earliest success consisted of taking images from advertising, including the Marlboro Man, which Prince re-photographed and manipulated. Later on, Prince took famous books by other writers, slapped his own name on the cover in their place, and sold the result as a new work of art.

“I mean a lot of people would probably say, ‘Well, wait a minute, you really can’t do this. You can’t go out and buy a book and sign it, call it yours and sell it.’ But for me, that’s very easy to do,” he said.

Prince’s deadpan style did not seem to do him any favors in the Cariou case. In his deposition, Prince admitted he did not intend to comment directly on the Rasta photos he used — which is one factor the court cited in its ruling. Cariou’s lawyer Daniel Brooks recently spoke about the case at a panel discussion at New York Law School:

“In this case, Mr. Prince testified about: What his purpose? What he was trying to accomplish? It was not to give new meaning to the appropriated images. It was simply to use them as he said, as raw materials, to serve a new aesthetic, and for his own artistic purposes.”

And Brooks says that alone is not enough to prove fair use. If it was, then anybody could grab any photo they want off the Internet, use it in a collage, and owe the original photographer nothing. Dale Cendali, the lawyer for the American Society of Media Photographers, says artists should be allowed to use photos.

“They should be able to do it in a way that reasonably compensates the first artist,” Cendali says. “Because otherwise, you could end up with a situation where you literally kill the golden goose. Where you no longer have people creating that original work that other people would like to copy and use in their own efforts.”

If the lower court ruling stands, it could have implications far beyond the art world. Take the search engine Google, which filed its own friend of the court brief in the case. In order to help you find what you’re looking for on the Internet, Google has to copy a lot of copyrighted material — without commenting on it at all. Google’s lawyers say a narrower reading of fair use could be “dangerous” to their business model. That’s just one more thing the Second Circuit court may have to consider when it hears the case on Monday. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

What, exactly, does that mean?

The founder and artistic director of the company, Ross Williams, told me that in large part, it means exploring “how we can get Shakespeare to work for a new generation, for new audiences.” And they’re serious about changing up the setting where necessary: their projects include a Shakespearean pub crawl, where at each location, a scene breaks out. They call it … Shakesbeer. (C’mon. Wouldn’t you?) Here’s the video from one of their past events.

At the moment, their mission means the same thing it means for a lot of artists and arts organizations trying to come up with funds for small, medium-sized, and large projects. It means taking their plea to Kickstarter — a plea that ends Thursday night at 11:00 p.m.

The effort resides, logically enough, at KickstartShakespeare.com. It’s a drive to raise $45,000, in large part to support a pair of upcoming undertakings. The first, called the Sonnet Project, means to create 154 videos of 154 actors reading 154 of Shakespeare’s love poems in 154 locations in New York. The idea is that they’ll look a little like this prototype.

That’s Vince Gatton, who appeared in the 2011 Shakespeare Exchange (or NYSX) production of The Life And Death Of King John, a Shakespeare play there’s a decent chance you don’t know much about and an excellent chance you’ve never seen performed.

For the sonnets to come, while Williams stresses the Sonnet Project is not intended to be a parade of celebrities, they’ve signed up a few folks more likely to be known outside New York, like Michael Urie (Ugly Betty’s delightful Marc St. James), Austin Pendleton (who has been in … everything), and Patrick Page, currently the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. The hope is that during the run of the project, if you have the app, you’ll get a new minute-long sonnet reading to look at every few days, and sometimes, you might see someone you recognize.

There are ambitious plans for the release of the videos at a rate of two or three per week over a year leading up to Shakespeare’s 450th birthday (or thereabouts) in April 2014. There will also be walking tours, special features, and plenty more. (The words “Sonnet Project mobile app” probably sum up what’s going on here about as well as anything could.)

The money raised will also help pay for the production of Island, an original comedy written as a riff on Shakespeare’s style and most commonly encountered elements. Here’s the plot synopsis for Island as the company describes it:

When a ferocious tempest shipwrecks two girls from 21st century America onto an island inhabited entirely by Shakespeare’s greatest tropes and archetypes, a hilarious clash of cultures ensues. An enchanted island; an ineffectual king and his usurping younger brother; a band of bumbling constables; a lovelorn, melancholy prince; a shipwrecked, cross-dressing lover in search of her twin; and plenty of other Shakespearean familiars come face-to-face with modern sensibilities as the mayhem of Kevin Brewer’s classically-entrenched psyche comes to gut-busting comedic life.

Well, naturally. It’s not Shakespeare without cross-dressing and royal power struggles.

Kickstarter fundraising has been a “crash course for everybody,” Williams says, in raising money for an organization that’s only two years old and isn’t as steeped in fundraising experience as other companies might be.

It has a catch, though: you only get the money if you make it to your goal. (As of this writing, they’re at a little less than $34,000 out of their $45,000 target with 32 hours to go.) But Williams told me that while they’ve had lots of internal discussions about the pluses and minuses, that actually turns out to be a positive thing that he sees as an advantage to Kickstarter as a platform over some other funding mechanisms that let you keep whatever amount you raise. There’s an urgency at the end of a fund drive with a hard goal you have to make, after all, when pushing past the goal is the only way to access the money that’s already been raised.

While there may be some Shakespeare purists who find the NYSX approach too different from the interpretations they’re used to, Williams says it’s a myth that Shakespeare is for fancy-pantses only. “Shakespeare becomes this grandiose experience,” he says, “and in fact, it was written for the masses.” [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]