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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Wayman Tisdale was that rare human being: a great athlete who had a great second act. But his life ended in tragedy. Wayman Tisdale was a three-time All-American at the University of Oklahoma, and a forward on the U.S. team that won Olympic gold, a great power forward for the Indiana Pacers and Sacramento Kings. But music had been his first love.

WAYMAN TISDALE: OK, ready?

SIMON: And he left the NBA to become a jazz musician, and also, once again, great.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Protesters across Egypt are demanding an end to military rule and they say they no longer want anyone connected to former President Hosni Mubarak's regime in power. But an Egyptian high court recently gave a green light to hundreds of former members of Mr. Mubarak's outlawed ruling party to run for parliament. With elections scheduled to begin next week, critics worry that people connected to that era might have the money and connections to win. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson...

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Bill Bratton is the former chief of police in Los Angeles, as well as Boston and New York. He helped introduced the system of predictive policing, and calls it the next era of crime prevention, and an evolution of community policing. Chief Bratton's now chairman of Kroll, a risk consulting company, and he joins us on the phone this morning. Thanks very much for being with us, chief.

BILL BRATTON: It's good to be with you, as always.

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The Arab League meets today in Cairo to consider imposing sanctions against Syria after Damascus rejected the League's demand that Syria allow an observer mission into the country. As protests there continue and the death toll mounts, neighboring Turkey says it's ready to join the Arab League in levying punitive measures against the government in Damascus. But as NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul, Turkey's deep reluctance to endorse a military option underscores the complex risks surrounding any foreign intervention in Syria.

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As a young reporter, Tom Wicker covered a beaver dam for the Sandhill, North Carolina Citizen. He went on to travel the world as a White House reporter and columnist for the New York Times and was in Dallas on November 22nd, 48 years ago this week when John F. Kennedy was shot. It was in a world before cell phones and text messages.

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This year's Christmas Grinch may be Mother Nature. The Associated Press reports that historic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma have killed thousands of evergreen trees in those states, including trees being grown for sale at Christmas. Karen Barfield joins us now. She runs the Tinsel Time Christmas Tree Farm with her husband in New Caney, Texas.

Mrs. Barfield, thanks for being with us.

KAREN BARFIELD: You're welcome.

SIMON: What's your farm look like now after the drought?

It's tough to have a famous parent, really hard to go into the same business, and almost impossible to create a brilliant career in your own right ... but that's exactly what singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, has done.

Tavi Gevinson's fashion blog, The Style Rookie, is a must-see Web destination. She's been invited to runway shows all over the world and has written for and been profiled in magazines like The New Yorker and French Vogue. Oh, and by the way, she started blogging at age 11 ... which was four years ago. Gevinson has now launched a new Web magazine, RookieMag.com.

Jason Bateman is that rarest of creatures: a former child star who seems sane and successful. He starred in many '70s and '80s sitcoms, and of course, the classic Teen Wolf Too. He went on to play the nice-guy lead in Arrested Development, and also appeared in the movies Hancock, Juno, Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up.

When I was a kid, I assumed that in the future things would get better and better until we were all driving flying cars and playing badminton with space aliens on top of 500-story buildings. Frankly, I kind of counted on this happening. But now I don't assume that we'll just keep going up anymore.

Wilhelm Furtwangler's name may be hard for Americans to pronounce, but the reason this great conductor is not so well-remembered here is that he chose to remain in Germany during the Second World War, though he was never a member of the Nazi Party, and he was completely exonerated by a postwar tribunal.