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It's been grueling for Newt Gingrich as he defends his record just days before the Iowa caucuses. Some of the stress may have surfaced Friday when one question brought on the tears.

There were at least three countdowns to shutdown, there was the debt-limit fight, plus the will-they-or-won't-they drama over the payroll tax holiday. Looking at how few bills were actually signed into law this year, one might conclude this session was mostly sizzle and not much steak.

Ellis Avery's novel The Last Nude imagines the hidden affair between art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and her model Rafaela. From afar, the boldly colored paintings appear polished and cool-headed, but up close, Avery says, you can see they were created in a state of passion.

Whether you wanted to or not, you probably heard songs that ruled the charts in the U.S. this year. But how about what was popular on the other side of the globe? Critics from Reykjavik and Beirut pick tracks by the artists who stood out in their home countries.

The founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War says while U.S. forces will no longer be deployed there, the mission of the organization continues. There's a new focus, though: Members want returning veterans to have an easier road to reintegration than those who returned from Vietnam. Elizabeth Fiedler of WHYY in Philadelphia reports.

Queen Elizabeth II has ruled the United Kingdom for an exceptionally long time. In six decades, her reign has spanned 12 prime ministers, 12 American presidents and six popes. She's one of the world's most famous women, instantly recognizable, yet eternally private. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks with author and BBC host Andrew Marr about his book, The Real Elizabeth, a portrait of the queen taken from interviews with those closest to her.

Some might be inclined to think 2011 was a pretty bad year for space, what with the U.S. space program shutting down. While the Atlantis marked the last mission in NASA's decades-long space shuttle program, the agency still managed to have other significant launches this year. Crafts visited Mercury, a massive asteroid known as Vesta, and the moon. Another left for Jupiter, and the Voyager 1 spacecraft sailed out of our solar system. Guest host Rebecca Sheir talks to Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium, about whether all that made 2011 a good year for space exploration.

For centuries, people from China have immigrated to major cities in the United States. There, many formed their own neighborhoods known today as Chinatowns. But with China's economy booming and the U.S. economy faltering, these historic neighborhoods are seeing declining populations and new demographics.

The word on the 2012 food scene is the opposite of processed, mass produced and factory farmed. Weekend Edition food commentator Bonny Wolf sifts through the tea leaves for clues to what you'll be eating in the year ahead.

One of the biggest political question marks going into 2012 is the fate of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Audie Cornish speaks with Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times about what's ahead for Americans in terms of health care in the new year, including a constitutional challenge to the law's mandatory health care provision.