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Summer time means backyard BBQs and parties on the patio! Chef Robl Ali knows all about good times and good food. The 29-year-old New Yorker has served big names like Michael Jackson, Vanessa Williams and President Obama. He got his start in a professional kitchen at age 15 and honed his skills at the Culinary Institute of America. After climbing the ranks of the restaurant world, he started his own catering business 'Chef Robl & Co.' He's gotten some strange requests from clients: a live monkey at dinner, a medieval feast with trolls running around, and even a wedding for Chihuahuas.

Chef Robl Ali's catering adventures are the focus of his reality TV show on Bravo, titled Chef Robl & Co. The second season started this week.

The chef joined guest host Celeste Headlee to talk about his cooking, catering, and staying skinny.

It's too early to tell whether North Korea's offer on Thursday of talks with the South — potentially the first such dialogue in years — is more than just another negotiating tactic.

But Seoul readily accepted the offer, and though Pyongyang said the agenda should be discussing the reopening of the jointly run Kaesong factory complex inside North Korea, it left the door open for the possibility of broader negotiations.

"We call for meeting between authorities to normalize Kaesong Industrial Complex and reopening of Mount Kumgang Tourist Region," Pyongyang's official KCNA news service reported. "If necessary, we could negotiate humanitarian issues such as bringing together separated families."

As The Associated Press writes:

"The envisioned talks could help rebuild avenues of inter-Korean cooperation that were obliterated in recent years amid hard-line stances by both countries, though the key issue isolating the North from the world community — its nuclear program — is not up for debate."

On the heels of Liz & Dick, Lifetime's campy take on the love story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton that starred none other than Lindsay Lohan, BBC America will be delivering another made-for-TV version this fall. Because they couldn't call it Liz & Dick, this one is called ... Burton And Taylor. (Innovation!)

This one stars Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter, and the first photo was released yesterday.

Of the many problems with Liz & Dick, one of the most prominent — which we discussed on our weekly pop-culture podcast at the time — was that Lohan in particular always seemed far too much a child, not nearly worldly and knowing enough to give you the woman Taylor was when she was with Burton. Helena Bonham Carter is not only an actress with a substantially weightier resume, but one with a lot more capacity for both unhinged energy and knowing seriousness, as you see right in this picture, actually. West, too, is giving a pretty persuasively Burton-ish vibe here. It was always quite difficult to imagine the Lindsay Lohan version of this story playing as anything but a stunt, but seeing these actors in this photo is kind of intriguing.

If you've ever wondered how to say "May the Force be with you" in Navajo, you're in luck. On July 3, a new translation of Star Wars will be unveiled on the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona. The 1977 classic has been translated into many languages, and the latest effort is the brainchild of Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz.

"We needed a way to preserve our culture," Wheeler tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "Language is at the core of a culture. And I felt we needed a more contemporary way to reach not just young people but the population in general. And so, that's when the idea of translating a major movie into the Navajo language came up."