If any Perl hackers out there are looking for a small project, you might want to take a look at a module I've been working on to talk to the NPR API that was opened up last year. I'm a really big fan of NPR--at times its been my only regular connection to the US--and having the ability to access all their content since 1995 is a pretty cool thing.
The current implementation of my module is a class that will help you do keyword searches for NPR content and delivers a list back with article IDs, titles and links. This is still a toy. Once I get the query and response classes sorted out (i.e. written), you should be able to do things like ask for content in a certain date range on a certain programme, and query the API for its various content lists, which show, for example, all the music artists that have appeared on various NPR programmes, or all NPR contributors.
I'd be happy to get some help with this since this is a project I'm only able to work on in my spare time, and I don't have much of that.