Episode No. 57 features historian and biographer Helen Langdon and artist Ahmed Alsoudani.

The Kimbell Art Museum and the Yale University Press have just published Langdon’s “Caravaggio’s Cardsharps: Trickery and Illusion,” a smart, richly illustrated 74-page book on the great Caravaggio in the Kimbell’s collection. Priced at $17, it’s an absolute steal.

A scholar of the Italian Baroque and particularly of Rome, Langdon’s 1998 “Caravaggio: A Life” is considered one of the best and most important of the many Caravaggio biographies.

The second segment features Ahmed Alsoudani, an Iraqi-American painter whose work is on view now as part of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Matrix series. His first American museum exhibition, it’s on view through January 6, 2013. Last year Alsoudani was featured in three separate exhibitions at and during the Venice Biennale: including the Pavilion of Iraq, the Pan-Arab world’s show and a show at the Pinault Collection.

Air date: Dec. 6, 2012.