Terry Gross

Shortly after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2019, architect Brian Ameche, then in his mid-60s, told his wife, novelist Amy Bloom, that he wanted to end life on his own terms, before the disease robbed him of everything.

David Sipress endured years of rejection before finally landing a gig with The New Yorker in '98. "I wasn't about to let all that rejection get in the way," he says. His new memoir is What's So Funny?

Meghan O'Rourke says long COVID and other chronic illnesses put an unwieldy burden on patients, who have to testify to the reality of their own illness. Her new book, The Invisible Kingdom, chronicles her personal struggle to find diagnoses for her own nerve pain, brain fog, extreme fatigue and other symptoms."When you're at the edge of medical knowledge, the lack of evidence is treated as evidence that the problem is you and your mind," O'Rourke says. "I felt, in a sense, kind of locked away in a room like a 19th-century hysteric."

Greenwood is nominated for an Oscar for writing the music for The Power of the Dog. He also recently scored Spencer and Licorice Pizza. Originally broadcast Feb. 7, 2022.

The British actor is nominated for an Oscar for his role as a taciturn cowboy in The Power of the Dog. He prepared for the role by spending time with real ranchers. Originally broadcast Jan. 19, 2022.

Historian and former State Department official Michael Kimmage says the war in Ukraine is going "surprisingly badly" for the Kremlin: "It didn't get the politics of Ukraine right. It didn't expect the Ukrainians to fight." We talk about possible scenarios of how this conflict could end, and what that means for Ukraine, Europe and the U.S.

Aaron Guzikowski says his futuristic HBO Max show, which centers on two androids raising human children on a distant planet, was inspired by his own experiences as a father of three.

Journalist Anne Applebaum has been covering the war in Ukraine for The Atlantic. "I don't think that we will ever again smugly assume that borders in Europe can't be changed by force," she says.

David Blight's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography traced Douglass' path from slavery to abolitionist and inspired HBO's documentary, Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches. Originally broadcast in 2018.

While it may sound nice to live in a world with fewer roaches, environmental writer Oliver Milman says that human beings would be in big trouble without insects. That's because insects play critical roles in pollinating plants we eat, breaking down waste in forest soil and forming the base of a food chain that other, larger animals — including humans — rely upon.