Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist William Stanley Merwin was known in the 1960s as an anti-war poet. Now an environmental activist, Merwin has published a new book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which addresses themes of memory and mortality.
While on tour for her album, Over and Even, Shelley stopped by WHYY to play some of her songs along with accompanist Nathan Salsburg. She tells Fresh Air's Sam Briger she's always wanted to perform.
The Late Late Show host talks about belting out songs with celebrities like Elton John, Steve Wonder and Adele. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross he doesn't know what he did to deserve this great gig.
"The '70s were a toxic, dangerous, scary time in America" says Jeffrey Toobin. His new book puts the kidnapping, crimes and trial of Patty Heart in the context of those times.
Dean Burnett says the human brain is like a computer that files information in a way that defies logic. According to Burnett, brains can alter memory, cause motion sickness and affect intelligence.
In her comedy special Baby Cobra, Wong speaks frankly about sensitive topics, including prejudice within the Asian-American community, interracial dating and her own miscarriage. She says her decision to film the special while pregnant was a personal one.
Rock historian Ed Ward says that musicians in Düsseldorf, Germany, including Klaus Dinger of the band Neu!, helped start a new German pop movement in the 1970s and '80s.
A conversation with novelist Jay McInerney about finding fame as a young man, writing, New York City, and his new novel Bright, Precious Days about marriage, fidelity and middle age.
The co-founder of the first national lesbian-rights organization in the United States — and the country's first national lesbian magazine — died Aug. 27 at age 87. We remember her with a Fresh Air interview from 1992.
As New Orleans' levees buckled, Kimberly Rivers Roberts turned her video camera on marooned friends, relatives and neighbors. Roberts' footage has been adapted into a powerful documentary that is as much about America as it is about the deadly storm.
Actor Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass pair up again for another chapter in the series about a rogue CIA assassin. Critic David Edelstein says Jason Bourne is very flashy — but not much fun.
The energetic lead singer for The Dap-Kings spoke to Fresh Air in '07 and again in '16, after she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. "I want to perform," she said in July. Jones died on Nov. 18.
After a cancer diagnosis, and treatment soul singer Sharon Jones has returned to performing. She's the subject of a new documentary Miss Sharon Jones! by academy award winning film maker Barbara Kopple.
Donald Trump's pledge to be the "law and order" candidate revived a slogan that's associated with Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. Many people have heard that phrase as racially coded, then and now. But linguist Geoff Nunber notes, its resonances aren't quite the same as they were back then.
As a reporter for The New York Times, Amy Chozick's beat is Hillary Clinton. But, Chozick says, it's hard to get to know a candidate who "has been so scarred" by her decades in the public eye.
Born in 1916, Christian died when he was just 25 years old. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead calls him "the single greatest influence on a signature 20th-century instrument."
Ailes resigned last week amid allegations of sexual harassment. Biographer Gabriel Sherman joins Fresh Air to discuss the accusations, as well as Ailes' influence on political discourse in America.
