The comedian and actor died Monday at age 63. In 2006, Williams spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about improvising, his training and how people expected him to act crazy.
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, spent six years researching America's nuclear weapons. In Command and Control, he details explosions, false attack alerts and accidentally dropped bombs.
On The Late Show, a set of previously unheard solo music from 1979, the jazz pianist employs techniques like suspenseful dropouts. He had a rare ability to sound archaic — and way ahead of his time.
John Michael McDonagh's new movie stars Brendan Gleeson as a priest who must eventually face off against a killer. It's excruciatingly obvious and inept, but Gleeson brings it alive.
Jason Hamacher wasn't trained as a photographer, a musicologist or a member of a religious community. The former Frodus drummer simply felt compelled to document this music.
The virtuoso jazz musicians perform from their new album of duets. It features hymns based on a tradition called shape-note singing, which dates to the early 1800s.
The new Cinemax show stars Clive Owen as a rude doctor in a New York City hospital in 1900. It may take a few episodes, but you'll care about the characters and their inventions.
Between 1917 and 1932, the label released thousands of records. Jack White's Third Man Records has joined with the reissue label Revenant to release the first of two packages documenting Paramount.
The New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise was among the first to arrive at the site of the downed flight in Ukraine in late July. She says it's hard to get the faces of the dead out of her mind.
Rick Perlstein's new book describes how Reagan emerged as the leader of a potent political movement during the turbulent mid-'70s. He says the soul of Reagan's appeal was how he made people feel good.
In the early 1960s when soul star Sam Cooke had his own record label, SAR, he recorded songs by his younger brother, L.C. Cooke. Fifty years years, the complete set's finally issued.
Spoon has just released its first new album since 2010's Transference. Fresh Air critic says that "They Want My Soul is another fine Spoon album in a career that has now come to display a remarkable consistency."
Allison Janney has been nominated for Emmys for her roles on Masters of Sex and Mom. She says her relationships with her mother and her brother, who was an addict, helped inform her characters.
As technology gets more complex, TV producers aim to take advantage of it, such as relying on phoned-in votes from viewers. The interactive talent show, it turns out, predates TV itself.
The newest Marvel comic adaptation features five motley warriors, including a raccoon and a tree, against an armada of space villains. The big-budget effects-laden movie is light and funny.
The eight-part drama that begins Thursday stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a British baroness with an Israeli passport. She's a fearless actor in a show full of kidnappings, seductions and betrayals.
Last year, journalist Rukmini Callimachi found thousands of al-Qaida documents in Timbuktu in Mali. She tells Fresh Air about al-Quaida's strategy of kidnapping Europeans and demanding ransoms.
Pinterest has created a database of things that matter to humans. And with a programming team that's largely been hired away from Google, the company has begun offering what it calls "guided search."
Chris Lelie-Hynan's debut novel follows a white grad student who's a chauffeur to a black basketball player. It references The Great Gatsby often with fresh takes on race, manhood and meritocracy.
