Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have been friends and collaborators since they first met in 1974. While they always wanted to make an album together, they never did until recently. Old Yellow Moon includes songs by Crowell, Patti Scialfa, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson among others.
The rich and good-looking get a taste of life among the 99 percent in Jonathan Dee's novels. In A Thousand Pardons, his protagonist, Helen Armstead, finds a secret talent for getting powerful men to apologize after her marriage falls apart and she is forced to enter the working world.
After hosting his Sunday morning show on MSNBC for the past year and a half, Hayes is making the move to a weeknight news show that premieres April 1. At 34, Hayes will be the youngest prime-time anchor on any of the major cable news channels.
Anthony Lewis, the New York Times columnist and reporter who covered the Supreme Court in the late 1950s and early 1960s, died Monday. Fresh Air remembers him by listening back to a 1991 interview in which Lewis talks about the responsibilities of a columnist and the importance of a correctly-spelled name.
World War II is often thought of as a good and just war — a war the U.S. had to fight. But it wasn't that simple. Public debate was heated between interventionism, which President Roosevelt supported, and isolationism, which aviator Charles Lindbergh became an unofficial spokesman for.
To remember Chinua Achebe who died last Thursday, Fresh Air listens back to an interview with the great African writer that originally aired on May 10, 1988. In it, Achebe talks about the literary trope of the white explorer or missionary living amongst the savages, and the importance of struggle.
In a new book about movie stardom and fame, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr looks at the evolving history of the relationship between movie stars and the people who love them, and at how changing technology influences the kinds of stars the public wants.
This macho action film starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman is a vigilante fantasy about terrorists and turncoats invading the United States. It's a popular genre, but critic David Edelstein says he's tired of the American addiction to these tropes.
Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Marc Almond, Marianne Faithfull, Shane MacGowan and others appear on a new two-disc compilation of pirate ballads and sea songs called Son of Rogues Gallery. Here, Terry Gross talks with Hal Willner, the project's producer, about some of the stories behind the project.
David Mamet, the writer and director of the new HBO movie Phil Spector starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, includes a disclaimer at the beginning of the film: While the movie might be based on the controversial music producer, "This is a work of fiction. It's not 'based on a true story.'
In a series for The New York Times, environmental reporter Justin Gillis has been exploring whether harsh weather events are connected to global warming or if they are simply the random violence nature visits upon us.
On his new album, The 3dom Factor, Altschul is great at mixing opposites: abstract melodic concepts with parade beats, open improvising and percolating swing. The album is the sort of comeback that reminds you how much good music the artist made the first time around.
Shereen El Feki spent five years traveling across the Arab region asking people about sex: what they do, what they don't, what they think and why. Her ambition was to learn about the intimate lives of people in the Middle East, and how the sexual aspects of their lives reflect larger shifts.
On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges American service members face in accessing disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.
The celebration of Philip Roth's career reaches its peak in a new documentary — Philip Roth Unmasked — that will screen on PBS next week as part of the American Masters series. There's no doubt that Roth is a master, and not just an American one, but the film tiptoes around the novelist's dark ferocity.
On his first album since 2006, The 20/20 Experience, Justin Timberlake explores his range, from soul-man groove to falsetto croon, taking inspiration from neo-soul and the expansiveness of '60s and '70s rock song formats.
In 2011, Emily Rapp's baby was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic, degenerative condition with no cure. He died just shy of his third birthday. In her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, Rapp writes about what it's like to care for a terminally ill child.
Jane Campion directs a new Sundance Channel miniseries, Top of the Lake, about a young New Zealand detective played by Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss. Meanwhile, producers from Lost and Friday Night Lights team up to create a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, called Bates Motel.
Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa and Cristian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills are wildly different films, yet they share a common impulse: to demonstrate indelibly how for girls, behaving outrageously is still a political act.
The veteran reporter has recently moved from ABC News to CNN where he now hosts his own show and serves as Chief Washington Correspondent. In Part II of this interview, Tapper talks about fact-checking the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and blow back from the White House after asking tough questions.
