History

Ever since Everybody Loves Raymond, the actor says he has been trying to take on more dramatic roles. In the HBO drama Vinyl, he plays a record company executive who contemplates suicide.

According to Adam Hochschild, about 2,800 Americans fought in the Spanish Civil War, and some were bombed by Nazis years before the U.S. entered World War II. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts.

Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that "it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war."

Veteran foreign correspondent Anne Garrels takes us deep inside Russia, where citizens struggle with a shaky economy and widespread corruption, but seem supportive of their controversial president.

In the first half of the 20th century, American eugenicists used forced sterilization to "breed out" traits they considered undesirable. Adam Cohen tells the story in his new book, Imbeciles.

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz chronicle America's poisonous relationship with lead in Lead Wars. "We've created a terribly toxic environment in all sorts of ways," Rosner says.

Once a grand seaside destination, Atlantic City now faces the prospect of a takeover by the state of New Jersey. Historian Bryant Simon and reporter Amy Rosenberg discuss the city's rise and fall.

Trevor Noah, talks about taking over the Daily Show from Jon Stewart, growing up in South Africa the son of a black mother and a white father under apartheid when mixed marriage was illegal, and adapting his stand-up comedy to American audiences.

Journalist Susan Jacoby tells Fresh Air that more than half of Americans will change religion at least once in their adult life time. Her new book is Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion.

New Yorker writer Jill Lepore examines the history of polling in America. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that today's polls may be less reliable — and more influential — than ever before.

Hicks, who died on Saturday, began performing with his band Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks in the late '60s. Rock historian Ed Ward has an appreciation. Originally broadcast Jan 10, 2002.

The new period comedy by Joel and Ethan Coen takes place backstage at a 1950s Hollywood studio. Reviewer David Edelstein says that despite flashes of brilliance, the film "feels thin."

Paul Goldberg's debut novel is an ambitious historical fantasy about Stalin's 1953 plan to purge Jews from the Soviet Union. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Yid is a wildly inventive "what if" story.

The Iranian-born photographer told Fresh Air in 2015 that he was less interested in personal belief than in "what people do in the name of God." Abbas died in Paris on April 25.

Steve Silberman talks about how Nazi extermination plans and a discredited scientific paper about childhood vaccines shaped our current understanding of autism. Originally broadcast Sept. 2, 2015.

The Seven Good Years spans the time between the birth of his son and the death of his father. Keret says his father, who was a Holocaust survivor, taught him to "look reality straight in the face."

In his new book, New York Times journalist Tim Weiner paints a portrait of a president overwhelmed by wars at home and abroad, whose self-destructive behavior resulted in "political suicide."

This stunning film follows the Angulo brothers, whose father kept them locked inside a New York apartment. But their father loved movies, and the pulpy, violent films he showed them were a lifeline.

In his new book, Midnight's Furies, Nisid Hajari describes the riots and massacres that ensued after Pakistan was established as a separate state, and how those tensions are still playing out.

After all eight seasons of drama, the TV series about men and women in advertising ended with a full-length ad. TV critic David Bianculli says the conclusion was "so unexpected, yet so appropriate."

Bryan Burrough's new book describes the Weather Underground and other militant groups' tactics to protest the government. He interviews former radicals who had never gone on the record before.