Terry Gross

Comic W. Kamau Bell has spent much of his life feeling awkward. A self-described "tall, rangy black dude," Bell was often mistaken for a basketball player growing up — except that serious asthma and allergies meant he spent the bulk of his childhood indoors watching TV.

The HBO series is now in its sixth season. Producer Frank Rich also writes a column for New York magazine about the intersection of politics and popular culture.

In her new memoir, "Sometimes Amazing Things Happen," psychiatrist Elizabeth Ford writes about the horror and the hope she found in treating Rikers inmates.